Orders of magnitude
How big is a web project, and what will it really cost? This skill trains you to put a project, a quote or a running cost at the right scale: a week or six months, free or €20 a month or a whole team. You'll learn to spot a budget that's ten times too small, an option that only looks cheap, and a "weekend project" that leaves out most of the work.
- What kind of siteWhat a site has to do, not how many pages it has, sets its size: accounts, payments, personal data and connections to other systems each turn days into weeks.
- Build or subscribeFor needs that many organisations share, a ready-made service is faster and cheaper than a custom build, which is worth it only for what no service does.
- The years after launchA site costs money every year after it's built, so options are compared over several years rather than on the day-one price.
- Free plans and pay-per-useFree plans have limits and pay-per-use costs grow with every user, so the cost is estimated at the scale hoped for, with a limit set before launch.
- Beyond the demoA working demo is a small part of the job, estimates are guesses, and how much care a project needs depends on what's at stake.