In Part One of “can I have that for less?” we explored some of the concepts behind the vendor-client relationship of web development services and how expectations can clash with reality when things aren’t spelled out in advance.
In this part, we’re going to discuss some of the canned and affordable options available for non-existent and low budgets. Custom design and development easily costs thousands of dollars, so it’s best left to another conversation. For now, let’s start with the no-budget scenario.
The no-budget website is suitable for individuals and community organizations with limited funding. Notice how I excluded small businesses? We’ll get to that in a minute.
No-Budget Solutions
WordPress (hosted), Blogspot, TypePad – if you want free, you’ll be limited to blogs or other similar platforms. While there are other free options available that work off of subdomains and other trickery, I’m loathe to recommend them as you never know if they’ll be there in a year or two, and you could lose all of your data. Plus, free isn’t always free. With Homestead and Vistaprint (and a million others like them), you get a ‘Free’ website when you purchase other materials.
If you happen to be a non-profit, check out Tech Soup for resources and downloads available specifically for non-profit organizations.
Low Budget Solutions
There are hundreds of solutions for under $500 (too many to list here). The common theme is that they all start with a shared hosting account (valued at $100). From there, you can install WordPress or Joomla (both for free), get a free or premium template (templates start at about $20 and range to just over $100) and so far, you’re still under $200.
If you are a small, local business, most of your clients probably come from referrals and good word of mouth, but your visitors still need a place to get a snapshot of your business. If you use a no-budget solution, people will judge your business accordingly.
Web development takes two things, money and time, each to varying degrees. The more time you’re willing to spend, generally speaking, the less it will cost. To keep your costs down, you can learn to do much of the work yourself (something I do) or you can use a free or low cost solution, one that gets you started. Don’t think that you have to spend thousands of dollars, there are a lot of solutions for under $500 out there including our My First Website plan which comes with one year of shared hosting, a free domain and a fully loaded website based on the WordPress platform for only $199.
Want to learn about more of our sub-$500 solutions? Let us know! Contact Hosting Nation to get started today.