There is no single price for a website, because “a website” can mean a five-page brochure or a platform with customer accounts, payments and integrations. What you pay depends on what the site needs to do for your business, so the useful question is not “how much?” but “what drives the price?”
Three kinds of website, three kinds of project
- A brochure site. Five to ten pages, a contact form, edited rarely. The simplest and quickest to build.
- A business website with a CMS. Service pages, a blog, case studies, several page templates and an editor your team uses every week. Needs more design, structure and testing.
- A custom platform. Customer accounts, payments, dashboards or integrations with other systems. This is software engineering as much as web design.
The five things that set the price
- 1Scope. The number of pages and unique page layouts. Ten pages that share three layouts cost far less than ten that are each designed from scratch.
- 2Design. A template-based design is faster to produce than a custom, brand-led one with motion and illustration.
- 3Functionality. Contact forms are simple. Booking, online payments, user accounts, search and integrations with a CRM add real engineering work.
- 4Content. Who writes the copy, takes the photos and handles translations? Content is often the slowest part of a project.
- 5Platform and performance. A CMS your team can edit, strong SEO foundations, accessibility and speed targets all take planning and testing.
Where money is usually wasted
- Starting without a clear scope, then paying for changes midway.
- Skipping discovery and building the wrong thing very well.
- Cheap hosting and heavy images that make a good design feel slow.
- No plan for who will keep the content fresh after launch.
Questions that reveal hidden costs
- Who owns the design and code when the project is finished?
- How many rounds of revisions are included?
- What will hosting, licences and plugins cost each year?
- Who updates the site after launch, and how much does that cost?
- What happens to the price if the scope changes?
How to get an accurate quote
The more clearly you describe the project, the closer the first quote will be to the final one. Share your goals and how you will measure success, who your customers are, the features you must have, two or three websites you like and why, your timeline, and a budget range. A budget range is not a trap. It helps the agency recommend the right approach instead of guessing.
Costs after launch
Plan for domain and hosting renewals, security and software updates, and ongoing improvements such as new pages, SEO and performance tuning. Many agencies offer a care plan so these are handled for a predictable monthly fee.
For a first estimate, try our website cost calculator. When you are ready for a real quote, tell us what you need and we will reply with a plan, a timeline and a price.