The IT Ninja

I have been looking on the Internet for pricing on web design and seen they are all over the place. Any information on how much a good web designer should be costing? I know I charge 25 an hour, but this seems to be on the lower end. Any information on this topic?

Hello Isabellas2007,

I've also noticed too, it really is all over the place. I think unlike more traditional services say like plumbing. Because its so new (well relatively speaking), its an unknown quantity. I think most companies pretty much charge what they like.

But what I have seen, is that at the cheap end its around £50-£100, the mid range stuff is around £200-£400. The more "professional" studio's which charge around £1500 typically.

However this is on a per project basis, I don't know what the would equate in terms of per hour. Some projects can take weeks to complete. Most of the time, a design studio will present many designs before the client will settle on an idea.

I don't know if anyone has any ideas/experience?

Hi Isabellas2007,

I agree with Jon's figures those are pretty much kind of range nowadays.

I think the only thing I would like to add however is that, the "template" industry that has sprung up, has indeed taken a chunk of work/revenue away from web designers.

There are literally thousands of very high quality templates available online. Most of them only cost a fraction of the cost a dedicated studio or graphics designer would charge.

The downside is that its not "custom", because many others will likely also have the same template. This is more so if its very popular!

I'm an ex-webdesigner (circa 2003) and in my experience, it really comes down to what the designer thinks they're worth - It has very little to do with any kind of industry standard or established guideline.

As far as determining what you should pay for a good one, I'd go with:
As high as you can afford.

The designers who price themselves higher tend to be of superior quality and do much better with the communication/support aspect of things.

What I have noticed is that you get what you pay for. When you go to a cheap web designer all of their sites seem to be about the same just different colors maybe, or small tweaks. I think a good designer will cost you at least 75 dollars an hour.

Isabellas2007 wrote:I have been looking on the Internet for pricing on web design and seen they are all over the place. Any information on how much a good web designer should be costing? I know I charge 25 an hour, but this seems to be on the lower end. Any information on this topic?

50$ / hour should be standard pay rate for a web designer, anything below that is not worthy...

thanks for the feedback. I was looking at starting this up, but like everyone said it is hard to make al iving doing this now. So I guess I will do my own sites and flip them!

I would agree that $50+ per hour is a fair rate for any good desinger. Anything lower would reduce the chance of getting quality work. Another good point was that prices are commonly a per-project issue, and generally determined by the designer's analysis of the expected amount of work. The best advice I could give, is to ALWAYS shop around for designers, even if you "already have a good one." Each designer has their niches, and projects that they'll charge little to do because of their easiness. The thing is, different things are easy for different designers. You have to find the right one every time.

This is true I never thought of the designer niches affecting the price before, but I guess they would have this type of issue.

Yea I've seen a really good web designer with great coding skills take up to $80 per hour on oDesk, etc.