So you’re looking to have a property website built? There are endless ways in which you could approach this and, as such, an endless variation of costs involved. In this post we’ll look at some of the options you have and a look at the potential costs you might be facing.
The first thing to note is that a lot of the costs depend entirely on how much time you have to put into the project, how technically minded you are, and, if you need to get a developer involved, the cost of the developer.
With all of the options below you or your developer can use Property Hive to take care of the property related pages. As it’s free this means no additional costs, and no advanced PHP or WordPress coding knowledge required.
Do-It-Yourself
Cost: Free – a couple of hundred pounds
You don’t need to be a code-wiz to build a website. Page builder themes for WordPress, such as Divi or X Theme, allow you customise most of the site and build each page individually, all through an easy-to-use interface. If you’re happy to do all of this customisation, uploading of images etc, then you can do most of, if not all of, the site and essentially do the site for next to nothing.
As an example of this, the guys at Ivy Gate did the whole site themselves for free. They used the Divi page builder theme and Property Hive.
Pros
– Less cost
– You don’t have to wait on anyone as you can do it all yourself
– No coding experience necessary
Cons
– Can take a lot of time to customise and input content, especially if you’re not familiar with WordPress
– You’re stuck with what you’re given. There are limitations with these page builders so anything bespoke won’t be possible if you don’t have coding knowledge
– A bloated site. Page builders are renowned for their size and tend to include lots of stuff on the site which you might not use, therefore resulting in a much larger and sometimes slower site. This depends a lot however on the hosting platform.
Use a Property Hive Theme
Cost: Free
At Property Hive we have developed themes which plug straight into Property Hive meaning you can have an estate agency website up and running in a few minutes. All you have to do is customise some options, upload your logo, add your content and upload your properties.
Our Honeycomb theme is lightweight, meaning it’s compatible with other plugins, and should be quicker to load than a page builder website, as mentioned above.
If you would like further enhancements to your website, we also have a whole bank of add ons to enhance your website further.
View our showcase of websites powered by Property Hive here.
Get a basic website built by an agency
Cost: Anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand
If you don’t have time to do it yourself, or want to leave your next site in the capable hands of a web developer then you’ll need to pay them for their time and skills. The cost for a developer will vary massively depending on a) their skillset and experience and b) the complexity of the site you are after.
For a basic site they might use a page builder as mentioned above, or they may create a bespoke theme. Either way, for a basic website I doubt you’d be looking at more than a few thousand for this, if that.
Completely Bespoke
Cost: £4,000 upwards
It’s impossible to put a cost on a completely bespoke website. I’ve seen sites quoted at (are you sitting down?) £60,000 before, and I wouldn’t be surprised if sites have been built before at double or triple that cost. Don’t let that put you off though. Depending on your location and the developer you use this costs can vary massively.
Ongoing Costs
As well as the cost of the initial build of the site, there are a few ongoing costs to bear in mind as well:
Hosting
Your site needs to be hosted somewhere for it to viewed by your audience. The costs for hosting can vary between £100 per year, to £300 per month. This all depends on the size of the site, the amount of traffic it gets, as well as any additional features such as security and backups.
If you’re having your site developed by someone else they will normally offer you hosting at the same time, but don’t be afraid to shop around. If you do host elsewhere however, just be sure the package has good support in the event that the site goes offline for whatever reason.
Support
Your site isn’t going to stay the same for the rest of eternity. You’ll find bugs, you’ll want changes making, or maybe new features added. You’ll also want to make sure WordPress and the plugins are kept up-to-date.
As such, you should factor in ongoing support costs if you had your website built by another developer. Some developers charge a monthly support fee ranging from a couple of hundred pounds per month upwards, and others charge on a per-change basis. When approaching developers, make sure you find out what their costs are going forward so you can factor this in. You might think your getting the website cheap initially, but then get stung with high monthly fees.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are lots of options about regarding the route you take to your next site. Just be sure to do your research and don’t rush into anything as this is a site you’ll probably want to have for the next few years.
Also, remember you can use Property Hive and the range of add ons to help assist with handling the property and search pages of the site.
