Cheap Web Development: Gambling Money and Time

Imagine This:

Sarah, a savvy professional with an eye on budget, needs to rebuild her company’s website. Trying to spend wisely, she chooses the cheapest developer team she can find. They even have a few good reviews and a decent portfolio—what a deal, right? 

A month passes.  

Sarah discovers the rebuilt site is utterly invisible on search engines. All the organic traffic the company has been building for 4 years? Gone.  

With 40% of the company’s revenue turned off overnight, panic starts to set in. When she asks the cheap team what happened, they ghost her. 

Scrambling to fix the total loss of traffic, Sarah goes to a local, reputable agency to recover as much traffic as possible. Luckily, they can fix most of the SEO issues—but it won’t be cheap. Sarah and her company are happy to pay the rush fees though, because they’re losing $10,000 a week to this issue.  

Then, another nightmare emerges: as the experienced developers dig into the website, they discover it’s not ADA compliant—a massive legal and financial risk.  

Sarah and the new team scramble to completely overhaul the website’s accessibility before she gets a scary letter from a law firm demanding an out-of-court settlement of “only” $50k.   

To pour salt on the wound, the new development team is struggling to build on top of the poorly structured website. With so many issues to fix, it’s cheaper to just start from scratch. Sarah gets a quote for a complete rebuild and starts the project with her new developers.  

They’re finally on the right track—but so much money and time has already been wasted, leaving the entire project disappointing and stressful.  

Is Cheap Web Development Worth It? 

In hindsight, it’s clear to Sarah that what she thought was a good deal has turned into an expensive liability.  

Unfortunately, this isn’t an isolated story—it’s a recurring theme in the world of “budget” web development.  

Why Is Web Development Expensive? 

Why does good web development come with a hefty price tag? Because you’re hiring pros who know the difference between a website that just “exists” and one that actually works. These are experts who obsess over SEO algorithms, ADA regulations, and best practices, so you don’t end up with a site that’s invisible, illegal, or unmaintainable.  

Sure, it’s a bigger upfront cost, but it’s a smart move when you consider the circus of problems cheap work drags along.  

Speaking of… 

Common Traps of Cheap Web Development: What You Need to Know

One Way Bad Web Dev Can Cost You Thousands 

As Sarah discovers in our example story, one common mistake cheap developers make is leaving a no-index, no-follow tag on the site. This prevents Google from indexing the site and makes it invisible to anyone searching for your brand. Many other technical mistakes can result in huge SEO drops too.  

These mistakes are so common that, here at Capitol Tech Solutions, many of our SEO projects come from businesses that just launched a new website only to discover that their traffic has disappeared overnight.  

A recent example we’ve seen involved a company that lost all its website traffic after launching a new site with a low-cost developer. The developer lacked SEO knowledge and made critical errors—unindexing pages (including high-ranking ones), decreasing keyword density, losing valuable backlinks, and failing to use relevant keywords throughout the site. These issues are especially common with freelancers or overseas development teams that don’t prioritize SEO. 

On top of the lost revenue from organic traffic (which depending on the business can be thousands of dollars a day), the urgent fixes required for this type of problem usually involve rush fees from experienced professionals, which can be multiple times the normal hourly rate depending on the agency fixing the problem.  

Investing in experienced web developers from the get-go safeguards organizations from this type of immediate traffic loss that costs big time, on top of the ensuing panic and delays. 

ADA Compliance: Don’t Get Sued Because of Bad Web Dev 

The reason cheap development services cost less than the industry average? They do less (or worse) work than industry standards require.  

ADA compliance is often the first corner cut because many clients won’t notice right away. 

For context: 

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), websites must be accessible to individuals with disabilities, which involves implementing features such as alternative text for images, keyboard navigation, screen reader compatibility, proper color contrast, and video captions to ensure equal access to online content for all users. 

When your site doesn’t meet accessibility standards, you’re playing with fire. A non-compliant website suit can slap you with fines ranging from $10,000 to over $100,000. Add attorney fees, and you’ve got a financial disaster and months of stressful litigation. 

Some businesses feel comfortable risking ADA compliance, hoping nobody notices or cares. The reality though is that ADA is one of the worst regulations to neglect.  

Why? Some law firms have realized that it’s very easy to automatically scan websites for ADA compliance and threaten to sue or settle out of court. The trick is that it almost always costs less to settle than to fight it, so these firms have set up a profitable niche systematically targeting businesses of all sizes to collect settlements.  

Considering the ADA settlements range from a few thousand dollars to millions, it’s definitely worth avoiding! With a whole industry set up around compliance-catching, investing in developers that know how to protect your business is a necessary precaution to minimize your legal and financial risk. 

Cheap Web Services: Pay Twice, Take Twice the Time

Kevin Olson is the first person clients talk to about web development projects at CTS. As someone who’s seen it all, he shares a typical story about getting burnt by cheap web dev: 

Unfortunately, examples like this are so common that larger agencies, like CTS, help clients with similar grievances on a monthly basis.   

Opting for cheap web development can often land you with an unusable site. Although this doesn’t happen every time, it’s far more common with cheap developers than with seasoned pros. 

And when cheap web buildouts do backfire, you’ll need to hire the seasoned pros anyway, just with less money and time than you had before. 

Spending on cheap web dev means a significant risk of redoing your project—paying twice for the same result, and taking twice the time.  

That’s not an investment in your business. That’s a gamble with your money and time.  

And it’s certainly not the bargain you’re hoping for! 

Is Cheap Web Development Ever OK?

Now, let’s be reasonable—there are cases where cheap development may be worth the risk.  

Some businesses may be fine seeing if they can get what they need for cheap and accepting the loss if it doesn’t work out, depending on their unique circumstances.  

If you’re running a micro-business with little to lose, or don’t have plans to scale anytime soon, cheap development could be worth the gamble.  

If you’re reading this though… that’s probably not you.  

You’re probably not OK gambling a portion of your budget and the entirety of your timeline on a coinflip project. If you have a boss, they’re probably not keen on that either.  

If You Don’t Think the Cheap Web Dev Gamble is Worth it, Check Out CTS

As the stories above show, creating or rebuilding a website requires many considerations.  

Protecting your traffic (and revenue) from abrupt interruptions, protecting your business from eager ADA lawyers, and protecting your timeline and budget requires expert care.   

If after reading this you think it makes sense to do it right the first time—to invest in expertise, thorough attention to detail, and close communication—you’re in the right place. 

All you have to do is fill out the contact form below, and we’ll reach out as soon as possible. We’ll use our 20 years of client-serving experience to guide you to the best possible version of your web development project based on your unique considerations.   

Talk to you soon! 

-Capitol Tech Solutions 

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