by Irene Lizarraga

Created on: April 12, 2010

If you ask 10 people how much does a website cost you will probably get 10 different answers, ranging from the almost free to the price of a small car. And the problem is, all of them may be right and all of them may be wrong. The price of a website will depend on its features, its size and the level of customization and bespoke work it requires. Add to that the technologies involved in developing and deploying it, and the numbers can vary wildly. However, there's a right price for your website, and that price is a function of how much money will that website make you over the time it's active.

Return of Investment, or ROI, is the main factor that you should take into account when deciding how much to spend on a website. If your website it's going to be your main sales channel and you expect to sell a lot of products or services from it, it's worth investing into a good bespoke development that ticks all your requirement boxes and your clients will love, even if upfront it sounds expensive. However, if you just want to have a place in the Internet, and some way for people to find you online, you may be fine with a customized generic template or even building a website yourself with any of the online website builders available.

Generally speaking, there's two types of websites. Static and dynamic ones, where you can update the content by yourself without having to learn HTML code or upload files to the server. CMS systems aren't so expensive anymore, and it's possible to have a really good dynamic website for a relatively low price. In the long term, using a CMS will save you money, since you'll be able to keep the content fresh and updated without having to hire a developer to do it for you regularly. A combination of a free CMS system, such as Wordpress and a bespoke theme can cost less than 1000USD and look really professional. However, the hosting required will be more expensive that for a plain, HTML only website though not by much if you use PHP and MySQL based solutions (Such as Wordpress, Joomla or Drupal). Hosting that uses Windows technologies is generally more expensive, so a .NET CMS such as DotNetNuke will be significantly more expensive to maintain. Commercial CMSs, such as ExpressionEngine, are significantly more expensive but have the benefit of customer support and a professional company behind them (so it's doubtful they will go out of business and leave you without answers to your support queries).

Even if you choose to go with an existing,

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