Franchise Focused Marketing Blog
I know, not the most alluring title for an article that is supposed to market my company’s web-development products. But, it’s the policy of my company to be absolutely truthful with everyone. Honesty & Fairness are two major reasons why we started this company, and will always be a standing policy for everything we do. With that in mind, I decided to be completely honest about CODEMAY’s pricing structure, and let you know that you will always find a cheaper company than us. CODEMAY is not a cheap web development company.
We receive a lot of inquiries on our website from small-businesses looking for affordable web-development, and we are always very happy they’ve chosen to reach out to us and explore the possibility of partnering up to create a truly unique and effective digital strategy for their business. But often times, the moment we get to the discussion regarding price, people tend to get a little scared, and many magically stop answering their emails or phones after that. Most of the times I hear “Well, my last website only cost me $1,500, why should I pay you guys $5,000 when I could have my buddy do it for way less?” Obviously, as a business owner, I have often contemplated how to compete with that pricing structure. And I always come back with the same answer: “I won’t compete with that price.”
Did you notice I didn’t say “I can’t compete with that price.” I absolutely could. But I won’t. To compete with lower-priced products, I would have to cheapen, and lower the quality of my company’s work. And that would defeat the entire purpose of why Jaime & I started this business in the first place. To understand this, let me explain how a lot of cheap web development companies keep their prices low.
For starters, a lot of these cheap web development companies, or the friend of a roommate of someone else who builds websites, start by building in WordPress. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, we prefer to build in WordPress. WordPress offers a great solution to build websites without having to charge a fortune for a custom CMS. WordPress was built to be easy to use for almost everyone. And that opened the door to everyone becoming their own web-development company. After that, the design process goes a little something like this: “Developer” finds a theme to use. Someone already designed a website & its functionality and made it available to “customize” with different colors, images, fonts, etc. A lot of times the entire design process ends there. They throw a company logo up, buy a few stock images and the entire process cost them about $60 for the theme and maybe 10-15 hours of work to “customize” it. Total cost to the “developer” is probably $500. They charged their client anywhere from $1,500 to $3,500 for that work.
Now, there are many cheap web development companies who take it a step further and tinker with the theme. They adjust the code to make it function differently. That does take a better developer, but in the end, you’re still getting a pre-made theme with a couple of adjustments. Definitely not a unique experience. A lot of times the changes made to the code actually make the site less functional. We’ve had a number of clients where the site stopped working entirely because of this.
So what makes CODEMAY different? Well, I could give you the long version that details every single step of the design & development process, but who has time for that? The truth is, all of our work is custom. We don’t use pre-made themes, we don’t use pre-made designs, and we certainly spend more time than just 10-15 hours to craft something that is is going to represent our clients on the internet.
Here’s a comparison of Cheap Web Development Companies vs. CODEMAY
| Other Guys | CODEMAY | |
| Design Time | 3 Hours | 10 – 15 Hours |
| Development Time | 7 – 12 Hours | 30 – 50 Hours |
| Total Cost | $1,500 – $3,500 | $5,000* |
| Cost per Hour | $150 – $350/Hour | $76 – $125/Hour |
Price varies depending on size & scope of the project.
When it comes to price, cheaper isn’t always cheaper. And frankly, we don’t view someone’s friend’s girlfriend’s brother’s cousin (you get idea) as our competition. A good analogy for this is like comparing a custom suit maker to Men’s Wearhouse. Men’s Wearhouse is great if you’re looking for a simple off-the-rack suit to fit your budget. They take something pre-built and try to make it as custom as they can to you. But ask anyone who’s had a suit custom-made to fit their body & style, there’s no legitimate comparison. There is a difference between “a website” and a site designed to to achieve your business goals. The latter requires a lot of expertise & experience.
CODEMAY’s mission isn’t to mass-produce “cheap” websites. Our mission is to give small-businesses the custom agency experience at an affordable price. And we’ve never failed at accomplishing that goal with any of our clients. We routinely come in cheaper than other custom site developers, and we’ve never left a customer unsatisfied with the work we’ve produced. Check out some of the great work we’ve done for our clients by visiting our Portfolio.