I happened to come upon a post this morning entitled What does a website cost?. I can only imagine it was written a while back, before Wordpress came along with its current functionality and use. $7,000-$12,000 for a content management system? That price would be outrageous by today’s standards. Just as hardware technology gets better and cheaper, so should programming technology. Why? Well, because …

• The tools already exist. Plugins, APIs, 3rd party services — all of these make creating your site faster and less expensive. Many of these services are so good now that there is just no logical reason to build your own. For example, Flickr is an awesome tool for uploading and organizing photos, and it has tons of search engine weight, so why would you build your own photo gallery when you can use a Flickr Pro account and their API to display images on your site? Another example is Paypal and Google Checkout. Many small businesses have no need for a full-blown e-commerce solution, as they only have a few products, low inventory, low sales volume, or they track sales themselves. For those people, having a merchant account with gateway fees is just throwing away money when they could do just as well with a site that uses Buy Now buttons (at a fraction of the development cost).
• The code library is already available. A few years back, everything had to be hand-coded from scratch. Now it is not unusual to find code repositories of PHP, JavaScript, CSS and HTML. I know that I have my own library of common functions from past clients that I can use on future projects, decreasing their development time as well.
• Themes are better than ever. Five years ago, a custom site would have meant hiring a developer and hand-coding the entire thing from scratch. Now that Wordpress is widely used and theme developers offer framework and layout options, customizing simply means rebranding a layout with some module changes — which slashes the website development time and costs. Many businesses can use the same layout without the end-user ever catching on, thanks to customization of the theme. (If you want an example of that, see how one theme is used very differently by over 100 sites at the WooThemes Showcase.
• Stock imagery sites offer a wide array of choices. By combining stock imagery elements in new ways, you can create unique graphical looks for less. Even if another site is using one of your same elements, the overall effect will be very different because it is the combination of the elements (along with the developed functionality) that creates the overall look and feel.

Now I am sure some developers out there will hand-code you a small brochure site for $1-5k, but why go that route when there are so many more options available? I know that I have dropped my prices in the past five years as technology and processes have improved, as it is only fair to my customers to pass those advancements on to them.

Nikole Gipps is a PHP/CSS/HTML web developer who takes pride in using out-of-the-box thinking to find unique solutions for the small businesses and entrepreneurs she serves. Catch more of her posts at That PHP Girl.