Content Management Systems and Pricing

[Lisa]

I have been asked by a new client to design and create a CMS based E-commerce site. I have a freelance programmer that I use for normal CMS and I have approached him to do the programming on this particular job. The only thing is the price he has given me I feel is rather pricey especially as I will being doing the design and creating the CSS element of it and also it will be the first CMS E-commerce site that he has done so he will be learning as he goes along (sort of).

My question to you other programmers is what do you think a realistic price is for such a job if you were using it as a learning curve as I would really like to know if it is me being silly?

[Xenonsoft]

How many pages is (s)he looking at?
Any special functionality other than it being E-commerce?

[Lisa]

How many pages is (s)he looking at?
Any special functionality other than it being E-commerce?

14 Pages including all the privacy policy information etc
Functionality wise other than it being CMS and the normal ecommerce shopping carts and such like nothing?
I have been searching the old interweb and found this site which you can buy the software from to create the ecommerce elements: Shopping Cart Software UK By ClickCartPro - E-Commerce Redefined and some of the examples on here are what they pretty much looking for to get them started?

[Xenonsoft]

We don't offer Ecommerce currently, so this wont be amazingly accurate, but I'd look at about £1400 (for the whole job) currently for that.

Most place I imagine would be looking at £2000+ which seems more than reasonable.

How much is the programmer asking?

[Lisa]

Not as much as you have suggested. He is charging £1000 but and this is the big BUT he wants me to buy him the software for the shopping cart element AND for me to do everything else i.e design, CSS etc.

All he has to do is add the 'shopping' element to the CMS that I create and supply to him. I honestly wouldn't mind paying that and more but he has no proven track record with ecommerce cms. Hmmm time to find me another genius I think? haha

[Xenonsoft]

Definitely seems steep if all he is doing is implementing the shopping cart & CMS.

I can't recommend this as we haven't used it, but if we offered Ecommerce then I think we would definitely try these out, worth a look I think:

Modern CSS + XHTML Ecommerce :: FoxyCart.com

[thebluefox]

Hi Lisa,

We charge roughly £3000 for full design/HTML build and include our own Ecommerce software (not currently available for sale). If the HTML was built, there would be a significant redcution on this price. We'd be looking at about £1000 for installing the HTML templates into the system, as well as setting up the initial catalogue etc. The software is included in that as well.

Personally, I think £1000 is a little too much for someone who is also learning while doing the job.

If you need any advice etc, don't hesitate to ask :)