What is the best hourly cost for a Magento specialst?

[marknoah3]

I got a tricky question.

My wife has recently finished building her new hand-made jewelry Magento site. And you know what, after it was completed, she found out that lots of functionality needs to be adjusted for her personal business needs (yeah, she has little experience in business planning - but that is actually her first store).  The company that provided her design and development services, wants 80 euro per hour (we are located in Germany).  That's pretty much for her startup store at the moment. Unfortunately, I also can't help because of the extreme lack of time.  

So we are considering finding someone else (another specialist Magneto web design company, or perhaps a freelancer) to get this store completed. Hence, my questions:

1. What is a reasonable hourly rate for Magento development services?
2. Are there any risks in giving a new person or company access to our back-end coding? Is that risky to hire a developer from india that has lots of positive reviews but charges cuspecioucly little (about 10-20 bucks per hour).

What are your thoughts on this?

Thx in advance for help

[Theis Corfixen]

Hi @marknoah3 

I can't give you an answer on that, there are so many variable that goes into picking the right developer / partner to work with. First of all by reading your post I assume your Wife's shop is in its startup fase. You need to make a choice, wether this is a business you plan on growing and therefor want to invest in, or if its something that your wife wants to do as a hobby. 

Again just assuming here, and sorry if I'm wrong, that this will mostly be a hobby project, you will properly be best of finding a freelancer of some sort. I'm not really that into the German freelance market so I can't help you there, but i suggest that you go to the german forum and ask around. A freelancer can help you with your coding need and will typically be less expensive then a development company. 

I will suggest you get a freelancer with Magento exeprience, or even better a certififed developer you can look people up here: http://www.magentocommerce.com/certification/directory, since Magento can be a tough nut to crack for a first timer and they end up doing more damange then good ;-).

My personal experience talk again sending work east of europe, but I'll be honest and say I don't have a lot of experience here, but I would try and get a local developer to help me, it will cost more, but it will be worth your time.

I hope this answers some of your questions and can help you and your wife along.

[Shilpi]

Hello marknoah3

The average hourly rate of the developers may vary based on various criteria like level of exoertise, country etc. However, I would recommend to contact a professional magento development company to get the solution. They may be able to help you in getting the best solution.

I would also like to add here that there is no risk in giving a new person or company access to our back-end coding; but before you proceed with any contract, make sure the person/company is a professional agency and experienced enough to handle your requirements. There is no harm in hiring a developer from India as Indian developers are competent enough to provide high end technical solutions. The only thing you need to do before handing over your project is; do not forget to check their credentials and work done by them in the past.

Regards

Shilpi

IDS Logic (Magento Development Agency)

[carlosrob4]

Trusting an individual developer from a different country is risky. The individual in times do lact the capacity to perform specific tasks, I suggest you to hire a company instead.  You can contact FmeExtensions  for custom development. You can check their portfolio as they have 100+ extensions and about 12000 clients base. Considering the amount of work they have done I can assure you the safety of your business and the rate is as low as $30-$35 / hour.

[Conor_Tomkins]

Avoid Digital media agencies / Magento companies as they have extorinate prices.

Smaller companies often offer the same if not better expertise and also a personal connection which is always important.

Large companies with 1000's of clients just outsource work to developers in Ukrain and other countries so you get very little direct input from the person doing the work!

[CreativeWest]

Offshore companies will be $15-20/hr, nearshore $30-50/hr, onshore $70-100/hr, senior consultants $150-200/hr, architects $300-500/hr. Individuals will be one level lower so starting at $7-10/hr. You get what you pay for, the higher the price the more experience they have and the less time they need, the longer it takes the more code and changes they make which becomes an iterative cycle. Quite lucky as work via a group so get access to all levels in one place which makes it easier. You can check out these @Pixafy @CommerceKick (we work via this group) and @Creatuity which simplify the technology for business people.

[himalayanbowls]

It's not simply "you get what you pay for" because the price varies hugely from country to country. I have amazing Magento developers in Vietnam who do excellent work for a very reasonable price. It's much less cost than contractors in the USA and they are very efficient. They don't waste time and often come in less expensive than their original bid. They're incredibly honest and much easier to work with. I've been ripped off by American companies and Indian companies. I'm very happy with this partner if you want a referral.

They did the same thing for me that you are asking. My site was mostly done, but my previous USA contractor did not fix all the small details. The new developers from Vietnam fixed everything for a very reasonable fee - about 10% of what the USA company charged me, even though they did not deliver a finished site. 

[CreativeWest]

You have 80% of the site developed by onshore resource, 20% so fixed and maintained by offshore, you get exactly what you pay for. Now try and have them develop a site from scratch, different ballgame, it's purely an allocation of the most efficient resources for that particular task. The last 20% takes 80% of the time so using onshore resource is a very expensive approach as it's time dependent, but any rational retailer would understand that before they start.