Reasonable price for Wordpress implimentation?

Johnatan56 said:
Kind of disagree with there being better, can argue similar in terms of functionality.

WordPress is nice as clients know it and it's pretty easy to find good plug-ins, the question is more often how bad some themes and plug-ins are and how many "developers" are in that field churning out cheap trash.

Used to build some custom sites using WP as the CMS, theme and stuff were all custom though, But it allowed easy and quick content addition and could take advantage of things like woo commerce that is pretty standardized so lots of payment features we could just charge for the plug in and quickly implement and the client was happy.
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WordPress is kinda that platform that's not quite sure what it wants to be. News Publishing? Blogging? Landing page? All in one website builder?
In that way, sure it does it all, that's what makes it stand out from the rest.

But if you break it up, there's overall much better focussed products for those individual features. Very few sites will have have all those requirements to be on one site.
 
R3000 to R5000 is a reasonable rate for a 1 page Wordpress website I'd say. As a freelancer, you have to factor in all the costs that they carry running their business. Secondly, there's usually a bit of communication and/or revisions involved. You sound like a client I'd likely pass on though. Take a look at something like Upwork or Fiverr for some freelancers who will work for really cheap.
 
Lol? R300-R400?

Hahahahaha

I charge for a one pager R150pm*

My packages are R250, R350, R450, R550 and beyond. :D and my clients with me for years.

Even once off R3000 won't do the effort for it.

Mwah

I also charge once off out of packages R550 per hour. Billed at x task quoted up front. Yes you can get away with fiver, upword, wix, square space... But do you know how many of those sites I redid for clients? Too many.

Look up Google light house and why it matters especially now since April and responsiveness from may with proper accessibility.

Who does your website business needs analysis? Marketing needs analysis? Theme design for either respect/impressing or funnel design with Data or getting clicks and goals met?

Adwords cost a fortune if they don't convert.

What about landing pages to target?

R300 once off? Nooo

Sometimes when I started I did sites for free and said once the site perform you can pay me out of the profits... Building you an investment or goal achiever.

I also straight up tell clients their ideas suck and rather do this and why. Free educational training, hours talking and learning their business.

R300 to even set up your server, your security, your plugins? Not even mention the other 7-10 days minimum of work for the rest.

Oh my, dreams we have for bargains eh?

I don't charge my packages at time invested I charge rentals due to my years of training to know how to solve x problems your business is facing.

Even a guild or hobby website... $$$
 
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RedViking said:
10 000-20 000 for a professional site. There is more to a WordPress site than just the way it looks.
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Define professional, at the first web agencies I worked there were WP sites as easy for client to add content, but rest full custom and extra features, you were looking upward of a million starting. Then again, you were paying for a good few hundred hours of dev time as these were huge projects.

WordPress development is a case of how long is a piece of string, for a small one man business where you'll spend a day on it, you charge what they can afford, and most good devs will quickly move away from there as living in e.g. Cape Town is expensive and one cannot afford to do such small business as getting clients is also a large task that somehow has to be built into the cost.

If you're taking someone from a cheap country in Asia, or a South African living in a backwater town, you're going to have cheaper rates as salary usually matches cost of living in those areas.
 
RedViking said:
10 000-20 000 for a professional site. There is more to a WordPress site than just the way it looks.
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I did 2 (1 mine) sites and have to agree. Way more effort than it look, most of the work is behind the scenes.
My website look like something thrown together in 5 minutes, but took many days (hour here and there) to get everything set reasonably correct (still find things to tend to when researching).
 
Johnatan56 said:
Define professional, at the first web agencies I worked there were WP sites as easy for client to add content, but rest full custom and extra features, you were looking upward of a million starting. Then again, you were paying for a good few hundred hours of dev time as these were huge projects.

WordPress development is a case of how long is a piece of string, for a small one man business where you'll spend a day on it, you charge what they can afford, and most good devs will quickly move away from there as living in e.g. Cape Town is expensive and one cannot afford to do such small business as getting clients is also a large task that somehow has to be built into the cost.

