How much does a website cost including running it?

This article according to Forbes, gives a guide that we don’t agree with: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/how-much-does-a-website-cost

For example:

Website prices can vary, and we can appreciate it’s a minefield so at the risk of our competitors having a sneak peek of what we charge and how, here’s a guide to how we do it, because we know you need to budget. And if it sounds too good to be true it probably is, so as a multi-award-winning website designer, with 26 years experience here’s what we think are some good website deals:

We have two packages, the Basic one and the Professional one. The Basic website you will need to allow time for as there’s work for you to do, the Professional one we do it all for you with unlimited changes until you’re completely happy and we love to host websites, large and small on our eco-friendly hosting, here’s what our packages include:

Basic website

This package is for new business owners looking for a straightforward, no-fuss website who are overwhelmed by all the options and advertisements. With this package, you get more than just a website—you get real, personalised support from a small business that understands your needs.

We specialise in creating simple yet powerful websites using the WordPress platform. This ensures you own your content and have the control to easily update it. Our basic website package gives you everything you need to get started, and we’ll walk you through how to manage it.

You will need to allocate time!

It’s an often underestimated task people undertake. You can hire us to write your content but we’ll still need to find out all about your organisation and get approval on what we write. So it can be a lengthy process.  You need to add your content and branding colours with our guidance. So although the technical set up is done for you, this can be time consuming and take longer than the professional package below where we design and add your content to your website. So before you begin, make sure you have allocated time for this project which we guide and support you through.

Once you’re happy with  your website we make it live and host it for you. Our hosting runs on 100% renewable energy, we provide one-to-one support, security is taken care of as well as spam management.

At £550 it’s our budget option but doesn’t include design we show you how to add your branding and content.

Our hosting is £20 per month, see more about our hosting here

What You Get:

• Custom Basic Website Design
• 2 Hours of Hands-On Training to help you update your site with ease
• As many pages as you like, we show you how to add these so you can be free!
• Mobile-friendly design for seamless browsing on any device
• Integrated Social Media Links to connect your business to your audience
• Optional Blog
• Clickable Phone Numbers for instant customer contact
• Managed Eco-Friendly Hosting for hassle-free maintenance
• Up to 5 branded email addresses
• 1 Year Domain Name registration included
• SEO Optimised so your customers can find you easily
• Google Analytics & Search Console Setup to track your performance from day one
• Ready to get your business online? Let us make it simple, effective, and stress-free

*doesn’t include: online shop, gallery, MailChimp integration, logo design or member area, although these can be added for a bit extra

See example site here of what you start with and a lovely testimonial from Sally Wainman of therapeuticmassageipswich.co.uk

"There's no substitute for face-to-face help when you want to launch your first website!   Abbie guides you through the whole process and there is a real sense of achievement when you realise you can "populate" and "update" without destroying the page completely; the WordPress website gives you the freedom to add new Blog posts, new Testimonials etc.  However, the most exciting part was choosing a logo and seeing it come to life on the new website  (See "The birth of a massage logo" on my Blog)"

Read more about our basic package here

Our professional website package

This will seem way more expensive and is for some, but you get all the professional quality design and build. A website that although is built on a well supported theme and page builder in WordPress gives an original look and feel, that reflects your brand, we include logo design in with the £2000 fee Which can be paid in instalments over as much as 3 months, and we can do special deals for charities and not for profits.

Here's three we designed earlier, click to enlarge or visit our website design page for more info

Here's a testimonial from Suffolk Care Association via our Trusted Trader profile
“Abbie created a new website for our organisation and was fantastic to deal with throughout. She was concise and informative, answering our (many!) questions with patience and ensuring our complete understanding of how things worked and how we could fully utilise all aspects of the site. Nothing was too much trouble for her. The site quality itself is excellent and we’ve already had several comments complementing it. Highly recommended"

This is a complete package and includes as many pages as you like plus:

• Professional design - unlimited changes until you're completely happy
• Training to update with SEO optimised content guide
• Mobile friendly
• Social media links
• Easy to find contact points
• Managed hosting
• 1 year domain name registration
• SEO Optimised
• Google Analytics & Google Search Console setup

Addons that are extra with the Basic package come as standard

• Slideshow (optional)
• Gallery (optional)
• MailChimp (optional)

Contact us about this package here and get a free logo design

Other addons

What else do you want your website to do?

Your WordPress website can do many things, even if you start with a basic package

Here’s a list of things you can add

• An online shop
• An online forum, which can be spam magnets, but if you have a membership site with access to this by login, that shouldn't be an issue
• Membership area, you can sell courses, access to resources, online tours, special offers to an area you charge a monthly subscription for, have a read of What can you sell online? Selling your time – Coaching, therapy sessions, online tours and teaching courses for ideas
• Booking or Appointment System, you can get third party services to add to your website as The Sudbury Podiatrist did here or use a plugin
• Events calendar, you can sell tickets to events as we do here for our useful webinars 

All these above can be added to a website or built with one in the original design. If you add a new online shop, you may need to think about reorganising the navigation to allow for basket, account and checkout buttons so they’re easily accessible as well as product category areas

Website hosting

Our website hosting starts at £20 per month, with experience we realised the people we built websites for couldn’t be running security updates themselves,  or working out how to reduce spam if they had an influx of it, or deal with technical issues, that should be done by someone like us! So in around 2013 we upped our hosting price and offered managed hosting where not only do we deal with technical issues including spam, but provide one-to-one support too. At first people didn't want to pay £15 per month, saying it was too expensive for just hosting, and it was hard to get across that it was more than that! We realised hosting is more than just having website files live on a server, but a responsibility of care! And getting that across was a challenge, until there were some major security leaks by some big name home internet providers, then people started to get it. We’ve only raised our prices by a fiver in ten years offering this service, and we do charge a little more for bigger more complex websites, all well under £100 per month.

So with our eco-friendly hosting, we care for your website security concerns are none of your concern, we deal with all of it and love it!

Read more about our website hosting here

How was that?

So this is what we charge, some website agencies will charge a lot less and some a lot more, and be wary if they do, find out exactly wat you're getting, is it all of the above or not?