I tried making a Freelancer post, as I used their service once years ago and it was generally pleasant, but I was immediately bombarded with AI Applicants and an AI Recruiter grilling me for answers to its questions. Immediately deleted the post and the entire account.
Where do I go to get a quote for some work done by some actual human beings? I don’t need AI, I don’t want AI, if someone automate their quoting process then I’m out because I’m not gonna fuckin negotiate with the hallucinating vending machine.
EDIT: I attempted a post on UpWork.com and there is far less AI response than on Freelancer, but I’ve still declined all offers so far because they failed an important filter question. Still, I’ve been able to get quotes! FINALLY! Looks like my website could potentially be built for some number between $5,000 and $38,000. Very interesting. As some commenters have suggested, I’ll check out some options in local cities, though I doubt I’ll find much in my small studio’s price range. EDIT2: These quotes are bogus, I think. I’ve been seeing the same phrases repeat across multiple proposals “AI is a powerful tool but no replacement for creativity”. I went through so many proposals and not a single one looked like a real human capable of adhering to a no-ai policy.
I’m definitely not local to you, as I live i Scandinavia, but if you want a quote, feel free to hit me up.
Not working with JavaScript sounds like a refreshing challenge.
Try going directly to a college or university and speak to humans directly. Middle-men have taken over the entire hiring process for most companies because there is coin to be made by putting up one candidate over another. Bring back classified ads in local newspapers. Surely printing newspapers everyday, like they used to, would have less of an environmental impact than just one datacenter? Yeah, I know, Boomer shakes his fist at cloud.
A long time ago I lived in Denver but right now I live between Nowhere and Limbo and the closest UNI doesn’t offer a comp sci degree or such.
This is a real concern in today’s day and age, where corporations are encroaching on third spaces, both online and in person.
I’ve had some luck searching for coding clubs on meetup or other group event sites. For example: https://www.meetup.com/code-and-coffee-chicago/ , https://codeandcoffee.org/ , https://www.meetup.com/dearborn-coding-club/ , https://www.meetup.com/nyc-coders/
There are usually developers looking for work who you can talk to in person at these clubs, its a great way to network and get connected with people in the community who are trying to avoid the beaten path!
What’s your project, and are you comfortable with implementations based on Node.js and/or WordPress? I’m quite busy until the end of summer, but open to taking a project later if it sounds interesting. Regarding the quote, what’s your country? I believe people from the U.S. should pay me the same they would their own countrymen, while for my Eastern European neighbors my rate is different. I still haven’t ever used AI for coding, but I use it as a summarizing assistant when writing university notes - it hallucinates a lot but helps me fight procrastination; a skeleton with mistakes that I can correct after carefully reading the sources is better than a blank page endlessly waiting for a good first sentence.
I suppose I’m okay with almost anything as long as the site still works on Firefox for users with Javascript disabled? I am based in the USA, currently.
I am looking for quotes for an upcoming website that will host comics for a team of independent creators. The budget is very flexible but the higher the number goes: the less likely the project will happen at all. Please be honest and realistic and post what you think this job should be priced at. Work will begin after a successful fundraising campaign in 2 or 3 months, work is expected to conclude less than 12 months from project start.
While I have dabbled, I am not a seasoned expert so please inform me of any complicating factors in this listing, please be aware that I am reasonable and that changes to scope can be negotiated.
Needs:
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Secure filesystem for images, form for administrators to upload chapters with an assigned version or category
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Minimal Javascript requirements for users’ browser. Working navbar and footer with links
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Fast-loading pages hosting the chapters, only rerender components/elements which change. Low overhead, minimal imports
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Must work on mobile and desktop, primarily Firefox
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No-AI. Human only work. You will be asked to sign a contract making you liable for the full cost of the work, damage to our brand reputation, and legal fees if AI output is without any reasonable doubt found in your submitted work. I do not engage in frivolous lawsuits, just please be mindful
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User credential management including account creation, login, and product code input to gain access to specific chapters stored securely. Users without access to specific chapters should be unable to view them even if they access the correct url. Administrators should be able to generate unique access codes on demand
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Maintainable by owners and future developers. Well documented notes on managing the filesystem and database would be very helpful
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Email server with automated response capability
Wants but not Needs:
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The following pages: front/landing page, about us page, news page, blog page, contact page.
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Controls on the chapter page to render pages of chapter side-by-side or single wide (
except for pages specifically marked as two-page illustrationson second thought this task could just be handled by the artists preparing the pages), and controls for a specific version (different languages) -
Comment sections and different controls for administrators and moderators to remove comments and take away commenter privileges
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User Profiles and achievements
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Ability to frequently and automatically check a list of patrons on Patreon via API call, and automatically generate a user account with relevant access and temporary password, and send an email to that patron with the account info
What will NOT be expected or required:
You will not be expected to implement any sort of store or transaction. All hosting will be handled by the owners and administrators of the site.
