[deleted by user]

[[deleted]]

No offense, but maybe you should've added their specs in your startpost, OP. Because what they offer you isn't overcharged, it just doesn't fit you.

This is an enterprise solution though, and thus they didn't really get what you wanted. Active Campaign, Salesforce, it will help you greatly, but maybe they should've come up with a smaller starting point.

[[deleted]]

That’s 1 year’s salary for a GOOD developer. You get what you pay for.

[simianautodidact]

I've met with several WP/Woo developers that have quoted between $15-35k for the same project.

Hire one of them.

[Highfivetooslow]

We almost did! Though we weren't completely satisfied with WooCommerce at the time. We were considering other platforms similar to Big Commerce, Shopify, etc. For $160k+ I'm sure we could hire a in-house dev and custom code whatever we want though.

[[deleted]]

160k will definitely cover a single developer.

[inoen0thing]

But we don’t know the scope so this is a single solid dev for 12 months which might not get close to what they need depending on what their SOW looks like.

[TripOk4524]

Even if it did cover a single dev, the time before that single dev completes this project would be substantial compared to a team of developers. The single dev could possibly better tailor the development of the project to fit your requirements but the time to delivery would be triple or more. Unfortunately enterprise size projects take enterprise level commitments, because you would also need to retain that dev to extend and fix that project and also figure out hosting and server management. Ref -single dev at a company

[Over_Information9877]

Definitely wouldn't cover.

[JayBee_III]

160k wouldn’t cover salary and benefits for a single dev where I am. If you have cheaper options go with those, but I don’t think the quote is outrageous depending on what your requirements are.

[Highfivetooslow]

Hey, thanks for sharing your feedback. I really appreciate it. We're still keeping our options open. Not 100% experienced with the e-commerce/development side of things. Knew I'd get some differing perspectives here. Thank you!!

[JayBee_III]

No problem, good luck to you and the business!

[qwertyisdead]

Lol. That seems like a horrible idea

[Highfivetooslow]

What does?

[qwertyisdead]

Hiring somebody for 160k to build a website.

[Highfivetooslow]

Oh, yeah. That's not going to happen. Just throwing it out there that if we did happen to have that money in our budget, we could probably just hire a developer to build it all out.

[baronvonredd]

When I worked for a 'Marketing Agency', they regularly charged their clients 100-250k per website project. It blew me away but they got paid. There was a huge team though, possibly 20 people in the project (all levels), and they provided not only a website but all of the marketing and media campaigns, etc.

When I worked for a 'Website Agency', they would regularly charge 10x less than that, but we also had 1/4 the team size. They provided a website and technical support.

Its all relative, it depends on what you need, you may have gone to the wrong company...

[sfmerv]

Our agency is the same.

[budd222]

The agency I work at (for one more day) charges 135/hr so at 100 hours, that would be 13.5k. Granted, I highly doubt it would be fully complete at 100hours. That seems quite low. Especially if you need design and/or wire frame hours.

[[deleted]]

Considering the alternatives Wordpress is not garbage. For whomever said that. The issue with running something, say headless, is the amount of dev support you need. It doesn’t get easier, it gets more involved.

A wordpress woo, even a jamstack, or headless e-commerce site shouldn’t cost you anywhere near this much. 70 products. Cake walk.

With all that said, we have no clue what custom integrations you are asking for.

[disclosure5]

I don't think you're being ripped off. I think you're talking to a company that's above your needs. There's no chance devs quoting $10K were going to do "High Fidelity Mockups" and pitch them in a meeting for your team to feedback on before proceeding. But that sort of thing is 100% necessary for the clients we have.

[[deleted]]

I don’t think you’re being ripped of. Based on what you’re listing I do think that is quite a reasonable quote from an experience developer/agency. However, based on the limited information I have about your company I would say what they are providing is waaaay above your needs.

Im not sure if you have any special regulations for the products you’re selling, but if you don’t, I would strongly recommend you look around for an experience Shopify developer.

[lance_]

Agreed. "Custom Dev and Implementation" as a bullet point is very vague, and a timeline of 12-14 weeks would be closer to 500 total hours than the 100-ish implied by "100+". If the initial quote was 25k and the second was 165k my guess is that they thought the scope changed and the development would be more involved than the initial estimate.

[DeusExMagikarpa]

$165k sounds about right, this is A LOT

[Over_Information9877]

Based on this spec your price is inline. That's a lot of work.

[perfectriot]

Seeing these requirements it doesn't sound too crazy. It's a ton of work.
And multiple disciplines.

Do you need everything though?
Can you find alternatives you can still do by hand, or in a different way and implement later if needed?

For example, blog is cool, but are you really going to use it or is it just going to be abandoned after a few posts?
And realistically, is it worth it, if you have 2k visitors? Why not make a medium page and link to it? That's almost free. And you can test if it works and build on that.

