
Ask HN: What does $2000 in Web design/development buy you these days? - wanderboy
I have a couple of features that I'm interested in adding to my Web application, and I've also re-designed a few page elements. If I had $10,000 lying around I'd walk up to the office of my local Web development agency, but alas that is not the case - I'm a college student, and I'm broke.<p>Provided that I provide very detailed spec documents and mock-ups, is it realistic to expect that a custom search feature, social networking/profile features, and a few static pages will cost me more than $2000?<p>I know most designers/developers charge $60+ hourly, so my question is really, "How long does it take to implement these features?"
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burriko
'custom search feature, social networking/profile features'. These terms are
so broad in their scope that it's really not possible for anyone here to
estimate with any accuracy the time/cost it would take to implement them.

If you actually do have a detailed spec then I'd recommend that you simply
approach a web dev shop/freelancer and see what they say. Explaining the
details of what you require is the only way that you're going to get an
accurate answer. You may even want to tell them what your budget is up front
so that they can be realistic and let you know what's possible for that money.
We've all dealt with clients that have very tight budgets, so it's certainly
not an unusual request.

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callmeed
I can't really speak to design (we do that in-house), but most of the
good/keeper Rails developers that I've used in the last year have been in the
$100-150/hour range. So, for $2K that gets you 13 to 20 hours of development.

For that, I think you _might_ be able to implement one of the features you
mentioned but not all of them.

I've had good luck finding developers at AuthenticJobs. If you post a
freelance job there and you're detailed about your budget and requirements,
most good devs will be honest about what's feasible.

~~~
hello_moto
Really? 100-150/hour?

Would you mind to share your experience? like...

\- how old they are

\- do they also help you with HTML/CSS?

\- do they also help you with graphics, icons, and contents?

\- what about unit-tests and quality?

Would be very appreciated if you can answer them. If this is just between you
and the developers and both parties prefer to be private and decided not to
answer, I would understand.

Thanks!

~~~
callmeed
Yeah, I hope this doesn't sound bad but I wouldn't hire a US-based dev for
under $50/hour. I don't feel $50 is inflated either—even in Tulsa that seems
fair to me. To me, going below that is like having the guy down the street
paint your car for $150. I'm hiring people for existing, production apps that
are making money. I'll skimp on some things but not that.

As for age, I don't know but my guess is mid to late twenties. Of my most
recent, one was in the bay area and one is a tech stars alum.

No, no help with HTML/CSS/graphics/icons. I do most of that myself. Plus we do
a lot of Flash on the front end and have separate designers for that.

Testing is one area Ive found where the more expensive devs seem to separate
themselves. Very thorough which is nice.

This may sound odd but I also try and hire developers who are smarter and
better than myself. After almost every job, I glean from their code and end up
learning a ton. If nothing else, the extra money we spend also goes to my own
education.

~~~
lief79
I'm curious how this works, and what level of work you expect for that? Most
of the contract work I see advertised is luck to get above $40 an hour, of
course that's through agencies.

Is this just the difference between contract to hire and lone contracts to
individuals? Is there a known place to bid for local work like this, or is it
all word of mouth?

I've typically been a java/j2EE dev working full time, but I can't help but
wonder if been missing out on something obvious.

------
blakeperdue
Most designers/developers that I know that are good charge closer to $100 or
$150 per hour. What you described seems like it would take closer to 30 or 40
hours, so I would say the cost would be more like $3k to $5k.

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DirtyAndy
You're a broke college student with 2K to spend on adding features to your
website, surely you should be able to find another broke student that would
like your 2K and could do a perfectly adequate job of delivering it -
especially with the potential to be involved in future pieces of work.

Not only is a really good designer / developer going to be too expensive, they
probably aren't going to want to get out of bed for a small project like that,
so rather than outsourcing overseas why not find someone that is in a similar
situation to yourself and you can have face to face meetings with to set
expectations etc.

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rguzman
Since the work consists of adding to an existing application it is even harder
to estimate than usual. In fact, so hard that it is not worth trying. A lot of
the time could potentially be spent just figuring out how your application
works and the good ways to implement the new feature.

That said...

As long as all the flows for the features are well-defined, I'd say it'd be
doable to implement basic search, social networking, and some facility for
static pages for $2k. It should be a few of days worth of work for a developer
familiar with the framework/libraries your app uses.

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csomar
Don't waste your time making useless estimates. Focus on what's important. Now
return back to your project

\- Check all the features you want to implement. What are the most important
ones? Prioritize.

\- Find a good freelance. The higher you pay, the more quality you'll get. I
guess that $50/hour will be okay and would get you a good dev. It depends on
the project and the quality your users are expecting. Start implementing the
most important feature. Go as money can go with you. If your project is
profitable, you get cash back.

\- Learn. If it's jQuery it's not hard, if it's PHP it's not impossible. Even
if you don't create features, you can debug them.

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dkuchar
2 hours of work from this guy:
[http://le.mu.rs/motherfucker/Index/Entries/2010/6/24_What_mo...](http://le.mu.rs/motherfucker/Index/Entries/2010/6/24_What_money_can_buy.html)