I’m not the biggest fan of AI either but honestly you’re just wasting a ton of money with that policy. Web sites are something that AI is pretty good at and yours doesn’t sound especially complicated - just a lot of work.
Nah, I’ll sit idle and fucking die before I use it. Never shall I ever hire a soul who has drunk from the well that is AI for anything requiring thinking. I’ve declined 9 proposals for simply saying “AI is a tool with specific uses” lmfao nope.
You have to understand, here, I’m placing myself and my team’s jobs and aspirations in the hands of a developer, if they failed to deliver competent well made product then it uses our limited resources up and leaves us with nothing. I have to set bare minimum standards.
Ok, your money I guess. In fairness it is harder to know if someone else who uses AI is just slopping shit out or guiding and checking it.
But also it’s not like humans contractors are guaranteed to write good code. I have seen plenty of human written code that is far worse than anything an AI would product (check thedailywtf for examples).
I have never seen any statistic that Sloppers write as good code as normal human beings. Quite the opposite, in fact, studies have shown AI Slop has singlehandedly created more vulnerabilities total than any other changes in tech or software. We’re talking multitudes uptick in errors.
It not only doesn’t make sense at large scale, but it also doesn’t even make sense anecdotally. You’re telling me a guy or gal who autogenerates code using a flawed statistical model which is famous for its absurd hallucinations, inability to count, violent amorality, and complete lack of puzzle solving capability can somehow be as good as a professional human being? I don’t buy it. I don’t support people who do buy it. I hate them, in fact, if only for the massive costs on consumers and the environment resulting from the training and operating of these bullshit generators.
studies have shown AI Slop has singlehandedly created more vulnerabilities total than any other changes in tech or software
Link?
LINK 1 Analysis of Github Repos
LINK 2 Veracode’s report on generative AI code from a hundred different models.
LINK 3 Ox Security report on 2025’s record high number of CVE, and critical issues per organization increased by about about 4x.
LINK 4 “We have a package for you!” study shows 1 in 5 AI code generations include a package dependency which does not exist which is in itself a huge security risk.
Thanks for the outline! Some follow-up details:
Versions and categories. Does a category mean a comic, and a version mean a language? Are files uploaded in bulk?
Blog and news. Is news meant for a specific creator, while the blog is for the website itself?
Achievements. What should be tracked for a user to gain an achievement?
Access control. To unlock a chapter, either: a user enters an access code; an administrator types their name into a form; or a Patreon monitoring script unlocks it automatically for a group of users according to some logic?
Email server. Can you tell more about this part? What do automated responses involve?
Appearance. Do you have mock-ups, particularly for the landing page and the about-us page? Maybe a design system? I can use generic daisyUI or Bootstrap components to make it look okay, but I’m not a designer myself, though I’ve taught an introductory design course for teenagers.
Notes about requirements:
Filesystem. I can store images outside the document root, and deny a file to a reader unless access control allows their signed-in account.
JavaScript. I’d like the front end to be a server-rendered SPA, using Preact and Vite. This means the reader pages will load and be usable without client-side JavaScript. But some JavaScript will be used for interactivity, especially in the admin section.
Mobile and Firefox. I daily-drive Fennec on Android, Firefox on Windows and Falcon on Debian, so these are the platforms I can ensure it works fine on.
No-AI. You can and should review that anything I code for your project does not include anything LLM-generated; btw, I’m interested in what tools you use for that. However, the bundle returned to the client will include code of dependencies, and I know that developers of many libraries and tools do allow AI contributions, for example it’s in Valibot and Vite, to which I don’t know good alternatives. I will ask you to plan the contract in a way that doesn’t hold me responsible for LLM usage by other people.
Maintenance. I do write documentation for every project that I author. It’s not very extensive, usually a README about installation, structure and some usage tips. Developers whom I onboarded to projects of my employers told me they appreciate it, but they rarely update my initial documentation on their own later. I’ll be interested in your experience with improving this.
My ballpark estimate is 120 hours for the initial release with the features you mentioned. Programming further updates to the website can be negotiated as needed. From what I found $58/hour is an average wage of full-stack developers using my preferred technology in the USA in 2026, so this is what I’ll ask.
Note that with my availability (day job, university, other clients) I can only allocate 10-20 hours per month. I use Kanboard, make periodic reports about what’s ready, and we can monthly discuss the priority of what features should be ready next.
In case the website ever shuts down, can you then release the code with a free software license? I haven’t yet worked on a project with a policy like that, but I saw this the idea on fedi more than once, and I liked it; this is how Firefox and LibreOffice came to life.
For further contact, do you have Delta Chat or XMPP, or how is it better to chat with you and other project members? What’s your timezone, and are you ok with not very fast responses, because I don’t spend much time on social media? I’m from Ukraine, EET/EEST (UTC+2/3).
Do you have any relevant experience or notable past projects? Are any past employers willing to vouch for you? Do you have a personal website and/or code repository such as github or Codeberg?
Versions and categories. Does a category mean a comic, and a version mean a language? Are files uploaded in bulk?
