Complete Breakdown of Web Design Cost in Ethiopia in 2024

Domain Name REGISTRATION

1100birr – 2000birr per year. Owing to the increase in the exchange rate, this is the price you are most likely to pay for a name that is free and available for registration. If you need a .ng domain, the price ranges between 1100birr – 1800birr. However, you may want a name that is already taken by someone else. For that, you will have to place a backorder for it (that is contracting a domain broker like Godaddy or Namecheap to purchase it for you as soon as it is free). This costs about $69. But if you are buying from another individual, then the price can be a lot higher – running into thousands of dollars. Generally, if you don’t have a specific need for a particular name, just choose an alternative. Personally, my normal strategy for getting the names I want is to go for the .com.ng or .ng extension. For example, when I was launching a new startup back in 2015, I wanted www.thesummary.com but of course, that wasn’t available and I couldn’t change the name of the business, so I simply opted for thesummary.com.ng. And the site went on to do quite well. You too may apply this same strategy.

Web Hosting FEES

web hosting comes in various categories. There are generally 4 basic categoriesIt could be;

• Shared hosting
• Virtual Private Server (VPS)
• Cloud hosting
• Dedicated server

The category you choose depends on the number of visitors that come to the website on a monthly basis. If you need just a business website for your company, it is okay to use shared hosting. On the other hand, if your website is going to serve a large audience, it’s safest to go for a VPS or cloud hosting. This type of hosting is recommended for blogs with a lot of visitors monthly or a church or association with a large membership

Web Developer Fees

This is a very important factor that influences web design cost. The programmer’s fee is largely determined by the type of website you want: static, dynamic site (Content Management System), or eCommerce. While I cannot speculate any fixed price that a web programmer will fix, the price of a basic static 5-page website ranges from N70,000 to N300,000 or much more depending on the level of experience. And it generally increases if you request more pages and functionalities. Anything less than this, you should be weary. For a dynamic site, the fee varies so much. While some programmers will take as little as N70k, others may charge as high as N5-10million. It all depends on the type of client, quality, and years of experience of the website developer. The uniqueness and functionality of the site also play a key role. If you want a unique bespoke website design from scratch, then be prepared to pay a much higher price than the person whose website is designed using a $60 template. I generally advise my clients to opt for templates (if you just need a basic corporate website) as it makes the work faster and even 10x cheaper while offering the same or even better functionality than the so-called bespoke design. The programmer’s fee for an E-Commerce website is usually not the same as it is for a CMS-driven dynamic website above. It may be a bit higher. Also the extra features as well as the number of products you want to sell on the website also play a key role in deciding the final price you will pay. For example, if you want to accept payment online in Ethiopia using Interswitch payment gateway, the price of the gateway alone is between N150,000 to N200,000. And this will be built into the programmer’s fee most times. Most people prefer Paystack, flutterwave etc. because creating account is free and they charge just 1.5% per transaction. So when your web developer starts quoting N500k – N2million, you have an idea of what the money will be spent on and why.