- I am an Independent IT Consultant and Application Developer. Besides our Real Estate and personal interests, I established my business to help end users, open an online school, and provide hosting for users who need the type and variety of support needed.Beside the “do gooder” in me, I found very limited support for those people looking to develop, run and maintain WordPress/FileMaker applications. So, I setup our server to provide it all at an extremely competitive basis.
While we can build an application that includes everything in any/all of our websites, the price exceeds taking our course and building your own application.
Even then, the expense required to maintain and develop applications .. as we do .. is really expensive. For example, I can do the project like our typical site within approximately 1 week ($40/hr x 40 hours, or $1,6oo) while the most expensive course for a single developer is $500 .. and that includes a typical 8 week semester of intensive and highly personal training around the students site). It also includes 4 months of our hosting and technical support .. which as best I can tell is the only way to develop and get the support needed to setup/run our kind of work. Then, you can opt to continue our hosting/support for $1,200/year.
Perhaps even more important, the students get 4 months of our hosting before they either stay or move on. The best rate for just the FileMaker Hosting is expensive and very limited, i.e. $55/month and includes only 5 applications? And that’s with NO support. Even if the student or a customer were to setup their own FileMaker Server for their needs, it would cost:
- Feasibility Study Expense (1-2 weeks)
$800 for FileServer 15 software - 2 hours to install Fileserver @ $150/per hour
- Cost of Plugins, Training, Website/Domain Name, SEO, Webinar, eCommerce (order processing), etc. Hosting, etc is very expensive
- Conversion and Implementation
Even all of the online tutorials lack the business sense that can only come from experience, i.e. feasibility studies, project management, owning/running your own business, etc.
So, in the end, our training and support is simply “faster, better and less expensive”.
The more you look, the better we look! Naturally, everyone should discuss their projects as if they wanted someone to build the application. Chances are they can’t/won’t show you theirs .. it doesn’t exist.
And, if it did their labor and hosting fees would “blow you away”. Ask them up front for the labor rates, application development, conversion and implementation, and training costs. My guess is that the development cost would be more than twice that of ours. Also, both options for using a FileMaker Host (or installing your own) are one of the main hidden costs.
There is another way of viewing us as your IT staff, that is considering the office space, equipment, salary & benefits .. we actually cost less. Check out (online via Google) the salary of a FileMaker developer. Then add it all up .. and see who’s the better choice?
Incidentally, our training program is designed to let each student either work for traditional company or become their own contractor. Naturally, we need and use additional staffing for the large development projects. So, our students are immediately candidates for work with me.
Thanks for taking the time to check us out,
John
