Websites!

[Trapper]

Hello - bit of a short notice ask (very short notice!)

 

We've been asking companies to price for a new website. Totally bespoke theme and development along with actual face time with the designers instead of just emails and phone calls.

 

We've also asked for it under 5 weeks, and sadly someone mentioned "OfSTED"!

 

The quote we had back was £10k - or about £8k with the VAT off.

 

Does that sound unreasonable?

 

The last couple we had cost about £4k - but it was a template, minimal development work and purely email/phone meetings!

 

Any advice gratefully received!

[JoeBloggs]

8k on the surface doesn't sound too bad...

 

How complex is the site?

 

What are the on-going maintenance and support costs?

[ITBadger]

I agree with @JoeBloggs. £8k is not unreasonable for a large site with design elements required. We have worked with a company called Funkemedia for a while. They are fantastic guys and have always managed to deliver to the tight deadlines that our SLT seem to throw at them. If you want to see our site to get a feel for what they can deliver then you can see it here. Be aware that we are going through something of a transition with the site at present though, so it may not be as inspirational as it has been in the past.

[webman]

Yes, I'd say that was quite reasonable. Particularly when you factor in:

 

Features you will need

Bespoke theme and developments

Meetings/project management

Testing

Timescale (Under 5 weeks seems rather fast)

[RobD]

You may of had enough quotes but my friend has recently started web development (he's very good and he's not far from Birmingham).

www.colourshack.co.uk

[TechMonkey]

For your requirements and the timescale I think £8k is very good. As someone else mentioned make sure you get the year on year after costs in case they try and get you with those.

 

From experience make sure you have access to edit any page, no static content out of your reach. We have been left in the position where there are a few pages that are static that we have wanted to make a string of changes on and either there have been delays or they have made noises about making a charge. We have now found out in the latest carnation of their CMS users have access to all static pages and we can upgrade for an all time low price of....

[rad]

Thats a snip compared to our website. I would say that is reasonable for a professional company to produce.

[Ketlane]

From a presentation I went to last week about Intellectual Property: check the contract when you agree or sign it. Ensure that the copyright rests with the school and not the contractor. The context was different, but the speaker from the IPO discussed an entrepreneur setting up a company and getting a contractor to build the website. When it came time to sell the company, the IP of the website was with the contractor and the company either needed to buy this out or was reduced in value.

[RLR]

Unsure about the quote but we're currently getting a new website created by e4education - Home. Our marketing team is dealing with it but this company focuses on education only.

[Mistert89]

We were about £10k including a photo-shoot for a day. Hosting is cheap, and we do general updates ourselves, but everything else is chargeable (I didn't choose the contract!). They don't even apply the WordPress changes, but we can't ftp a backup - so they charge to do this.