Web design - the cost

I've never been aware of how much I am giving away when I make somebody a site. To me, it costs me nothing to produce, and so why not, which is great when I'm still finding my feet and learning new tricks.

However, as part of our mock client project, costings (or learning about them) play a part. It's good to know.

Research online has been quite surprising, as can be seen below.

Littleblackdog, a web design agency in Nottingham charge:

• A two page site is charges at £250!! (Considering that now, that's the easiest pocket money ever!)
• £600 for a twelve page site (In reality, most small sites/small clients will have around this much content if not less)
• For a logo, letterheads/business cards etc and a website, they charge £1000-1500! (I can't believe how much I've therefore actually given away!)

In fact, looking at their work, I feel I could produce to the same standard. They use modern, clean designs, that have life through the colourisation and I definitely know of somewhere to send off for work experience now.


Designer-webs seem a more ecommerce type web design agency, but their pricing structure includes basic static sites:

• A small static site starts at £350
• Basic ecommerce site is available from £750

Meanwhile dubbing themselves pro web designers, FXPro Design make a website that can comprise of Flash, HTML and ASP (or PHP).

• The site they say will typically be of 10 pages, have an email account, hosting, a PHP/ASP contact form and costs £815.99

Mediadesignstudio seem to go for a slightly more competitive price range, including domain and hosting within all their packages:

• A 1 page site, dubbed a webcard is charged at £130
• A 4 page website design is £390
• A 6 page site is charged at £570

Webcatch tout themselves as offering cheap web design for companies.

They go in a 2, 4, 6 scale for packages:

• Basic consisting of 1-3 pages comes in at £199 plus VAT
• Business they consider to be 5-10 pages at £399 plus VAT
• Business Pro is their larger package and covers 5-20 pages and costing £649 plus VAT.

Lastly FusionXS have a bright, quite modern looking website and offer three packages in regards to pricing structure:

• Up to 5 pages here is worth £200 including ongoing support, management, hosting and email accounts
• 8 pages here is worth £300
• Upto 16 pages is £400

Of all the sites, these do seem to offer better prices for the quantity. Admittedly however, looking at their portfolio, the designs do seem dated, but this by no means means that it is rubbish, it is perhaps just a couple of years behind current design.

I definitely feel the design work we provide will be of a more contemporary nature, being qualitative and so think price-wise, we could "charge" (as it's all really for free at the end of the day) perhaps £400 for a five page site.

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