If you're taking someone from a cheap country in Asia, or a South African living in a backwater town, you're going to have cheaper rates as salary usually matches cost of living in those areas.
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I assume we are taking things in context here and not taking about a corporate site. We talking here about a Home page, About Page, Service Page and contact Form. I definitely don't think OP is going to pay a million for his site. He won't be on here asking us then.
 
RedViking said:
I assume we are taking things in context here and not taking about a corporate site. We talking here about a Home page, About Page, Service Page and contact Form. I definitely don't think OP is going to pay a million for his site. He won't be on here asking us then.
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Yes, that's why I mention adjusting to client.
Just saying as some people see the word professional and then blanket that.

Old company/startup I worked for was:
Basic site about 15k if one Pager, professional doesn't matter.
More advanced due to more cms stuff and more custom components, e.g. Custom animations, sliders, etc. Would bring that to 30-40k, and then e-commerce was around 50k but usually threw in a day's guidance on how to actually take photos of products, add a design language doc for the site, etc. Which is usually a good 2-3 days work from our designer, and so far of the around 20 clients we did the e-commerce for 17 are still in business and turning a good profit even in covid and were still asking for more custom stuff, since pure web business. As a dev, you also need to scope your clients, businesses going under easily after you make them a sales platform is bad, can be taken as your site is bad.

Again, all depends on use case, who you hire, where they're based, what your own business is, etc. A game of how long is a piece of string.
 
Johnatan56 said:
Yes, that's why I mention adjusting to client.
Just saying as some people see the word professional and then blanket that.

Old company/startup I worked for was:
Basic site about 15k if one Pager, professional doesn't matter.
More advanced due to more cms stuff and more custom components, e.g. Custom animations, sliders, etc. Would bring that to 30-40k, and then e-commerce was around 50k but usually threw in a day's guidance on how to actually take photos of products, add a design language doc for the site, etc. Which is usually a good 2-3 days work from our designer, and so far of the around 20 clients we did the e-commerce for 17 are still in business and turning a good profit even in covid and were still asking for more custom stuff, since pure web business. As a dev, you also need to scope your clients, businesses going under easily after you make them a sales platform is bad, can be taken as your site is bad.

Again, all depends on use case, who you hire, where they're based, what your own business is, etc. A game of how long is a piece of string.
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Of course. Basic site about 10-20K I would say from my research. Take an awesome word press theme you like and let an experienced designer/developer set it up.

If you want more than just a couple of pages expect to pay more.

Compare that to the guys charging a couple of hundred or 1 or 2 grand,

Get yourself a Filipino slave labour then and don't complain when you are not happy with it.
 
ronald911 said:
Agree.

Wordpress is dodgy.
Debugging someone elses themes + child themes can be a nightmare, especially if that developer and whoever touched it before you did stuff anti-pattern which is all too common in the WordPress ecosystem. End up fighting with stupid donkeycrap for hours, that otherwise would've been easy to deal with.

My only remaining WP clients are my legacy ones from when I just got into the business. They are just for maintaining and I kinda know their sites/themes/plugins/etc inside out by now. And their hourly rates makes it worthwhile ;)

Not say WordPress is bad. I just think there's far better / easier maintainable / more flexible CMS's out there if you are starting a new content based project.

But anyway, regarding OP's website, with a R3000 budget, you'd probably get more value just DIYing it.
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WordPress can be dodgy, but certainly doesn't have to be. I chunder in my soul when I see the admin area of WP sites developed by others, as it's such an ungodly mess that the client can't maintain. (I know plenty of good devs, but we don't take over each other's work)

I take a simple approach: have a whole stack of agency licenses for top-notch plugins like ACF Pro, WP All Import, WooFunnels, SEOPress Pro, Fluent Forms Pro and so on, and develop without the WP theme framework. What is the point of themes anyway? Just pointless bloat imo. And I avoid the hell out of stuff like Divi and Elementor. Throw it solid hosting on an UpCloud or EC2 server (or similar) and you've got <500ms load times.

If you manage the entire site's data using ACF Pro, the client has an incredibly easy time maintaining their own site.
 
