Now, do I really have a problem if someone is offering things at such a price? Not at all. However, you (the prospective website owner) may have a big problem in future.
What happens when you are going for such a low budget website development?
- Who owns the domain? People who go for such websites are often novice in the web world. They do not understand the difference between .com and .cc TLDs. They have no idea about domain ownership or whois details. Thus the company often holds the right of the domain name and next year when you want to renew it, they will charge more – may be even Rs. 5000 / year. Poor fellow! Thinking about starting 10 new website at that price? What about all the marketing efforts that you have invested so long?
- Common template: You should not even dream of getting a custom made template for your website unless the developer is your girlfriend / boyfriend. They will just pick up a common template (somewhere from the internet) and replace your details. A typical website worth Rs. 450 contains a home page, about page and contact page. Who cares about the web standards!!!
- Website is not available: We do not need to point out that the website is using a cheap shared hosting solution if not free. And the result is almost negligible uptime. Since the client does not know much about these things, there is hardly any problem for the company.
- Pay for each update: This one is unique. Beyond 3 pages stipulated in the initial web development offer, you will need to pay for every new page or existing page update (starting at Rs. 300 / page). The client is just trapped. They will simply not tell you how you can do it yourself. And believe me, if you can connect to the internet, you can make minor updates yourself. (I am not talking about the aesthetics.) Helping you is nowhere in the business model.
- A website will help you to grow your business: Most of the people are said that, if you start a website you will get more business opportunities. People searching in Google will come to your website and order whatever they want. Those of us working in the web industry for sometime know very well, how much effort it takes to generate real business from a website. I will not think twice before saying that these people are being cheated. Nothing comes for free my friend.
Does it mean that, you should consider well established companies to develop your website? You must be careful there too. A well established company has charged RS. 5,700 for a .in domain whereas, it was available in godaddy just for $12 (RS. 550). There is another highly reputed media company who charges Rs 15,000 for the same package.
So, what to do? Wait for my next article.
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