How much does a website cost?

There is no honest single number, and anyone who gives you one before seeing your scope is guessing. Price follows six things: template count, design depth, content readiness, integrations, platform choice, and who maintains it after launch. Send us your scope and we will quote it in writing.

Less than most owners fear, and more than a builder subscription. A small business site is usually a handful of templates, a contact form wired to your inbox or CRM, local search setup and analytics. The number climbs when you add booking, payments or a real integration.

More than a brochure site, because a store is software. You are paying for catalog setup, payments, shipping and tax rules, inventory sync and email flows on top of design. Catalog size and integration count move it most. B2B rules like contract pricing and net terms move it again.

Because a published number would be wrong for almost everyone who reads it. A five-page site with finished content and a fifty-page site with an ERP integration are not the same job. We would rather scope yours on a call and quote it in writing.

A site builder with a stock theme, your own words and your own photos. That is genuinely the right answer for a one-page site or a side project. It stops being the right answer the moment you need custom logic, a real integration, or content that has to rank.

Rates vary by market, but scope drives the number far more than location does. A vague brief priced anywhere gives you a vague number. Write the scope down first, then compare quotes on identical deliverables. That is the only comparison that tells you anything useful.

Templates matter more than pages. Twenty pages built from four layouts is a much smaller job than twelve pages each designed on its own. When you count pages for a quote, count how many are genuinely different layouts. That number is what the designer and developer are actually building.

Yes, up front. A template buys speed and gives up fit. A custom design starts from your buyers, your proof and your conversion path, so it usually earns more per visitor. The better question is not which is cheaper, but which one you will still be happy with in two years.

This is the cost buyers forget most often. Words, product photos and team shots either come from you, or someone gets paid to create them. Projects stall here more than anywhere else. If your content is finished before the build starts, the project gets faster and cheaper.

Not automatically. WordPress and WooCommerce have no platform fee, but you carry hosting, plugin licences and update work. Shopify charges a subscription and takes care of the plumbing. Over a few years the two often land closer than people expect. Pick the platform that fits the job.

They can be the largest single line in a build. A form that emails you is simple. A form that writes to HubSpot, triggers a Klaviyo flow and syncs an order into NetSuite is three integrations, each needing testing and error handling. List every system you use before asking anyone for a quote.

Building it accessible from the start costs very little. Fixing it after launch costs a lot. Department of Justice guidance says businesses open to the public need websites that people with disabilities can use. Treat accessibility as part of the build, not an add-on you can drop to save money.

Fixed price suits a build with a clear finish line. A retainer suits ongoing work where priorities change month to month. Plenty of projects use both: fixed for the launch, retainer for the growth work afterwards. What matters is that the scope for each one is written down.

Only where hourly genuinely fits, such as small ad-hoc changes or debugging a site we did not build. For a full build we quote a fixed price against a written scope, so you are not exposed to how long something takes us.

You get a change note saying what is being added, what it affects and what it costs, and you approve it before work starts. No surprise invoices at the end. Scope changes are normal on real projects. Silent scope changes are what damage trust.

Both. The build is one-time. Hosting, domain renewal, platform fees, plugin licences, security updates and content changes recur every year you keep the site. Plan for the second cost from day one, because that is where a cheap build quietly gets expensive.

It depends on the platform far more than the page count. A static Next.js site on Cloudflare needs little beyond occasional content edits. A WordPress site with a dozen plugins needs monthly updates, backups, a Lighthouse check and someone watching for breakage. Ask any quote to spell out what maintenance covers.

Usually yes, and you should own that account rather than renting it through your agency. Owning the hosting, the domain and the platform login means you can leave whenever you want. We set every project up in your name and hand over the keys at launch.

Because they read the brief differently. One priced a theme setup. The other priced a custom design system, accessibility testing and a redirect map. Neither is lying. The fix is to hand both the same written scope and ask them to price the same list of deliverables.

For a simple site, yes, and we will tell you so. The subscription never ends though, and your own time is a real cost. Owners who value their hours usually find a built site pays for itself once it has to sell, integrate or rank rather than just exist.

A redesign can cost less, because content, brand and structure already exist. It can also cost more, if the old site has years of URLs, plugins and integrations to untangle. The audit at the start is what tells you which one you have.

Replatforming is priced on data, not design. Products, customers, orders and old URLs all have to move without losing rankings. Google tells site owners to prepare a URL mapping and redirect the old URLs to the new ones before the move. Skipping that step is the expensive mistake.

A small marketing site usually moves in weeks. A store with integrations and a migration takes longer, and content readiness normally decides the date. Timeline and cost are linked: a rushed deadline costs more because it needs more people working at once.

Often yes on the invoice, and that can be the right trade. The risk is single-person cover: holidays, illness and other clients. For a small site that risk is fine. For a store your revenue depends on, ask what happens if that one person is unavailable for two weeks.

If you need a one-page site or a hobby project, use a builder and keep your money. If you want someone to sit beside you and teach you a website builder, a local trainer fits better than we do. We earn our place when the site has to sell, integrate or rank.

A rough page list, the systems the site must connect to, whether content and photography exist, any deadline you are working to, and whether this is a new build or a move from an existing site. Five minutes of that detail turns a vague estimate into a firm quote.