The Cost of Building a Website From Scratch
Recently over a cup of tea i was discussing the scenario of building a web portal inhouse versus buying an off the shelf and tweaking this. I am sure there have been numerous articles published on this topic but either way i thought i should share the conversation:
Pros of a customized developed solution:
If you have a clear idea of what you want, you should get a website that does exactly what you need. When i say this i mean you have the right blend of tech guys onboard who look at the app from all angles, database computing, performance, load balancing, security, user interface, design, extensibility, flexibility for the application to change, writing clean and efficient code, etc. – Yes this is a dream to have a team like this a few do have this on board and some of these companies are startups that i have met in India and NZ as thats my world at the moment lol!!!
Cons of a customized build:
Its time consuming and takes a long time. If you don’t have a good technical team and the key stakeholders within the company are not Technical enough then God save you as you will have no idea what the developers are doing under the hood.
If you don’t get it right in a years worth of development then you know the road ahead has just got harder.
If you go down this path, make sure you have a detailed specification brief of what you want and agree with the tech team be it inhouse or outsourced before you start. You are bound to pay extra no matter how you look at it.
A customized web development solution will give you greater flexibility ,however this comes at a cost and i hope you get it right. During my career the one thing i have experienced during my contracting career is if you have a sound team on board then go for it but if you are not a web development company then buy a product and then tweek it specially if you are wanting to venture into a market that you are not very savvy about.
A simple example if you plan on having you own company blog then go for a bloggin product thats already built don’t try and build one from scratch. if you need a website then go with a CMS applications thats already available don’t try and build a website just because you can.
All the best
March 6th, 2009 at 12:47 am
Haha ^^ nice, is there a section to follow the RSS feed
March 7th, 2009 at 5:49 am
Great site! I am loving it!! Will come back again – subscribing to your feeds also, Thanks.
March 11th, 2009 at 9:53 am
I dont usually comment, but after reading through so much info I had to say thanks
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:32 am
hello
just thanks
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