Pay Per Page Website Pricing

[Lando1005]

I just had a potential client call about designing a website for a couple business he hows. He's gathering some additional information regarding what he would need included.

I don't have any experience with WP or any of the other big name website development platforms. I told the potential client that I would be happy to design him a site using Squarespace. I have a lot of experience with their model after building my site, and I have tinkered around with some custom code enough to be familiar with it.

I'm leaning towards charging per page for website design. I haven't thought it through much, but something along the lines of $80 per page with a $240 minimum appeals to me.

Also, what is the general going rate for monthly maintenance? The website would be hosted by Squarespace with a monthly fee and $20 per year domain registration fee. I imagine I would charge something on top of that to make sure it's operating smoothly and keep the domain up to date.

Thanks in advance for any guidance!

 

[Y.F.N.C.G.]

I normally don't charge per page, since that becomes unrealistic when you start adding in ancillary pages like a privacy policy page or if they have a bunch of sub-pages for products or services. I'm currently working on a project for a doctors office that literally has hundreds of service pages (for SEO reasons) that talk about each and every medical condition he treats. He'd be paying me over $10k for a simple brochure site if I charged per page.

You really just need to determine how much time you think it's going to take you to complete the whole site, then double it (to account for the un-anticipated things that come up), and then calculate your charge based on your normal hourly rate.

As for monthly maintenance, that really depends. I charge anywhere from $20-$240 a month for ongoing web maintenance depending on the needs of the client. I would offer them a few different tiers of maintenance plans, like:

$40/month - Hosting, backups, security, up to 5 content updates
$80/month - Hosting, backups, security, up to 10 content updates and 1 hour of consulting (for things like SEO, creating new pages, adding new functionality, etc.)
$120/month - Hosting, backups, security, unlimited content updates and 2 hours of consulting