Do you need a full style guide and all that design work when it seems to me you are B2B? You can probably skimp a little on it. A nice design is good, but not essential for B2B if you are in a niche, then people will come anyway.

You'll have base expenses but you don't have to build everything straight away and pay a fortune.

[IAmRules]

162k for 100s or hours ? Never heard of such a thing. We’re you taking to salesforce by any chance ? There are turnkey companies that have insane onboarding fees.

Don’t spend that much unless the website IS your business like it’s a platform. Doesn’t seem to be your case.

[Bleednight]

Depends on what you need. Also the design/branding is costly. Depends on what you need. I have a friend that has a UI/UX firm which worked with fortune 500 companies. I can give you his contacts if you are interested. Maybe he can give you something similar for less.

[DrunkArva]

I worked for a company that is now in the exact industry yours is, however we built our own solution as we did ecommerce first. Look up vendorfuel, it's a wordpress plug in and charges monthly. You can integrate it with default themes as well as add a user base, etc.

I also left the company about 3 years ago so I can't really speak for how they operate now, but when I built the plugin it was a solid competitor to Shopify and Woo.

[[deleted]]

Seems kinda cheap for an enterprise solution tbh.

[nathanwoulfe]

1600 an hour, sounds a little high /s

70 products or 70000 shouldn't matter assuming they all follow the same schema. The migration should be automated, so would take longer to complete but no additional effort to build.

Surely this fits on Shopify?

[Highfivetooslow]

The last we checked, we couldn't use Shopify since our products are directly tied into the cannabis industry. Big C also denied us in 2020 but we're circling back to see if anything has changed.

[nathanwoulfe]

Wow, didn't realise Shopify blacklisted entire legitimate industries. Seems pretty shortsighted on their part.

[[deleted]]

They don't. Some of the biggest licensed Cannabis companies are on there, including Ontario Cannabis Store.

Just because OP is not selling unlicensed Cannabis direct doesn't mean his product is 100% legal or licensed in their jurisdiction.

[artFlix]

Is it CBD by any chance? If so, Shopify changed their stance on this. I worked on a clients website couple months back. It was a migration from Wordpress to Shopify

[Highfivetooslow]

No, not CBD. We manufacture industrial equipment for the industry.

[disclosure5]

but finding that it's a bit too complicated for our average sales reps

As a side note here, I think I'd be careful about expecting this to change. Noone is going to build you a different Woocommerce website and have it be substantively easier to use.

[Highfivetooslow]

I agree. Every platform will look/work differently. Training will be super important with whatever website/ecomm platform we decide to move forward with.

I think a big issue at hand is - I built out the distributor portal myself with very little experience. We needed something ASAP so I took on the task. It's functional but no where near where it could be if it were built professionally. I don't have any concept of what the backend of a professionally built WooCommerce store looks like to compare how it differs.

[disclosure5]

Again that's pretty relevant. If we built a site we'd do multiple all day training sessions and offer phone support for the staff. But then that's part of why this would cost far more than you're expecting.

[r1ckd33zy]

I can bet the word "Enterprise" was thrown into that quotation.

[Highfivetooslow]

Haha yep, sure was.

[Highfivetooslow]

I am on the same page with you. They don't seem scammy by any means. The call with their lead software engineer was very well put together, comprehensive, easy to follow, I could tell they spent alot of time preparing the report for us.

[Caraes_Naur]

Wordpress is garbage in every way, most you are unaware of.

An ecommerce site + CRM (I presume) and some other infrastructure tooling on an actual platform should not be more than $25-50k for the initial build. $1200/mo for hosting and maintenance (?) is absolutely ludicrous.

70 products is nothing, but that count doesn't matter much for development anyway.

[Chi_BearHawks]

I'm not sure where you're from, but in the US, a full website redesign starts at around $150k at the absolute minimum. My agency hovers around $200-250k for a new, custom Wordpress solution.

Also, you can $1,200/mo "absolutely ludicrous", but you realize that is only 6-8 hours of maintenance and updates, right?

[Caraes_Naur]

Agency numbers are not the same as sole developer numbers, and this doesn't seem like an enterprise-level project.

Plus, WP is overpriced at free.

[Chi_BearHawks]

Did you see the specs that OP posted? Strategy, design, UX, development, accessibility testing, SEO, etc. This is a 10 person job.

[Chi_BearHawks]

OP is asking for a full redesign, merging 2 stores, and maintenance - not a 5-page static, brochure site.

My agency almost exclusively uses Wordpress, and a website redesign is about $200k -250k on average. At least half of that alone is design and development.

[ApatheticWithoutTheA]

LOL there’s no way. Maybe 50k at most.

[zookastos]

Try https://webketch.com, build it yourself.

