Domain Names

Telkom charge R1014 for .com and .net domain names
We charge R115 to register .com and .net domains

Telkom charge R419 for .co.za domain names.
We charge R85 to register .co.za domain names.

Telkom charge R179 for DNS options.
We offer it for free.

http://www.telkomsa.net/
Click On "Our Products" then "Domain Name Service" and then "Pricing"

Web Hosting

Telkom charge R389 pm for 80 MB space and 150 MB Bandwidth.
We charge R45 for 150 MB space and 5000 MB bandwidth.

http://www.telkomsa.net/
Click On "Our Products" then "Shared Web Hosting" and then "Pricing"

Website Design

A web designer charge R5995 for a complete website and then you must for example ADD R495 to integrated a Forum and ADD another R6495 to integrate an eCommerce system.

Our prices on www.website-shop.co.za where we offer complete websites for free up to less than a thousand rand speaks for themselves and you can add many more features for free or at the fraction of above prices.

Other

Just a SINGLE visit to a dentist, a tank petrol or family outing can easily cost you a few hundred rands. 

With that in mind is a few hundred to OWN a website and domain name or rent web hosting space for one year too much for your business?

Visit a real web designer site

Why the HUGE difference in prices-

With Telkom the answer is simply - Greed

Many other BIG companies also plain abuse their customers with expensive prices but I think that, if you believe that a BIG company will offer "better" services than a smaller company then you cant blame them for getting even richer with your money.

In general the medium and smaller ISPs are however very competitive so their prices dont differ too much.

With regards to our own business we are still small enough to care about our customers and do everything in our power to make things as easy and cost effective as possible for them.  Our low prices and many value added services such as the free and low cost websites that we offer is proof enough.

In the case of web designers and developers things are a bit different and the service of a cheaper web designer or developer are mostly justified by the personal and unique designs and programs.

While website designers and developers offer a valuable service for a personal, unique and VERY fine tuned approach open source software and templates offer a very low cost or even free alternative for people that simply wants to get the job done without caring TOO much about the finer details.

At present many open source software are so advanced that if would be very difficult for even a group of website designers to match the features offered by such software and who will anyway pay tens of thousands and even hundred thousands to reinvent the wheel-  

Search Engine Optimization

Many web designers and developers would also explain that their personal attention and techniques will help to optimize your website for search engines but the reality is that it dont.

The initial search engine optimization for a website is easy enough but the REAL difference is in the quantity and quality of content that you have on your website and no website designer or developer will add such content for you so you have to provide the content yourself anyway.