The website industry in Vietnam is not yet matured. Most of the website providers are tiny to small businesses or even one-man teams. The market in Vietnam demands low-cost websites due to the lack of understanding of how a good website can help a business and how much time and effort must be put into building a great website.
If you are new to websites, we suggest reading our detailed articles on website design template vs custom build website and website cost structure.
In Vietnam, it's possible to find unbelievable offers for $20 USD a website, how do they do it?
Low hour rate: due to the lower living cost, the average hourly rate in Vietnam is much lowered than the developed countries.
Hacky job: utilizing pre-made, low-quality templates without any care about accessibility, usability, and search engine optimization.
Hidden costs: high charge rate for any extra tasks such as graphic designs, content edit, etc...
As the old saying goes, you get what you pay for. Even with the cost in Vietnam, this type of offer means that the provider cannot spend more than a few hours on the whole project. It's not surprising to see that these websites are a waste of time for both the businesses and the website visitors. These websites are also easy targets for hackers due to their careless setup and non-existing support. We strongly recommend you stay away from these offers. If you really have to save, please consider using website builders such as Wix, Squarespace, and others.
In the mid-end, you can see website project quotes ranging from a few hundred to several thousand USD. This price range can give the provider more time to spend on project meetings, research, design, and development. Even so, the mid-end projects mainly consist of websites built upon pre-made templates with a minimal level of customization. The reason is simple: it's a lengthy process to do custom design, it's costly to hire talented designers and developers.
It's worth noting that most website design projects in Vietnam are stand-alone projects with loose connections to the bigger branding strategy. The majority of businesses in Vietnam do not have the vision, budget, and experience to properly execute a complete marketing campaign that coordinates and utilizes the various offline and online marketing tools.
“ Mid-end website projects in Vietnam cost any where from $2000 - $5000 USD. ”
High-end websites ranging from $50000 USD and up are rare but there are some. If we do not count eCommerce businesses such as foody, tiki, lazada that cannot operate without investing a huge amount of money and effort into their website platforms, there are just a few corporate websites that truly employ high-end services. The success of these campaigns still has not reached the expected level, however, partly due to the fact that most marketing agencies in Vietnam do not yet have deep insight and experience with digital marketing.
With over 50% of the population having access to the internet, it's not hard to see that digital marketing can revolutionize the way businesses can reach out to customers. Traditional channels such as newspapers, television cannot provide the level of interaction that websites and web apps can. To maximize your website performance, we strongly recommend you to read our article on maximizing your website return on investment.
“ High-end websites are usually custom built and may have a huge price tag to develop and operate. ”
Before you make an investment in your website, make sure you really need a website first. Perhaps you don't really need a website. If you are still determined that you need a website after checking out all the alternatives, why don't you give us a try? We offer one of a kind fully managed website solution with unlimited changes that ensures you can always go back and fix all the mistakes after deployment.
