How Much Does it Cost?

It's usually one of the first questions asked when considering a new website. "How much does it cost to make a website?" The short (and often surprising) answer is "Not much!". Technology has changed so much in the last ten years that almost everything that once required an expensive professional can be done by even a beginner. This is great news!

Here's about what you should expect to pay if you're building your website yourself (on average):

• Yearly Domain Name Fee: $10
• Yearly Hosting Fee: $75 - $120 (Depending on the length of your contract)

That's it! If you take the time to do the work yourself, creating a website for personal or business reasons can be a very low price venture that can certainly bring you many rewards.

Now.. let's compare that with hiring someone else to do the work:

• Site Design: $1500 - $3000 (up into 5 digits for e-commerce sites)
• Hosting & Maintenance: $250 - $500 a year

Considerably more! I'm not saying that a superb design isn't worth the money. There are times when nothing less than a professional designer will do (maybe you have an idea for the next Facebook or Amazon.com). And there are business people who simply don't have any extra time or interest in designing their own site.

If you are going to pay someone to design your site, I would offer one piece of advice; Don't let anyone charge you extra for Hosting or Maintenance fees! There's a common trend among designers. Many of them realize that a client knows very little about the process of starting up a website. Realizing this, they'll add a hefty monthly charge on to the quote for Hosting. Hosting should not be expensive, rather someone builds your site for you, or you do it yourself. Webfaction is one of the top web hosts available and signing on with them under a five year plan only costs $5.50 a month! That's for far more space and features than 99% of all startup sites would ever need.

Another big advantage of choosing a good web host is the ability to host as many websites as you like. Your hosting fee should allow you to start as many websites as you need, and only pay the yearly average fee of $10 p/ new domain name. Though you might not have an immediate interest in doing this, you might be surprised at the ideas that will start coming once you realize that website building isn't hard.

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