Although it is published on our fees page, some new clients ask us about our Joomla Hourly Support rates, thinking that our published rates are only for established clients. We would like to clarify this for all our prospective clients, we currently don’t have maintenance clients (clients who pay a monthly fee and will get a number of free support hours and a preferred rate for our consulting services), so our rate of $75/hour is for everyone – old clients and new clients.
Now how do we compare to the market and what is the average Joomla hourly rate?
We know that this is the Internet and we’re not alone, and there’s a lot of competition, especially in our industry. We have seen hourly rates ranging from $15/hour to about $150/hour.
We did our investigation and here’s what we found out about these rates:
- $15/hour rates: These rates are offered by either individuals working in developing countries or by non-established companies also operating from developing countries. Either way you will run into the following problems:
- Cheap labor: Cheap labor is always associated with cheap quality. Think about it this way, why should you charge $15/hour when others are charging $150/hour.
- Communication issues: You will get stuck with programmers who don’t understand what you want. There’s also another thing, you are often stuck with inconvenient communication means.
- Different timezones: You have to wake up either very early or sleep very late to be able to talk to the programmers (that is, if you can talk to them).
- Scams: Some (if not most) of these companies/individuals ask you to pay either the full amount or a substantial part of the amount at the beginning of the project, and then either vanish into thin air or will give you only a part of what you want done.
- No money back guarantee: When these companies take your money, they will take it, meaning that you will never see it back, even if they didn’t do the work, even if you don’t like the work, and even if the work is incomplete.
- Security issues: These programmers won’t take good care of neither your website/CPanel credentials and nor your website security as a whole.
- Hourly productivity is very low: When you pay $15 an hour, you should think that you are really paying at least $100/hour – this is because a day of productivity by programmers being charged at this rate is really equivalent to a maximum of 2 hours of real productivity.
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$50/hour rates: These rates are offered by either established individuals or companies, who are also located overseas. By established we mean that the individual/company has been in business for a few years and has gathered some clients. The quality is still not that good when you go for this rate, and while hourly productivity is higher than the $15/hour rate, it still comes up to around the same thing (so you will be really paying $100/hour after all). You will also be faced by “hidden fees” (such as project management fees) and communication issues. Not to mention, of course, that programmers at this rate will not try to ensure that their code is
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$75/hour rates: These rates are the optimal rates and are typically offered by North American companies where individuals who understand your language work. Usually you will not pay any hidden fees, the quality is excellent, your website’s security is prioritized (mainly because you are dealing with Joomla security experts), and you will be guaranteed to pay the same amount of money even if the work takes longer. itoctopus goes beyond that by only asking for payment when you think the work is done and following-up with you after the work is completed.
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$150/hour rates: We have noticed that these rates are charged by individuals (not companies) who have decided to charge double the fair rate because they always have a lot of work to do (not only that, some of these individuals also have a full-time job!). Now although these individuals are great programmers, you will end up having low quality and non-secure work because they simply have too much work and they need to accommodate everyone. Additionally, you are not able to communicate with these individuals once they think that the work is done. Finally, these programmers always make you feel that you are at their mercy and don’t appreciate you as a client.
As you can see from the above, the average hourly rate for Joomla support is around $75, and this exactly what we, at itoctopus, charge (and what we think a Joomla website owner should be paying to get excellent Joomla work). Our clients are always happy with our work and we only invoice them once the work is actually done. If you have a Joomla website and you need support, then why not contact us. We really want to work with you and help you achieve your goals with your Joomla website!