Full featured social network website cost

From my personal expierence it would take from 2-3 months + and total amount estimated would be near $15k+/-

40% of Drupal dev effort goes in Layout designing + Themeing so it entirely depends on whether you have 5 layouts or 75 for your social network.

I like this one "Add/remove custom Apps system", it is total open ended, it could take considerable effort.

In general, its in the details, your list leaves a lot to the imagination.

90% of drupal is configuration. Once you have it set up it runs smooth as silk.
the problem comes with the steep learning curve in configuring all of the features to work.

Photo & Video Galleries
CCK and views plus node reference takes about 4 hours to set up, but will take morer time to tweak to get it just right.

User profiles
This comes out of the box but there are a lot of add-ons.

Private messaging system
There is a module for this

Friend buddy system
There is a module for this as well

Mutual Friends system
Hunh? Oh you mean like facebook right?

Activity stream / status update
There are modules to do this as well.

Groups with discussion board
Organic groups or roles work well for this. A discussion board is also known as a forum.

Add/remove custom Apps system
Yes, there is a module for this as well, but this is very dangerous as custom "apps" are actually modules and you do not want just anybody installing modules on your site. Or your "apps" could be feed pages or content from outside sources your users subscribe to but if you do this improperly you could end up with many thousands of nodes to wade through plus you have no control over the content.
Or you can create new views and content types an call them Apps. this is probably what you had in mind.
You mean like little green patch and mafia wars? Forget about it. Facebook already does this and has billions in infrastructure.
Writing something like this for drupal is simply too expensive for 99% of users needs. If you need that much customization. and you have this kind of budget you should write what you need from scratch.

Ecommerce system
This is a little bit tricky. E-commerce is a complete set of technologies and information. Plus you have to load your products.
Ubercart is recognized outside of the drupal community as "the" drupal shopping cart but E-commerce works as well.
What about your security certificate
What about your payment gateway service.
This is probably the most difficult and most expensive part of your request.

I think 15 grand is a little steep so long as you don't expect to recreate facebook with drupal.

Having nearly completed a social network site myself (http://www.mygolfhelper.com, writeup can be found here http://drupal.org/node/719078), I think your two major hurdles will be "Add/remove custom Apps system" and "Ecommerce system" .

Apps system will depend on what it is you want and the Ecommerce System is another whole projecct it itself. These two features willl probably double your cost. If I were to quote you on this project, I would give you a quote without the two features and then at the very least double the cost for the other two features (depending on your requirements of course). The time frame would be 3-6 months.

From my experience 10% will be to find and install the modules and the rest will be to theme and customize it. You can't get away from writing your own custom module ... it just has to be done if you want your SNS site to do what you want.

good luck

Hi design10,

May I know what kind of module can be used for "Add/remove custom Apps system" as you've mentioned there is a module for that kind of system.

Thanks
Hlan

Hi,
i developed something exactly like you need (only Drupal6 modules) with the exception of: "Add/remove custom Apps system"
and much more of what you require.

Photo & Video Galleries
User profiles
Private messaging system
Friend buddy system
Mutual Friends system
Activity stream / status update
Groups with discussion board
Ecommerce system

Our social networking platform, originally made for a social network of Rome, has got all of this plus facebook like statuses, invitations to events, very advanced profiles, user points system, etc.
Only Drupal 6 public modules were used: organic groups, user relationships, activity, facebook status, advanced profile kit, privatemsg, etc. etc. etc. plus large use of Views and Panels.

If you can handle some italian take a peek at: www.ro.ma

Development for us took more than 1 year but the result is very satisfying. The platform can be sold for no less than $15k. Feel free to contact me at aldo[at]luv.it for further information!

Thanks

I agree with many of the things already stated, although I think it's more likely that the custom app part alone is going to far more than double the cost. Minus this and even with the eCommerce portion, it could easily be done for under $15k. It could easily be many times more too.

An estimate of costs and time for development really is in the details. Any one single feature which can be accomplished with an existing module might be implemented and configured very quickly - if one is going to use it "as is". If it requires customization or this is going to be theme development associated with its use, then it is truly going to depend on the details.

Organic Groups, for example, is like that. One could install and set-up OG in a few hours. But not everyone wants to have group functionality in the default mode, so additional theme development, customization, or even custom module development might be needed.

The custom app part sounds like a very big component, and I don't see that a module allowing modules and themes to be installed as likely being the solution you have in mind. Custom apps (if you're thinking in "Facebook mode") is very different that modules. Again, looking at Facebook as a example, we're talking about a whole API and proprietary syntax (PHP, etc. based) that goes with it. That's very different than permissions and processes associated with allowing modules to be installed. If you're thinking of something even as a very scaled down version of Facebook apps, then a $15k estimate is not even close.

Leaving that out, much could be accomplished for considerably less - again, depending on the details. Even eCommerce can be added if the specific features are inline with existing modules - the same with shipping, payment processing, etc. If one is setting up eCommerce with a common payment processor like Authorize or PayPal, then that is considerably less work that creating an integration with a more obscure payment processor. The same with shipping, product features, checkout flow, etc. etc.

Lets hope the original poster comes back with details. Or maybe he was just trying to get pricing info!