This article covers a free website cost calculator to estimate website cost using a sitemap. Building a new website from the ground up is not cheap. So, it’s nice to have an estimation of the total cost of website development.
Octopus is a free online website cost calculator that also doubles as a website prototyping tool using a visual sitemap. With this tool, you can create a detailed sitemap of the website and then calculate the cost estimation for design, frontend, development, testing, and management. You can invite other people to collaborate on the sitemap and also share it with others in read-only or edit mode. You can also download the sitemap as an image and PDF file with an embed feature coming on the way. The free plan limits you to one project which you can extend with a paid plan and get more features such as user permissions, team workspace, transfer ownership, and custom domain.
Also read: 5 Free Online Business Startup Cost Calculator Websites
Free Website Cost Calculator by Creating Visual Sitemap
To estimate the cost of website development, first, creating an account on Octopus and log in. Then, create a new project which takes you to an editor where you can create a sitemap of your website.
To get the cost estimation, create a prototype sitemap of your website. In the sitemap, you can add any number of pages along with siblings and child pages. Each page shows two + buttons, one on the side and one on the bottom, which adds sibling and child page respectively. In each page, you can add page elements and color code them. This way, create a complete sitemap of your website along with cookies and 404 error page.
Once the sitemap is done, click the $ button from the top right corner. This brings the cost calculator on your screen. The calculator contains five following items for cost calculation:
- Design
- Frontend
- Development
- Testing
- Project Management
You can simply select for which of these items you want to calculate the cost. When you enable these items, a box for each item is added alongside each page on the sitemap. Enter the estimated hour needed for each task there. Then define the per hour rate of each item in the calculator screen. When you do that, this calculator does the calculation and gives you the total estimated cost including/excluding tax.
Try this website cost calculator here.
Wrap Up
Octopus is a nice tool to estimate the cost of website development. It is also great for prototyping website by creating a visual sitemap which you can share and download. Using this calculator, you would have an idea about the cost along with all the resources you are going to need. And, hence you can plan everything by keeping your budget in mind.
