Website Services

In addition to our educational presentations, we have 20+ years of website design and development to make sure you get the right site for your unique business needs. We build our websites using the WordPress platform, which is used by many of the world’s top companies. With WordPress, you will have full control over your website and can avoid the cost of having to contact your developer each time you want to add a page or update an image or text. Due to the wide use of WordPress, there is a wealth of online support documentation and help articles for those who want to avoid developer costs and make changes and updates themselves.

Your Website Cost Estimate – INSTANT ONLINE QUOTE!

website cost calculatorWebsites that may seem the same can vary in cost due to many factors, including customized colors or logo placement, site layout requests, and customization requests that may seem simple but involve several hours of custom coding work. The website calculator we provide is based on a standard WordPress template install with customization costs based on general inputs.

To get a true cost estimate for your new website or website upgrade, we would need to gather more detailed information about how you envision your website. (If you don’t yet have a vision, we can help you create one!) The estimated cost provided by the calculator is a good indicator of what you can expect to pay for the options you provided.

And yes, a basic WordPress website with 1-5 pages can be as low as $800! (please read the section below regarding Recurring Website Costs)

Click Here for Your INSTANT WEBSITE COST QUOTE!

Website Education

Not sure what type of website you need, what options are available, or how much you should expect to pay? A Quarkshow website presentation will help. Our popular one-hour WordPress and Shopify 101 presentation shows business owners how the WordPress website platform works and how it can help you achieve your online goals. The presentation also covers the Shopify e-commerce platform used by businesses of all sizes to sell their digital and physical products online. Click here to see a schedule of upcoming presentations, or Contact Us about bringing an educational presentation to your location.

Website Examples

sample wordpress site
View sample WordPress templates to see what various options can be.

For examples of WordPress templates we use to customize your website, please click here to browse options. You can browse sample sites and even view a live demo to see how it looks on a computer and on a mobile device. When considering a site template, keep an open mind with the site types listed; we’ve built restaurant sites using a template intended for web designers, and this Quarkshow.com site was built using a political campaign template!

Part of our free site assessment and quote is determining what site template would work for your unique business needs.

Not all WordPress templates are the same

There are many other sites that offer lovely WordPress templates ranging in price from free to several hundred dollars. It is always best to use templates from a reputable site in order to avoid hidden site redirects or back-end code that links or refers to shady sites. Some templates from reputable sites may look beautiful but don’t have the correct template management tool to make it easy to modify, resulting in extra customization costs for things that should otherwise be simple.

Unless you’re familiar with a specific template company, we encourage you to do some digging or browse that site’s customer support comments before you pay and download a template you love. Many paid templates are functionally unusable without paying additional costs for custom development, so a $59 WordPress template could quickly turn into a $500 one, and that’s before you’ve even hired a developer to help you.

Recurring Website Costs

In addition to the cost to develop a website, there are recurring costs involved with your domain name registration (site name) and hosting account (where your site is “housed”). If you have an existing site and are already paying these fees, this is reflected in the calculator. Once your site is set up, you can expect to pay around $150/year for your site hosting and domain name renewal.

There may also be additional recurring costs when add-ons or plugins are used on a site. Most WordPress site templates provide free options for plugins such as popup forms, online shops, donation pages, etc. When customizations are required that exceed the functionality of the free version of these plugins, a paid version is often required, resulting in either a one-time purchase or a recurring monthly or annual fee.

Free Websites vs. Paid Sites

A common question from clients is why to pay for a site when they could get a free one, or pay a very cheap monthly cost to build one themselves. That’s a great question! Once such free site-builder is WordPress.com. This service is part of the WordPress platform but is hosted and maintained within the WordPress.com site. The WordPress.com sites do not have the full functionality of a WordPress site hosted on another platform, meaning you do not have access to all of the fabulous plugins that make WordPress so powerful. For a home crafting business or a simple event site that does not need a real business presence, WordPress.com is a great choice.

There are other “site-builder” options such as GoDaddy, Wix, Weebly, etc. that promote free or $2/month sites. Although there are many small to large companies who have used those site-builder services, we’ve seen many issues with those free or inexpensive “all-inclusive” site platforms and there are many reasons why those options aren’t viable for a long-term online business presence.

The biggest reasons to avoid a “site-builder” service are flexibility and control. By investing a bit more up-front in your own site, you have full control over the content, SEO, upgrades, portability and most importantly, add-ons and plugins that are limited with most other proprietary site-builders. Even the free WordPress.com doesn’t allow embedded scripts, which severely limits what you can integrate with the site. Any business interested in a real online presences should avoid the site-builder type of website platforms and invest their time and money in a hosted website platform that can grow with you.

Website Cost Summary

In summary, a simple 5-page website with basic content provided by the client can cost $800 with a delivery time in 2-4 weeks. Other up-front and recurring costs include the monthly hosting ($7-$50, paid annually), the annual domain name renewal ($15-$25). A $2000 website may have custom site registration and logins or plugins that provide additional features for an interactive experience. Websites that cost $20,000+ usually consist of dozens (or hundreds) of pages and have development customizations tailored to the individual business needs.

How To Choose a Hosting Company

Your web developer can help you with choosing a hosting company for your site based on their experience. A growing business should avoid hosting with a developer who offers their own hosting service where the business owner has no real control of the site and is at the mercy of the developer if something happens. A reputable developer will have a hosting recommendation based on price, site speed, and ease-of-access. In the end, you, the business owner, should have full access to your hosting account, as well as a phone number to call should you need technical support. Even if your developer does all the work on your site, a savvy business owner should always maintain records with full access and ownership of their site hosting and domain name. 

Use Facebook as your website?

As a very inexpensive alternative to a website, some fledgling companies use their Facebook business page as their website. This can be done by purchasing a domain name for $15/year and then pointing it to a Facebook page so when someone visits ‘SampleBusinessName.com’, they would land on that businesses Facebook page.

We’re Here To Help You!

Please contact us for more information, or use our WEBSITE COST CALCULATOR to determine general cost estimates for your website project.

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