Let’s face it, a big dilemma for us web developers is coming up with a price to charge for our work. In “12 Tips on Pricing your Web Work,” I wrote tips about how to establish an appropriate price for a website, when you do freelance. As I mentioned in that post, it is not easy to determine suitable prices to charge for the value of your work, because most people do not want to overcharge and push away clients, but you do not want to undercharge and not get justly compensated for your hard work and skill. Therefore, I came up with some elements to consider when trying to decide what to charge for a website; so you, as the web developer, can be confident when you name your price, and the client can be sure about what they are getting for the price. So if you have not yet seen those tips, feel free to check out those tips before reading this article. In this post, I am going to give some tools to help you make price estimates for your web work. As per the comments on my previous pricing post, it seems like most people like to charge by the hour. However, there are various methods to charge including an hourly rate and a flat rate. Those two are the two most popular ways to charge, so those are the tools I have included below. Hope you find these helpful! Please feel free to comment, and leave your own price related tools! Enjoy!
Charging an Hourly Rate
Charging an hourly rate is very popular for certain types of projects. To calculate your hourly rate, use my tips in my prior pricing post to decide an appropriate price. An average price range per hour for web developers and designers can range from $20-100+. With that large of a range, it is important to make sure you are not charging too much or too little. I am confident that my tips will help you in this regard.
Some readers have asked me for a formula to help them come up with an hourly rate. Though I usually charge a fixed or flat fee, I can recommend using my tips to estimate where on the scale your are as far as expertise, experience, length of project, turn around time etc. In other words, the hourly rate you charge for one project, may not be the hourly rate you charge for another because though your expertise does not change, the turn around expected for the particular project might. So essentially, a formula could look like this: level of expertise in project area + level of experience + specifications of the project + demand of time = your rate! Now other things that should be considered is the economy and who the particular client is. For example, if you client is a corporation vs. a mom and pops corner business, the price may change slightly, and of course in this current economy you may want to go a little easy on your clients if you expect them to come back!
Web Development Project Estimator Tools for Hourly Rate
Each of the tools below are simple tools that allows web designers and developers to quickly and thoroughly estimate the time and materials required for a proposed web project. Each of them require you to simply enter the title of the project and your default hourly rate, then you just change the hours you expect for the project to generate your total project estimate. When finished, you can even view your final estimate in a print-ready format or print a copy for your records. Below are various tools to help you come up with your price using an hourly rate.
Web Development Project Estimator
Sample Website Estimate Worksheet
Sample Cost Estimate
Charging a Flat Rate
Even though some people like pricing per hour, I only do hourly for very some projects, because in my experience, clients feel as though they can easily be taken advantage of with hourly rates on long, detailed projects since I do freelance. However, I know pricing per hour works for some people, but I usually only price per hour on small projects or small changes to a site, because sometimes I could be working on two projects at one time, and who would I charge? Nevertheless, I always track my hours, so the client knows how the total price of the project breaks down on an hourly rate.
With simple projects that are pretty generic, which most projects are, I like to have a set booklet of prices. For example, I will charge a flat fee per page, because I know how long it takes me to design and program each page for a web page. In my experience, clients like to get a flat rate, because they feel as though they are getting more for their money. But, each client is different, so work with them to see which pricing method works best. You can even use the same sort of formula I mentioned above to come up with your fixed rate! Good luck!
Web Development Project Estimator Tool for Flat Rate
There are not as many tools for flat or fixed rate projects, but I did find the following websites with examples of estimates using a flat rate. Hope you find them useful!
Web Design Estimate
Sample Flat Rate Estimate