General

This question seems to be asked all the time, often by people that don’t necessarily understand what’s involved with setting a web site up, or who have been bamboozled by agencies, developers or designers trying to charge them excessive fees.

The basics

It really depends on what level of technical competency you have personally. Purchasing a domain name and hosting it are the two major up front costs that you need to consider, because after that, everything else can be carried using Open Source software. In the UK, if you’re doing it all yourself – you can get decent hosting and a domain name, all for about £30 a year – as long as you’re willing to the design and promotion work yourself.

The intermediate options

Off the shelf scripts, are where you can really supplement existing Open Source web offerings – but these are only really beneficial if you’re trying to achieve something non-standard. General prices for functional scripts that can often be bolted on to existing open source web site structures range from about £20 to £100, although increasingly some authors are pursuing subscription models (for updates and support primarily), or are asking for donations if you use and benefit from their hard work.

The advanced options

Really, unless you have tons of cash or are producing a web site for a company – the advanced option of paying for a web team or designer to put a web site together for you will be beyond the means of most people.  Prices can range from a reasonable £100-ish, to thousands and tens of thousands…

But with so many free options available, why would many people want to look at these expensive options. A little bit of hard work and systematic research and anyone can begin creating their own web site, whatever their requirements.