School Website Costs & Prices

This page gives useful information for schools when evaluating the costs of a website.

The costs of a school website vary considerably between those for primary school and those for secondary schools, mainly due to the size of the school and the scope of the required website.

When a school considers setting up a website, the design cost (or website price) may well be one of the smaller costs associated with the website! The highest cost is most likely to be the cost in time for staff to maintain the website content, so this must be considered from the start.

When designing the website, designs which minimise the required ongoing maintenance will in the long term be more cost effective.

Below is a checklist of costs to consider when investigating setting up a school website. This is divided into primary and secondary school websites as there is a difference in school support structure and website scale.

Primary school website costs

Most primary schools do not have a dedicated IT support department, so may look to the web design company for ongoing help and advice in maintaining their website. Websites tend to be marketing tools to showcase pupils work and inform parents and prospective parents about the school. An up to date website can be a useful source of information on dates and school closures. It is currently (in 2008) unlikely that primary schools will be using intranets and virtual learning environments as a major part of the education process.

School website costs - free (.sch.uk) provided for each school.
School website Hosting - often provided 'free' or as a hidden cost with your schools Internet Provider. However in reality this is likely to be very poor, slow hosting often on old servers. Many school ISPs then charge a huge excess to add other standard features such as website statistics, scripting or databases. Schools may be better using a 3rd party hosting provider and costs should be no more than £100/year, probably less.
School website design and creation of initial school website. Forget 1 page school websites as these are a complete waste of time and money. A small simple website of 3-5 pages which acts as on online brochure should cost no more than £600 and possibly less. This type of website would have a flat single menu with little scope for future development.

Larger websites with a double menu, capable of coping with between about 8 and 80 pages will cost upwards of £1,000 . With such websites it is possible to start small (say with 15 pages) and the school gradually more pages over time. This is usually the most cost effective method both in terms of 'website price' but also staff time.
School website maintenance. An up to date school website is a valuable marketing tool for the school. An out of date website gives a very poor impression. Website maintenance therefore MUST be considered at the design phase. The options include:
- Asking webdesigner to make changes. Usually best for the headers and the design layout. Not such a good solution for page content.
- Use PC/Mac based tool (Contribute) to edit webpages. For business this costs about £120/user but there are HUGE education discounts. This is easy to use software requiring no webcoding knowledge that is good for updating page content. It can be setup to only allow changes to be made which conform to current accessibility legislation (this is not the default mode) and will then produce high quality code. Cornish WebServices have many school clients using this software.
- Online CMS (content management system). Entry level systems start from about £300 and can all produce poor quality non accessible code unless used with great care by a webdesigner. Usually these produce poor quality code and lose the website design. (These disadvantages are not often mentioned). Online systems as good as Contribute exist (but at £10k setup and £2k/year ongoing are not a sensible option for a primary school). There are compromise online systems which produce reasonable code, the best depending upon how many people will be editing the website and whether new pages need to be created. Contact us for more information on this option.
But the biggest cost of ongoing website maintenance is staff time in updating the website content. This can be minimised by designing the website to need minimum maintenance. Term dates are important, but by keeping information on other future dates to a minimum and in one place will help reduce the work in keeping a website up to date.

Secondary school website costs

Most secondary schools have some form of dedicated IT support department, and (in 2008) will either be using or thinking of using school intranets and virtual learning environments as part of the education process. The school will have a variety of different systems with different purposes ranging from a password protected staff system for monitoring and / or planning (part of the intranet) to the PR brochure type material for prospective pupils and parents (part of the website). In between there is information on the curriculum which could be part of the school Intranet or could be part of the school website.

Some schools attempt to unify all the above functions under one system. This may not always be best, and it is quite possible to have 'seamless' links between a PR website, an internal learning environment and school admin systems. There is no reason for the above three functions to have either the same design, the same technology or the same updating mechanism. Each is intended at a different 'audience' and may provide a better solution if considered as such.

Below considers in more detail the PR brochure type requirements of a secondary school website.

School website costs - free (.sch.uk) provided for each school.
School website Hosting - often provided 'free' or as a hidden cost with your schools Internet Provider. However in reality this is likely to be very poor, slow hosting often on old servers. Many school ISPs then charge a huge excess to add other standard features such as website statistics, scripting or databases. Schools may be better using a 3rd party hosting provider and costs should be no more than £100/year, probably less for the PR part of the website. However consideration should be made of the hosting requirements for the school learning environment (which will be considerably more) and the website may be able to use the same hosting provision.
School website design and creation of initial school website. It is unlikely secondary schools will be considering websites with fewer than 15 pages. Larger websites with a double menu, capable of coping with between about 8 and 80 pages will cost upwards of £1,000 depending on design and numbers of pages. With such websites it is possible to start small (say with 20-30 pages) and the school gradually more pages over time. This is usually the most cost effective method both in terms of 'website price' but also staff time. A budget of £5k should give a secondary school an excellent PR website that they maintain themselves.
School website maintenance. An up to date school website is a valuable marketing tool for the school. An out of date website gives a very poor impression. Website maintenance therefore MUST be considered at the design phase. The options include:
- Asking webdesigner to make changes. Usually best for the headers and the design layout. Not such a good solution for page content.
- Use PC/Mac based tool (Contribute) to edit webpages. For business this costs about £120/user but there are HUGE education discounts. This is easy to use software requiring no webcoding knowledge that is good for updating page content. It can be setup to only allow changes to be made which conform to current accessibility legislation (this is not the default mode) and will then produce high quality code. Cornish WebServices have many school clients using this software. Contribute can be installed as a site wide license and different members of staff given different permissions to edit different sets of pages. Functionality of sending for review before publishing also exists.
- Online CMS (content management system). Entry level systems start from about £300 and can all produce poor quality non accessible code unless used with great care by a webdesigner. Usually these produce poor quality code and lose the website design. (These disadvantages are not often mentioned). Online systems as good as Contribute exist (but at £10k setup and £2k/year ongoing may be slightly expensive). There are compromise online systems which produce reasonable code, the best depending upon how many people will be editing the website and whether new pages need to be created. Contact us for more information on this option.
  
  Some secondary school IT departments favour systems such as Moodle. These are 'free' systems designed for content management and, like Contribute, can be setup to produce good code (the default is not). Moodle has a hidden cost of taking up considerably more space on a webserver and is rather clumsy for a small website - but is a sensible alternative for larger secondary school websites. We can design websites and produce templates which work well with the Moodle system. Contact us for more details.
But the biggest cost of ongoing website maintenance is staff time in updating the website content. This can be minimised by designing the website to need minimum maintenance. Term dates are important, but by keeping information on other future dates to a minimum and in one place will help reduce the work in keeping a website up to date.

Within website design, the KISS (Keep It Simple) principle works best - and for secondary schools this may mean having separate (but seamlessly linked) systems for your PR brochure website aimed at prospective pupils and parents, your leaning environment and your admin systems.

Additional website functionality

The website is where the school communicates with the community and parents. A website can also be used to collect money (by online payment) for school trips or events. Contact us for further information on this.