Might of been ripped off.

Beansprout · 7 Jul 2006 at 21:56

JonRohan said:
30 p/m for business hosting isn't that bad. I've got clients paying £100's. You'd expect the service to be much better than the average host at those costs.

True, but I'm getting the impression that this lot are a bunch of overcharging cowboys doing absolutely nothing to warrant business-class hosting pricing

Mr^B · 7 Jul 2006 at 22:03

That's very very cheap and yet they have still managed to overcharge you.

/me removes his hat.

fluiduk · 7 Jul 2006 at 22:04

RIP OFF! That page is terrible! And as for the hosting, thats a complete rip off. That site is hardly going to need mega space or bandwidth.

Its idiots like these guys that give the rest of us designers a bad name!

zetec452 · 7 Jul 2006 at 22:27

Beansprout said:
True, but I'm getting the impression that this lot are a bunch of overcharging cowboys doing absolutely nothing to warrant business-class hosting pricing

I would agree.

Gman · 7 Jul 2006 at 22:38

well as the saying goes, you pay peanuts you get monkeys

but still even £150 for a site like that is a rip off, even the most inexperienced web designer could knock that together in the best part of 30mins

fluiduk · 7 Jul 2006 at 22:42

shifty_uk said:
The copyright lies with the creator I believe, if he's working freelance.

It does, unless he has signed it over. Which I always do once I have been paid in full. Doubt these cowboys will have, to be honest I woulnt worry though, as I wouldnt want anything to do with that site.

Aaron

Sirrel Squirrel · 7 Jul 2006 at 22:59

£150 for that :eek:

I need to jack up my prices, I'm not that good but I'm a hell of a lot better than that lol

supercrewd · 8 Jul 2006 at 13:27

well personally i think the £150 is a lot for what you have got (such as bad markup), but in my area a basic one page site is £100(with better markup offcourse), so £150 is common for a two page static site, but this normally includes hosting for a year and an domain name, the £30 a month is a complete rip off though, ask them how they can justifly it.

But then again if the webdesigner is just a inexperienced kid then the £150 is way over priced but if there are a proper company (using the term proper loosely) i would say the £150 is average for a two page site.

RandomTom · 8 Jul 2006 at 16:15

Sam. I have emailed you in regard to your website, if you're around can you add me to msn or reply, I've got a proposition for you, it'll save you some £ too.

Gaverick · 8 Jul 2006 at 16:37

Doesn't even validate lol

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.deandales.co.uk/index.html

benjo plz. · 8 Jul 2006 at 16:43

Website said:
~ Deandales Staines ~ Decorator Staines ~ Painter Kingston upon Thames ~ Decorating Kingston upon Thames ~

Aren't they meant to hide this bit?

shifty_uk said:
The copyright lies with the creator I believe, if he's working freelance.

The copyright on the site is to the company, but then again who would want to copy it?!

phykell · 9 Jul 2006 at 02:22

My first impressions are that it's not the greatest site in the world but that's reflected in the price however. The graphics are actually not too bad and if unique (not from a template) give a reasonable look for the cost of £150 to be perfectly honest. I'm not interested in how the markup looks from "View Source" as it happens...

The hosting charge seems expensive to me but you don't mention what the support arrangements are. A basic hosting pakage can be had from around £50 a year but that's with no technical support. That's fine for people who are "IT-savvy" but your average painter/decorator might need a great deal of technical support. It's possible that the company which did this site may offer free, 24 hour support for all we know, allowing unlimited updates and so on. I know of at least one hosting company, a Nominet member as it happens, that charges £250 per annum for hosting a basic 5 page HTML web site so £30 a month isn't all that shocking necessarily.

Gaverick · 9 Jul 2006 at 11:26

£250 per annum is only around £20/month for a 5 page site, the OP is paying £30/month for a 2 page site, i can only say there are a lot better deals to be had

JamesU2005 · 9 Jul 2006 at 12:07

I must admit the £150 for the website doesn't surprise me, but the hosting costs are unjustified. Confronting the company for answers is the only way.

Al Vallario · 9 Jul 2006 at 15:17

A bit more digging and it would appear that the site is the work of internetters, who run the UFindUs service advertised at the bottom of said site. Browsing through their site I'm guessing that the OP's uncle has taken their "UFindUs Complete" package. In summary, this includes priority listing on the UFindUs site, a domain name, a two-page site made with their "RapidSite" software, web hosting, a single email address, customer support during normal working hours and the promise of traffic as a result of their advertising campaigns.

Seems like a waste of time to me. If I were in the same position as the OP's uncle I would hire some real web designers to make a professional website (semantic markup, standards compliant, usability orientated and search-engine friendly) and spend a bit of money advertising through proper methods (Online CPC advertising networks, Yellow Pages adverts, sponsoring local events etc.) rather than paying a company to promote their own service, which may or may not drive business to my company. A web site should be made to convey a professional image and drive business, not because everyone else is doing so and you think you have to "be online".

Well, at least we can rest safe in the knowledge that the atrocious markup behind that site wasn't created by a human being

phykell · 9 Jul 2006 at 19:35

Gaverick said:
£250 per annum is only around £20/month for a 5 page site, the OP is paying £30/month for a 2 page site, i can only say there are a lot better deals to be had

Hey, I'm not saying that I would pay it either, but it's not enough to simply compare hosting costs as people have been doing in this thread. All hosts are simply *not* the same as there's a world of difference between a basic hosting service and a fully-managed web hosting solution. I agree with you though, on the face of it there must be better deals than £30 a month! I know the company I work for charges nothing like that and I'd bet that our service level far exceeds that of the company in question.

Al Vallario · 9 Jul 2006 at 19:49

phykell said:
Hey, I'm not saying that I would pay it either, but it's not enough to simply compare hosting costs as people have been doing in this thread. All hosts are simply *not* the same as there's a world of difference between a basic hosting service and a fully-managed web hosting solution. I agree with you though, on the face of it there must be better deals than £30 a month! I know the company I work for charges nothing like that and I'd bet that our service level far exceeds that of the company in question.

It looks like the £30/month covers a glorified directory listing, one email account and access to the "RapidSite" software (which created the horrific website in the OP) in addition to the web hosting. They only provide support during working hours, Monday to Friday, which is pretty abysmal compared to most web hosts.

£10/month could buy you a nice shared hosting account (not of the vicious overselling type) with unlimited POP3 boxes and 24/7 support. You can create the site yourself, get someone else to make it or use one of the many free tools equivalent to "RapidSite" which produce ready-made sites from templates.