There are five primary costs associated with establishing an online presence.

1. Domain Name Registration
2. Hosting
3. Web Design and Development
4. Promotion
5. Maintenance

1. Domain Name Registration

Can cost as little as $2/year through sites like GoDaddy, or as much as $35/year through sites like Network Solutions. Many companies offer discounts for multi-year registrations $1,000 for 100 year registrations and the like. Also, many hosting companies offer a free domain name (from a year to life) with the purchase of a hosting agreement.

OpenUX — Free with hosting package or up to $35/year without our hosting. — We offer a contract long free domain name with hosting package purchase. For outside hosting domain purchases we use both of the companies above for domain registration depending on our client and their specific requirements. Regarding multi-year registrations we recommend registering for a minimum of 5 years, doing so provides cost savings but more importantly you have peace of mind that you have a lock on your domain name.

2. Hosting

Like domain name registration, hosting costs differ greatly between providers. Costs can range from $2/month to $10,000+/month. The cost is dependant upon the required features, the level of service you expect from the host, how experienced you are at maintaining your own website, the type of server you require (Windows, Unix, Linux, etc.), and many other factors.

OpenUX — Starting at $150/year. — We offer various hosting plans starting at $150/year. Our all-inclusive plans including hosting, maintenance, regular upgrades, software monitoring, website statistics monitoring and more, these plans start at $1,000/year.

3. Web Design and Development

You could pay $50-100 to the kid in the garage next door, $500-1,000 to a recent design graduate, or upwards of a million to a high profile firm. Design and development prices vary greatly from city to city, firm to firm, and so on.

OpenUX — Starting at $1,500 to upwards of $30,000. — We understand that you likely have a budget in mind, and to avoid wasting anyone's time we'll ask you up-front what your budget is so we can create the right solution within your budget. That said, we also understand that your needs and budget today may not be your needs and budget in 6-months, so each of our proposals outline various levels of interactivity and dynamic content management. That way, even if you don't need certain features today you'll know what you need to budget and how the changes will affect your company and website when you're ready for them.

What we won't do is try to sell you anything that won't ultimately benefit you and the goals of your project.

4. Promotion

There are many ways to promote your website. Free search engine website submission is the first level of promotion. The next level is search engine optimization of your website's content. When completed by a professional this generally costs between $5,000-10,000 for full optimization of an existing website. It is less expensive and more effective to optimize a website before the design and development begins. Finally a full marketing campaign including Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, optimization for top-10 organic results, link reciprocation, traditional media tie-ins, newsletter and blog integration, and more will cost between $1,000-50,000/month.

OpenUX — Starting at $400/month to over $10,000/month. — We offer all of the above services at rates to suit your unique promotional requirements. As a service to our clients, regardless of whether or not we enter into a promotion agreement, we do one of the above services at no extra charge. When we develop your website we do so with all of the above services in mind, that way, if you aren't in need of promotional services when the website is initially created it will be ready when you are saving you the cost of website re-development.

5. Maintenance

Maintenance contracts can be as simple as an hourly fee ranging from $25-250/hour for general updates or as complex as an annual maintenance contract that includes any changes to a website, installation and integration of new products, and more. These contracts generally fall between $1,000-50,000/year.

Most people want to maintain their own website, but they often realise they don't have the time to dedicate to learning how to maintain a website and even if time is made, the process turns out to be more difficult than they thought. Do what you do best and hire a professional for the rest.

OpenUX — Starting at $3/day to $10/day to upwards of $50/day for time-intensive contracts. — We know that if your website has nothing new and useful to offer on a regular basis you limit your website to new visitors. When you consider that it takes 7 to 11 interactions with a new company and/or product to trust it enough to commit you realise the value of proper maintenance. We offer all levels of maintenance from hourly rates (starting at $50/hour) to <5 hours/month contracts starting at $1,200/year to full daily website maintenance, upgrading, and new technology integration starting at $50/day.

Cost is an important factor for any purchasing decision
but when it comes to quality, cost is rarely the primary consideration.

Many companies choose their first web consultant by cost; the cheapest quote gets the job. Then, after many months of poor communication and ineffective design, the company pays their final bill and they never hear from the consultant again. They're left with a site they're loathe to put online on display for their clients and competition, and an empty wallet.

We could be like all the other companies and say, "We're different!" and it's true that we are different but instead of just saying it we actually back up our claim with a 100% money back guarantee. Read more about our guarantee. If you have any questions check our FAQ or contact us. We look forward to working with you.