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Well there a lot of factors here, yes some a kid can whoop up a site in 3 hours.
But here are the questions:
WordPress themes by nature have terrible UX design, is this person going to fix that?
Is also very bloated even the so-called best themes... slowing your site down costing you conversions? are they going to remove unnecessary code? clean it up?
Is he/she going to use a premium theme? Which should give you support through website-breaking WordPress updates?
Is he or she slapping in plugins for every little function (or actually coding them in) making the site slow, vulnerable, and dependant on numerous updates.
I've never seen R300 themes lol, cheapest I ever saw was 990 and they are terrible.
I've seen designs that are worth R10k + minimum. With UX that provides ridiculous conversion rations and subsequently along with some SEO (not just a Yoast plugin) great rankings and turn themselves into R100k+ income sites a month. R3000 isn't going to get you much unless there somebody doing some really good work at a really cheap rate.
As with everything one purchases it's always a bit of a risk I would say to you don't go cheapest and don't go expensive, try middle ground, look at reviews and work they've done. Check those websites with GT Metrix for speed, Moz for traffic, Seositecheckup for general SEO details. ( Which generally just include a lot of good design and code practices. ). Also Use Google lighthouse. These are all free tools that will tell you a lot about the site and the kind of work that your potential guy is putting out.
 
Look if your website is really simple and you have a PSD ready to go for the look, all the plugins, and themes with future updates that means when WordPress, a plugin, or a theme updates functionality doesn't break then, by all means, pay 300.

Even with a page builder or template, it's blatantly obvious when somebody hasn't really customized a theme for you, which a lot of people also seem to forget, and also some website designers are guilty of not having this. A website isn't just sticking your info and images on a web page in a pretty way. It's a sales tool.

It needs to be designed for the target market involved. Technically speaking most themes CANNOT be perfect for your target audience. I've seen beautiful sites right from a theme developers imports deployed just with informational changes or said company, and then I've seen sites that look less superficial where there are real images, real thought to the layout, a lot of the times they don't look as glamorous but they almost always convert better.

Look im not go pay 10k for a website and im not saying don't pay R300 - If I where you id drop the 300 for sure and look at in-between options go exact search that companies footer link and see the sites they put out, not the stuff they show you on their portfolio. Use an SEO tool, check its site speed, traffic .... I often find this is where the lazy guys stop working. And yes even for me when I work on something somebody else has worked on its a different charge because most developers/designers do not comment code and there are 100 ways to achieve the same thing its a pain sometimes.
 
Juan Preuyt said:
Look if your website is really simple and you have a PSD ready to go for the look, all the plugins, and themes with future updates that means when WordPress, a plugin, or a theme updates functionality doesn't break then, by all means, pay 300.

Even with a page builder or template, it's blatantly obvious when somebody hasn't really customized a theme for you, which a lot of people also seem to forget, and also some website designers are guilty of not having this. A website isn't just sticking your info and images on a web page in a pretty way. It's a sales tool.

It needs to be designed for the target market involved. Technically speaking most themes CANNOT be perfect for your target audience. I've seen beautiful sites right from a theme developers imports deployed just with informational changes or said company, and then I've seen sites that look less superficial where there are real images, real thought to the layout, a lot of the times they don't look as glamorous but they almost always convert better.

Look im not go pay 10k for a website and im not saying don't pay R300 - If I where you id drop the 300 for sure and look at in-between options go exact search that companies footer link and see the sites they put out, not the stuff they show you on their portfolio. Use an SEO tool, check its site speed, traffic .... I often find this is where the lazy guys stop working. And yes even for me when I work on something somebody else has worked on its a different charge because most developers/designers do not comment code and there are 100 ways to achieve the same thing its a pain sometimes.
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I don't think any of the good devs I know will build a site for R10k or less. That's not high-end money.
 
SaucePlz said:
@Mars did you end up finding someone? Let's see the site :unsure:
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Naw, I haven't done it yet. I'm dealing with a whole lot of other crap atm. The website depends on the outcome of said crap.
That said, I'm budgeting about R5k or so for it.
 
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