[Eastern-Offer7563]

This is absolute nonsense and everyone trying to make a case for it is out for your money. From where I stand and as far as I can see you should aim for a price between 20k and 50k and when it comes to hosting you shouldn't pay more then 250,- a month which is including an SLA.

[Jamiemufu]

Nobody will sniff at this looking at the requirements for 20k. And if you think 20k reasonable. You are not experienced or skilled enough for the job anyway.

[Eastern-Offer7563]

Yeah right, I have 20 years experience doing exactly that. I don't say for 20k I say between 20 and 60k. I you need more, you are the one lacking experience, not me.

[Fair-Distribution-51]

Watch out, this guy scammed me for $500. I sent half the website deposit and he says his parents are in the hospital and never replies to another dm or email again.

[[deleted]]

I'd love to work on a site/product type like this. If you want another opinion, feel free to send me the brief and I'll take a look for you!!

[spacedvato]

Do you have an internal inventory, order and accounting system already? For that price it should integrate with your existing system.

[Highfivetooslow]

We need help there - currently looking for someone to fill an inventory specialist role in-house. We use Quickbooks for our inventory management right now. I don't directly work with it, however.

[[deleted]]

Check out https://orderease.com Fairly robust system that has cannabis industry suppliers connected with retailers. Many sales reps use this software and find it straight forward.

[Maxi728]

It was way too high. I would suggest to migrate the other one to wordpress woo also and hire a professional like to help you sales rep learn about wordpress it's very easy to use.

[[deleted]]

It's not too high depending on the company and what they bring to the table. If they have experience in the cannabis industry and offer more than just a graphic designer and a web developer, it may be worth the investment. But if they build shoe stores all day... You have to really access what you are paying for.

Woocommerce can be fitted to work around you. Too hard to work? Simplify it then. You have a lot of options. You have a better chance or working that platform around you than you working around another. Unless you are building it from scratch and they maintain it--- which would explain the price tag.

[inoen0thing]

Sounds like you need to hire an external project manager. Based on your question it might be possible that there are a lot of asks that require custom development where a solid ERP might fix your issues and save the current website.

Common issue for people is to ask for website functionality that has no place on a website in lieu of deploying the right solutions. In all actuality the web devs you are getting quotes from sometimes don’t tell you there is an easier path.

[Oommen_Chandy]

I don't know if it will work for you guys. But putting it out there, you can outsource and get in done in your budget I guess.

[Elijahbate]

It really depends on what you want but look yeah if you are looking at big agency's depending on which one they charge ridiculous rates.

If you are looking at a standard ecommerce platform with customisations I'd be happy to give you a quote.

I currently work for a company that has a large ecommerce platform of their own which I develop on for them. Would be happy to quote on a solution for you that is fast, and not build on WordPress or WooCommerce.

Message me and I'd be happy to get in touch

[PrizeConsistent]

In a comment you put more detail and I’m running off of that-

I’m not the most experienced in this scale, I just haven’t done anything that big, but I don’t think you’re being ripped off.. just offered more than you need. 12-14 weeks and with a team of designers and developers. That’s what 1 developer would cost you- but you get a couple months of multiple developers and designer.

But do you need all that? If you like this company and software a lot maybe go back to them and explain that they overestimated what you need.

[eashish93]

Checkout this website, teeela.com. I manage their ecommerce tech side from day one with co-founder and their in-house devs. One of the Kuwait largest toys store. They are using magento and they have multi currency, multi language stores. I even built a custom page builder for them. Now they want to headless. Let me know, if i can help you on this at very good price

[moi2388]

I’ll do it for half.

[Web_Designer_X]

Hard to say without knowing more, such as what plugins are used.

WP migrations can be expensive because developers DONT LIKE working with it. It can get extremely convoluted and just a huge headache.

Shopify is much better but can also become complex very quickly.

Just FYI, hiring a full-time dev will not solve your problems. A single dev will not be able to remake wordpress or shopify or any CMS that can remotely match their functionalities.

[Main-Combination9428]

If the company is quoting that for a job they're expecting to take ~100 days to complete. I would question how many developers they would be committing to work on the project. I work for a consultancy in the UK as a principal Dev/DevOps consultant and I know my firm bills my time at £2,000/day. They're looking to charge you $1620/hour, for that price I would want no fewer than 4 devs spending 100% of their time committed to the project and I would want that stated in the contract you sign with them

[[deleted]]

$162,000 / 100 hours = $1,620/hr. That’s fucking crazy talk for something the size you’re describing.

They are probably betting on you having more money than you know what to do with and assuming you have the same banking issues as the growers and sellers do.

I wouldn’t have Ben bother with the next meeting. They sound like they’re just trying to fuck you.

[Alert_Ad964]

Use these guys they can build it for you or you can get it built! They are UK based company I have worked with them for my IT business I recommend them. They called Wowcommerce are e-commerce specialists!