A Perspective on
Website Costs
People automatically assume if
they see a website that they can afford the same website, but the
fact is websites can cost from a few dollars to many hundreds of
millions of dollars.
Now that is quite a range and
I think I can bring it into perspective.
There are a few very
expensive elements in running a website:
Labor: Design
& Programming
Hardware: Servers
and Firewalls
Operational Costs:
Bandwidth and Network Services
First, we have to
examine the labor costs of a website.
Of course, if you build a
website yourself, your cost is only your own time, but can you do
it all?
Can you write code, create
programs and build graphics? Well you can using a system like
pageBuzz, but your results will be based on your ability. Since
you are not a seasoned professional, it might not be as refined
as a professional would build.
But you have to look at your
budget. Do you have $10,000 to pay for design? Do you have $20,000
or $100,000 to pay for programming?
If not, you will have
something very basic which is fine, unless you expect to have a
million dollar website.
pageBuzz is focused on basic,
functional and useful websites that never cost over $20 a month.
We realize that 99% of the people that need websites fit into
that segment.
But making those
people understand that is another issue entirely.
Most people know they cannot
afford a RollsRoyce, but that is only because Rolls has a
reputation for being expensive. If the same people see a car
driving down the street and don't know what the brand is, they
don't assume the car costs $1million dollars, they assume they
can also afford one.
This is the problem with
websites. People just don;t have any perspective when it comes t
prices and website costs.
They see 10,000 TV ads from
Godaddy and Web.com saying "get a website for $1" and
now I see Hostgator advertising unlimited websites for just one
penny.
Anyone that has called these
companies and asked to have a website set up know the actual cost
is more like $1500 and up. And that is just for a basic page or
two.
So
most business owners are in limbo. They need a website but
they think it should only cost a few dollars, be as easy as
click 1,2,3! And not be complicated or involve any extra fees.
So they just keep searching
for the $1 website even though they never find it or when they do,
it is worth every penny they pay for it and I mean that litteraly.
It is worth pennies or nearly worthless.
The think to remember is that
even if you hire one person at just $10 an hour, a website can
take hundreds of hours to complete and cost you thousands of
dollars.So there is just no way to get around labor costs.
Even a small website with 200
products might take 100 hours just to enter the product data for
the shopping cart. Even paying someone minimum wage to do that
can still be over $1000 and you have not even started the website
design costs.
The other huge
labor cost is programming.
Programmer, at least good ones
get top dollar and programs take even more hours to create than
the actual design or data entry. So building anything custom can
cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In most cases, companies can
use prewritten programs like we have at pageBuzz.com and rather
than paying a programmer to build one, you can lease one for $20
a month. That is a huge cost savings, but you are limited to what
the program was written to do.
If you decide your business
needs a custom program, get out the wallet and be prepared to pay
for it.
It is kind of funny
because we get people asking us all the time what software we
run. They want to start a business like pageBuzz and run it
themselves. I have to tell them we have created our own
programs at a cost of several million dollars just for
programming and design work. And even after I do, they still
ask, where they can get a copy of it.
People just don't understand
the time involved in writing programming code and building
software. They all assume they can go to the local computer store
and buy a CD with what they need for $20.
But that is not how it works
and it is not very likely that could ever happen.
It is just a case of hours and
hours of work that add up to be huge amounts of money. You can't
get 2000 hours or more for a few dollars no matter how you try to
figure it out. Labor is expensive and will be a huge factor in
how much a website costs.
Cost Of Hardware
Secondly, we have hardware
costs. For most people, they assume again, there is no hardware
cost, just signup at godaddy for $1 and you don't have to worry
about anything else.
And if your business can run
on a $1 website that is true, but most cannot.
If you are developing your own
software you need dedicated servers for a few reasons.
Security
CPU Resources
Drive Capacity
Backup Ability
General Network Access
If you are spending tens of
thousands of dollars creating programming you don't want that on
a shared server where anyone can access it. You also, don't want
credit cards or financial data on a shared server so you need a
dedicated server at least.
But now you have t look at
website resources and architecture. Do you want to be able to
scale the website? Allow for more than a few users at a time when
you get bigger?
Then you have to plan for that
and in those cases you typically need more than one server to
manage the architecture you need. You also need general network
access so you can network those server together on the back end
and have firewalls so only you can access them via the admin
functions.
All of this hardware costs
money.
We run servers that cost $100,000
each, so if you needed 4 or more of those, you see that adds up
fast. Switches at $3,000-5,000 each and miscelaneous things like
KVM over IP, monitor and networking components.
Don't forget, this hardware
has to be someplace with Internet access, backup generator and
climate control that can manage the huge amount of heat put out
by the equipment.
Typical datacenter space for a
single rack in a shared facility is around $1000 a month before
the bandwidth costs.
So that $1 website is not
costing half a million just for hardware and that is not actually
a big number when it comes to hardware for a website.
While the average person does
not pay that because they can't, they can use a company like
pageBuzz who has spent considerably more and leases space for $20
a month.
But that is for a small
business website with no access to the server admin or root
functions.
So if you need custom, you
better be prepared to fork out some serious cash for hardware.
Of course, if you only need 2
servers, one for a basic site and one for backup or
failover in case the primary fails,
then you cost might only be a few thousand dolls, but that does
not leave room for expansion as you grow.
Now, maybe you think I am
exaggerating this somehow but I am not. Hardware is expensive and
it is equally as expensive to run it. Forget that you just spent
half a million on hardware, now you need a system administrator
to keep it running, manage the network and deal with issues like
DDOS attacks and hackers breaching the servers.
Ever server on the Internet
has multiple hacking attempts ever single day, so you have to
deal with it and keep it running. Again, more labor.
Important to
Remember
It is important to remember
that just because you don;t see it, does not mean that it is not
there.
We don't see all the 100,000
or more servers running google.com, but without them, it would
not work. So while sites like google seem simple and easy to
build, they are immensely expensive and have huge back ends. In
fact in google case, they have multiple datacenters around the
world all with massive numbers of servers to manage loads of
world wide traffic.
I can promise you that google
cannot run on a $1 website at godaddy no matter what the support
people over there tell you. If that was the case, there would be
just one server on the Internet and everything would run off of
that. We know that is not the case, so you have to understand not
all websites can run on $1 website hosting.
Not to Scare You
About Website Costs
I am not trying to scare you
about website hosting costs at all, in fact most websites can run
on $1 website hosts or $20 websites in our case.
The point is to tell you that
not all do, so assuming that what you see is always possible for
just a few dollars is misguided and incorrect.
Most small businesses don't
need anything custom, but they often assume they ca get something
custom because hey see other people doing it.
I have written so many
articles addressing the topic of website costs
just because it is such a struggle for non tech savvy people to
grasp. Yet it easy to understand that not everyone can afford a
10,000 square foot mansion or a 200,000 square foot retail space.
Most people live in small
rented homes or apartments but that means you are bound by what
the owners have down with the property.
The same is true of hosting at
a system like pageBuzz.com. You get in for pennies on the dollar,
but you have to live with what you get and can't make all the
changes you might like. But the cost in comparison to building
your own website or home from scratch is huge.
Renting an apartment, owning a
website, the concept is the same. I hope hope that brings website
costs into perspective for you.
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