Cost Comparison
Setup & Maintenance
| Setup | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Year 4 | Year 5 | 5-Year Total | |
FREE DESIGNS |
$0 | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 |
HYBRID DESIGN |
$500 1 | $1140 2 | $1140 | $1140 | $1140 | $1140 | $6,200 |
CUSTOM DESIGN |
$3,500 3 | $1140 2 | $1140 | $1140 | $1140 | $1140 | $9,200 |
INDEPENDENTLY BUILT |
$25,000 4 | $2,000 5 | $2,000 | $2,000 | $2,000 | $2,000 | $35,000 |
(1) Reflects an estimate cost for customizing a free template (savings from bypassing the full design phase).
(2) Reflects our Pro Package at $95/mo. The Webmaster Package would reduce your yearly operating costs by $480/yr, reducing the 5 year total by $2,400.
(3) Reflects basic custom design costs. Of course, there are no setup costs associated with our free templates.
(4) $25,000 is a general estimate of what it would cost to build a website, with a Content Management System and all the functionality you will get with your Gutensite, from the ground up. This is a very conservative estimate, based on our experience building sites just like this. Custom development is intricate and time consuming, and when you add up the hours the costs are simply astounding. This is why development projects for small businesses usually opt to start with an existing CMS, which can save a lot of the basic work. The budget can then be spent on customization. The problem is, commercial CMS's can be expensive, and together with free Open Source solutions, both are often not easily customizable, which results in high costs for anyone that wants to do anything beyond the basic default setup. Our Gutensite CMS was built as a flexible framework, that allows us to easily customize every aspect of a site, for a fraction of the cost of normal custom development.
(5) Average Maintenance, support, and server costs for an independent site. $2,000 is a general estimate of the costs associated with running an independent CMS driven website, assuming very minimal support needs. A traditional HTML website, which requires a developer to implement every text change on your site, would be considerably higher. Our estimate is assuming a conservative $15/mo for hosting ($168/yr), and a mere 2 hours of support and development costs a month (at a modest $75/hr). If you are running an independent site, you will need to be the webmaster (or hire someone to function in this capacity which would cost extra). The webmaster will need to interface with the server and email support at the hosting company, troubleshoot problems with the site or figure out how to use the features of the CMS, apply upgrades and security patches to your CMS when necessary, etc. If you are on your own, and you need help, the support costs could easily exceed this estimate.