The Core

There is a startup in my incubator that needs a 'paid event' (or 'meetup') style website built for them and they approached me to be the project manager, because they are totally not technical.

I looked and there are paid plugins that would work perfectly for their needs and there are paid themes for events sites that are really nice, that I can pay to have customized. Both were rated high and had substantial downloads. I don't know what else they need, but basically I can damn near turnkey this myself in a few days, and then hire others to tweak it to my needs.

I was thinking I'd just bill them for my time, plus a percentage of the spend for management, but I was just wondering what a wordpress like this goes for on the market these days? And what it would cost if you had a custom solution built just for them. So that they could see their options.

Basically, they may think the wordpress solution is a little too Mickey Mouse, but once they hear the difference in price, they may decide they want to pilot the idea like this and if it starts to fly they can develop their own custom solution.  

I have to see what these plugin and theme guys want to tweak stuff, but most will work out of the box, I think, so it shouldn't take much. Usually the biggest job is hand holding.  

I'm thinking if one size really fits all, and it's as easy I think it is, I bet we are talking $2500-3500(?) retail, and if it's a hard one and it's a pita, $5k-7k(?), and if you wanted that functionality from scratch, $20k++(?)

I think a basic Wordpress site - building a custom child theme and getting everything set up runs about $2500 to $5000. If you minimize the custom design (just change colors and logos and such) you can go less.

If you want something really custom from a topnotch designer, you would go a lot more

As for the bespoke solution, it would depend on the contractor. If you go with a solo dev or possibly a two-person dev/design team, you might get quoted under $20K. If you go with an agency, you'll be lucky to get your first design comps for that price.

We recently got quoted $10K to add a social medium "wall" to a page (i.e. pull curated posts from our social media streams). I looked into one of the solutions that does this and it's basically putting a few lines of Javascript on the page and tweaking the design to match.