So, the comic is an anthology and there could be categories for each: writer / lead artist, available language, and storyline. For example, Chapter 1 on the site (or rather, Issue 1) is the first chapter in part of “The Tabula Sophonic” storyline, the lead artist is FiniteBanjo, and the available languages are English and German. Issue 2 is a standalone chapter for “Head of the Company”, lead artist is someone else, available languages are also English and German. This information should be visible to users browsing the archive and there should be a database table or perhaps a simple file storing this information about every chapter. Uploaded files are images named number 1 through X, generally uploaded in bulk and ideally should be stored in separate files.
Blog and news.
Blog doesn’t require images and includes long form posts from the team about whatever they feel like talking about. News entries require thumbnails and are short but important updates such as upcoming deadlines, schedule changes, collaborations, team members joining or leaving, licensing changes, etc.
Achievements.
Well, nothing really required, but I guess chapters owned, chapters read, time spent reading, comments made, upvotes on comments, Patron status, user found the hidden page, user tried to break the rules by accessing something they shouldn’t, etc.
Access control.
You understood it well. I could probably help out a little bit with the Parteon API if you have any trouble with the implementation, but I’ve confirmed the necessary capability is there: check patrons, check patron emails, send patron messages individually. This should hopefully be the only API we have to worry about on this project.
Appearance. Do you have mock-ups, particularly for the landing page and the about-us page?
Me and the team are mulling over our options currently, but it’s vitally important to get quotes now and begin the fundraising process with which to fund the development and the fulltime artwork in a few months time. While we certainly COULD proceed without that, it would put us at a pretty big personal risk.
We probably want a sort of modernist approach where light mode is clean white with black boxes and text, sharp edges, and dark mode would be a grey with white lettering and perhaps teal boxes. We do NOT want to sacrifice utility / usability for visuals. Some of the site will utilize a proprietary font that I own, but for the most part Atkinson Hyper-legible will be used.
Mobile and Firefox. I daily-drive Fennec on Android, Firefox on Windows and Falcon on Debian
While it’s not exactly as accurate, there is a firefox tool in the hamburger menu under
more tools > Responsive Design modethat allows you to emulate various device ratios such as iPhone, Laptop, Tablet, Pixel, etc. so as far as visuals we should be good on compatibility. Would you be able to add a banner and notification if a user accesses the site from Chromium to tell them they’re in an unsupported browser?I know that developers of many libraries and tools do allow AI contributions, for example it’s in Valibot and Vite, to which I don’t know good alternatives.
I’m okay with library dependencies using it, although I’d be willing to search for a better solution but I don’t think it’s really economically feasible at the moment to be limiting our options. I am really interested in Fresh from UseFresh.dev but idk anything about it aside from being similar to a React.js project that I’ve worked on in the past but I gave up on trying to build it myself after a while. EDIT: Fresh uses Vite as well.
My ballpark estimate is 120 hours for the initial release with the features you mentioned. Programming further updates to the website can be negotiated as needed. From what I found $58/hour
EDIT: Other quotes I’ve gotten are $5,000 / $14,000 / $15,000 / $38,000 so the $7,000 estimate actually seems really low by comparison. Clearly the amount of features I’ve requested are quite challenging.
Almost $7,000 then. Might be doable, we’ll keep this number in mind when we launch fundraising. We’ll probably have to put forward our own money to make it happen, most successful crowdfunding campaigns are less than $9,000 total and we’re already way over that amount with just the artist team’s wages for the first couple of chapters.
In case the website ever shuts down, can you then release the code with a free software license?
100% I’ll be sure to put that in writing when we decide on a contractor.
For further contact
You can reach me at finitebanjo@yahoo.com for now I’d appreciate you and other users from this post reach out to me there for future inquiries. If you need an encrypted communication app as a hard requirement then I can look into DeltaChat but I’ve never heard of it before today so I’m not really sure about it just yet.
EDIT: Other quotes I’ve gotten are $5,000 / $14,000 / $15,000 / $38,000 so the $7,000 estimate actually seems really low by comparison. Clearly the amount of features I’ve requested are quite challenging.
Interesting, do estimates of hours also differ a lot? Do responders who have more senior qualifications estimate particular tasks as more difficult, according to their experience? I’m fairly confident that my estimate matches the tools I’m familiar with, but at the same time I’m neither still junior nor yet senior and might have underestimated some tasks, particularly those related to communication inside the team, because I’m used to working solo.
When I made my post I requested flat rate estimates, so I’m not sure. The largest difference in price points doesn’t seem to be qualifications, almost random actually. Users with higher estimates seem to have questions about the hardware, though.
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Search locally. Try finding web designers/developers in your city first, and if that doesn’t work then check out websites of local businesses and see what developer they used (usually linked at the bottom of the home page).
Seems to me all the brick and more web developers are calling themselves “SEO/Marketing” consultants these days. You might have luck looking for one of those businesses geo locally.
