Comment by j on "Can someone who doesn't code still be considered a developer?"

that's are really good question! Let put it in an analogy in design do you reinvent all shapes of your design?

If you can build those things and you know how they work you can call yourself something.

I love the reasoning of reinventing the wheel ;D .... but lets go down to what happened ... you paid someone to build you a homepage and they used a template. That is common business usually a qualified person would not necessarily use an existing complete template but reusing existing parts is common.

It's hard to asses the work and the output based on 'they reused things that existed' this is like blaming you for your photoshop presets .... the amount of work needs to be tracked ... but if you went for a fixed price instead of hours that can be proven you somehow have yourselves to blame as well.

just the basic calculation -> i googled a standard fee for freelancer $70 per hour in north america that would mean you paid less than worth of 40h of work. The question of quality is something else. But for quality $2.5k ? the process alone of sitting with you guys talking on what you need and want and how it should be done, sending you different templates really would probably already cost half of it.

I understand you feel ripped of ... I don't say he didn't rip you off ... all I can say is that 2.5k is not much and if bad comes to worse it's cheaper to install a cache plugin + putting a reverse proxy (something like cloudflare) in front of your homepage to speed things up. So you can compensate for the slow hosting etc.

but without technical data or anything similar it's hard for me give any assessment besides things I can google and speak from experience.

But maybe some americans can provide better feedback Jason Knight for example.

j, how much should I expect to spend to get a "real custom job" then? It's confusing to me, because, in our graphic design field, even $500 logo design is a custom job, and we spend a few hours drawing many iterations of a logo concept in Illustrator, all from scratch, using our hand skills in Illustrator. We can't sell a stock template with just a few tweaks. Otherwise, why should people even hire us? They could buy an off-the-shelf loyalty-free logo for $10 if that's all they needed. Our design projects are mostly in $1,000 ~ $3,000 range, but we spend hours in Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign to come up with something from scratch, even if we might use a few stock images here and there. They said their work was going to be custom but then kept telling us how many things we requested were impossible. Don't you think there is a difference between building something from scratch using your hand skills and just tweaking a few things to customize?

Hanah Steven it's not the price it's the time that's what matters. it has a lot to do with the feature sets you want and how you want it for example if you want a static page 500-800€ where you just upload pictures to a folder and the system automatically generates a gallery is reasonable.

Also comparing designing 1 thing that remains roughly the same with building something that is displayed in ~5 different browser engines and lets say 8 different standard resolutions is something different.

I don't say it's less or easier it's just different ... your job is to be creative ... a developer is often just a glorified carpenter.

The price is besides the point giving you a blind estimate without knowing the wanted features does make me an idiot. I would go for ranges based on your needs I would probably offer you 4-5 different solutions talk about exit strategies talk about phases, planning targets and allow you time to analyze the impact for your money before moving on to the next target.

often people overestimate the impact on the web so sometimes a plain static html page can be enough to bring in customers so the money saved by spending $500 once and every 2-3 months $50 dollars just to add a small features would give you the possibility to reason about the price to market value.

As an system-architect and designer I need to know your needs otherwise you will waste money and I would waste time.

So no there is no adequate pricing out of the box but going for fixed prices instead of boundaries / packages based on your custom needs already looks like factory work to me and factory work is template work otherwise you cannot keep the price / work ratio low.

They still can rip you off that is no doubt they can outsource to india for example or other methods. There is no specific how much price tag there is process where we would try find what you need and then talk about how to get there an plan different phases .....

and the points Jason Knight about quality and the field been flooded with amateurs is true... but then we all were amateurs at some point.

does this make sense?

j, I'm sorry, no, it does NOT make sense to me at all. "100% custom" means just that; 100% custom. These guys said it was that except some "basic stuff that's always the same," whatever that meant. To me, what you are saying sounds as if asking to add extra onions and olives at Subway should be considered a "full-custom sandwich." I wouldn't think of that as "fully customized" as making a sandwich from scratch, baking bread exactly the way I want, and putting the exact quality and amount of ingredients I want. I might not grow veggies in my backyard to do that, but it is still a lot more extensive, precise and hands-on than merely changing some options at Subway. Don't get me wrong; I don't mind Subway or any premade stuff. I just don't expect people to tell me it is "custom" or "homemade" and charge a premium price for it. And, honestly, why should amateurs take a professional job as a pro if they haven't even mastered the craft well enough to carry out the task? Are you implying that it is my responsibility to tolerate them and help them gain experiences at my expense? How is that understandable?

I am quickly learning that professionals in your field (web development, web design, whatever) have a completely different set of nuance and definitions. Thanks for your insights, but I am quickly leaning toward learning this stuff myself, at least enough to build what I want (a simple portfolio site) so I won't have to ask others to do it. I find it ridiculous that people charge premium for just tweaking mostly-pre-made stuff and calling it "custom job." I could learn to do that myself.

Hanah Steven Fair enough. I don't mind you doing all the things.

And yes we have complete different approaches then you have in your field :), but what you mention is not a field thing it just seems more like a personality thing.

Still I love your description. Lets wait for your experience and which way you go.

I also would like to hear how it goes and feel free to ask here. We got some pretty good people in this field here.

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