In the future, I plan to offer web design and maintain services for clients if they want it. I'm just wondering...

When it comes to maintaining a clients website, exactly how much do you guys charge? Monthly? One-time? Yearly?

Thing is, a local company around here, owns like 35 Burger Kings and is looking to get a website, hosting and design in one package. I know the prices for hosting and basically for a design. But what about maintaining the site? Never been paid to do that before.

Any advice you guys can post would help. Thanks!

Maintaining a website, should be charged by the hour. at least thats what most web designers do. depending on your web design background, $10-$40 an hour is common pricing.

Originally posted by vigor
Maintaining a website, should be charged by the hour. at least thats what most web designers do. depending on your web design background, $10-$40 an hour is common pricing.

If you're billing hourly, I would say more like $75 - $150/hr. I also know of some firms that offer web site / web application maintenance packages for a set fee per month and those services usually start at about $1000/mo for about 10 hours of work a month.

And damn, I wouldn't even do design work for $10/hr when I was 15 (5 years ago now ...) :stickout

-Jay

Setting prices is the thing I like least about web design... but I normally charge $35/hour, and that rate was set by the company who hired me on a contract basis. In turn, they bill the clients for whom I design sites $75/hour for my services.

I do my contract work part time. If I were a full time business my rates would very likely be higher. I'm strongly considering offering fixed-price packages as well, just because some people raise eyebrows at a $35/hour rate if they're not familiar with how much a web site costs.

Also, two local (Seattle) design companies I've talked with charge between $100 - $200/hour. These are larger shops with actual office space and a good number of employees, as opposed to just me working out of my home.

Originally posted by dustin[s31]
owns like 35 Burger Kings

I smell disposable income :D

It'll totally depend on what you think is fair, depending on the work involved. For instance, I maintain a site for only $20 a month, but that only involves me editing tour dates on one page, and usually takes me about 5 minutes or so, once a month. The odd photo gets sent me way to add, but it's rare.

As it's for a fairly famous 50's soul singer that kind of cut my price down a little too. It's good for the portfolio. :)

Your best bet is to find out how much time, and what exactly, you'll be editing each month, and price accordingly. If they become vague about it, you can be sure it's going to be major changes, so make it clear that there's a difference between 'updating' and 'development costs'

I might be swayed a bit by free whoppers in this case, were it me

Greg Moore