~~~
brent
I think it would be interesting to compare 2 hours of output from this guy vs.
100 hours of output at prices mentioned in various posts.

~~~
dkuchar
yeah, that would be a good way to prove/disprove his worth for sure. he should
put himself up against someone who charges even $50/hour with the same budget,
then have the work judged by an impartial panel of experts.

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nrml_consulting
Like most of the responses here, it's pretty broad based on what you've
described and most importantly 'Be Careful' if you have something custom done.

I do designer work out of the Seattle area: <http://consulting.nrml.cc>

But I'll tell you up front, most of the work we do is out of the box or
ported.

If you're looking for a specifically tailored CMS plugin or custom ground up
framework, you might want to ask around for a referral from someone that has
first hand experience of what the developer can do.

------
Ixiaus
The problem with your question is that the answer is highly ambiguous. Asking
how long it will take to implement those features is a bit off; instead, you
should be asking "What needs to happen to implement these features and what
would you estimate all of it to be?"

Just a search feature and social networking/profile feature implies a whole
gamut of underlying logic that you aren't aware of (because you aren't a
developer). Depending on what your vision is, those two features alone could
end up being a two month long project just for a first iteration (don't forget
about iterations!)

I charge about $65 per hour for web application programming work in either
Python or PHP (I prefer Python), I segment my time into 40 hour work weeks.
For two months of work that would equal out to a little over twenty grand for
a _first iteration_. That does not include going through QA, user acceptance,
feature list refinement, and finally a second iteration (then a third and a
fourth and so on for as long as your product stays alive).

Many non-technical people trying to get into the web startup or software
startup scene see that price tag and commitment to time (through iterations)
and have a mini-gestalt. They simply aren't aware of what _goes into_ building
a reliable, feature-rich, maintainable, and _clean_ web application! This is
why almost all of the successful web startups have been built by people that
do the work for a living already (or some by very wealthy people that can
afford it), because they don't have to go pay a lot of money for someone else
to do it, they just have to pay for their living expenses.

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guiseppecalzone
Check out freelancer.com and rentacoder.com. You have to be extremely detailed
and agree on everything in advance. You could always put your idea up for a
bid. If it's too high, pull it down. Another approach is to break your specs
down to individual pieces. Then, start by outsourcing the smallest piece as a
test.

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joevandyk
How well does it need to scale? How many concurrent users? How easy does it
need to be to add future features to? Does existing off the shelf software not
give you most of what you want? What's meant by "social networking / profile
features"?

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SamAtt
Can you tell us more about what the site is built on (Language/Framework)? If
you've built your site on something standard like Wordpress or Django than it
will be much cheaper to implement these features. If it's custom all the way
things get a bit trickier.

The biggest problem with this sort of request is that a lot of people out
there will say they can do it but won't do it well. Sites like scriptlance
will probably get you quotes in the few hundred dollar range but their code
will be of poor quality and missing important "behind the scenes" features
like error handling. So you really have to be careful (and if you tell us more
maybe we can help you with that)

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sr3d
I'm working with a web development shop in Vietnam (disclosure: I own about
1/5 of the company). If you already have the mock-ups, then send it my way and
I can forward it to the guys. I think if the requirements are not crazy, you
can make good use of your $2K. Here's the link to the company's brochure:
[http://www.scribd.com/doc/29808412/Quick-Solution-
Credential...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/29808412/Quick-Solution-Credentials-
rev1-040310)

Cheers!

------
schindyguy
Simple answer is that it depends

Depends on if you care about the scalability, optimization, and speed of the
site. If you do then you will pay a lot for US dev

The alternative is to outsource and get all those features for 2k. Go to
elance, guru, odesk, or getafreelancer.

The latter I would suggest for proof of concept of prototyping an idea. Once
you get a whole bunch of traffic and users you can rebuild it correctly when
it's worth it to do so.

Launch fast with the least investment.

------
mcknz
You can get more for your money if you can find an existing framework/solution
to modify (e.g., BuddyPress), and can find a solid freelance developer or
small shop to do the work.

People who charge 100-150 an hour are not doing web sites for college
students.

------
rwhitman
It depends on who you go with. I know a secret - that price does not
necessarily equate to quality + value when it comes to consulting work.

Some people are extremely talented & efficient but have never been exposed to
the true value of their work. They are usually in college or recent grads, and
probably live somewhere where well paying web work typically isn't either
commonly found or fun.

It can be done for sure.

------
gte910h
Social Networking? No.

Forum Profiles? Possibly.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
eh, there are lots of open-source things that would help with that.. where's
phpnuke these days?

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dnsworks
"What can I get for $2,000?" is an excellent question. As a consultant, I wish
I'd get this question more often from cost-conscious customers rather than
"how much is this going to cost me?", because the former is quite easy to
quantify and quickly sets a budget and an expectation. The latter is very
exploratory and immediately puts the consultant on the defensive.

~~~
ScottWhigham
I find it odd that your comment has so many upvotes. No offense but who is
upvoting this? I figure it's one of two types of people:

1) People who are used to hiring others yet who don't like to talk "budget"

2) Consultants hired by #1

Really - I don't know of a single transaction in either my consulting practice
or in my hiring of consultants/experts/etc in which budget was not a major
discussion point. Maybe, as the consultant, I'd be the one bringing it up but
I assure you: before I entered into any agreement with a client, the "Can you
afford to pay me what I'm going to need to do this project?" question had been
sufficiently explored.

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stiggz
Depends on your area- contract to Canada, devs here are making much less than
$50 / hr, and are just as qualified to make production apps. The internet
makes it easy to hire someone from farther away, just be sure that they share
your vision - detailed specs are a must!

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mkramlich
This kind of Ask HN could easily be abused if it becomes a trend. There are
plenty of other websites that are more exactly suited to answering his
question, and in a more direct and actionable way, based on a real submitted
spec.

~~~
wanderboy
noted. I wasn't trying to abuse HN with this post, just trying to get an idea
about whether any type of a dynamic site can be created for under 2k. I'll
refrain from this type of speculative posting in the future.

