Planning time can vary greatly depending on the scale of your project, your experience with the issues and technology and the size of your organisation. Don't forget to include meetings with key stakeholders at this stage.

Set up for a basic site is not that hard and both Drupal and CIviCRM do a lot of useful stuff out of the box. However, the default settings will not be to everyone's tastes and requirements, so some configuration will be required. Whether you decide someone on your team has the skills to do this or can take the time to learn, or you decide to bring in some outside help, this will likely be a large chunk of your budget.

When thinking of design costs, people often refer to the question "How long is a piece of string?" Some of the templates (themes in drupal-speak) can be easily used to produce a simple, clean looking site with your logo and strapline to identify it as yours. Consider the costs of a full corporate identity overhaul from a top brand consultancy and you may not find a piece of string long enough.

Hosting costs will vary with reliability, amount of sharing involved, bandwidth, service levels etc. You should probably expect to pay between £10 and £50 a month. You can find deals for less than this if your requirements are low. You may already have a hosting package that will allow you to install Drupal and/or CiviCRM.

Some alternative systems have more specialist requirements. Plone requires the language Python to be installed which is more unusual than PHP and less often found on cheaper hosting deals. Similarly .NET hosting generally has higher overheads. The bottom line?

• more than a simple site
• less than many alternatives

Backing up your data uses disk space and bandwidth. Will you do this on your own network or pay someone to manage it for you? This may be covered in your hosting package, but you should check as some hosting companies charge a lot for managed backups.

Any software can develop potential security risks and so you have to consider upgrades and the amount of time needed to apply them. Drupal usually provides important security updates as patches that can be simply applied. Upgrading to a newer version often gives not just the patch but new features too. However, full upgrades can take hours to test and implement. This may be covered in your hosting package if you have chosen a specialist Drupal host - again you should check whether this is part of the deal or an additional cost.

Conclusion

Before embarking on any project, it's important to get an idea of the TCO. Free software may save you a considerable amount, deliver better results than proprietary solutions, and safeguard your investment for the future but there always some costs involved. Get them in your budget.