Whereas I, very frankly,
wouldn't.
And here, quite frankly, is why.
If we could time-warp back fifteen years or so, when a web-site such as this one were
new, then I might consent to paying £10,000.00 for it. But that simply isn't the case anymore.
Today, there are literally tens-of-thousands of companies who have been in a similar situation to this client, and they
don't have to "start from scratch."
Welcome to the oldest economic principle in the book:
"economy of scale." Weebly (for example!) hosts more than
20 million websites now ... and, by the by, every single one of them is
already mobile-ready. No matter what this particular client's needs might be,
they are not "unique" anymore, and therefore there is
no justification to spend £10,000.00 for it. Instead, you latch-on to what 20 million people have already paid about £40 a year for.
You do the math. Instead of spending £10K of your own one-time money, to do a "one-of-a-kind" thing as though it
were "one-of-a-kind," hitch a ride on a £400M revenue-stream that's already being paid. Instead of forking-out all of it, just pay your tiny
pro rata share and be done. (And
yes, if need be, you can cook-up your own custom formats and appearances. You can even download all the HTML and move it somewhere ... anywhere ... else.)
I said it all in a blog-post last month:
End of An Era: The Death of the Botique Web-Site Company (1996-2014). No, it isn't pretty or palatable – but, it's true. The stuff that we are doing is
not "novel" anymore; it isn't "cutting edge." It's commonplace. And, as such, the premium-price that such work once commanded is
gone.
Yes, I can start from scratch and have a complete on-line 30-page e-commerce plus blog website ... highly visible to Google and SEO and all the rest ... and have it (domain-name and all
with SSL) on-line and visible within the
hour, having paid about £25
total for the "privilege." And what I will have thereby produced
will not be inferior to what your £10,000 would have actually produced.
I'm sorry to be the blunt bearer of bad news. But, the roses are out there now, and they demand to be smelled. (There was, after all, a time when we'd pay £100 for a four-banger pocket calculator, because it was so much better than a slide-rule.)
---
Yes, I would recommend weebly ... and
no, I don't have any "skin" in their game at all.