Guide
How much does a website cost, and what drives the price
How much a website costs: what makes up the price, the costs you pay every year and the questions to ask when you compare two quotes.
Two quotes for the same website can be far apart, and often neither is wrong. The price does not depend on the number of pages. It depends on what the site has to do, who prepares the content and how much custom work it needs. Here you will find what makes up the price, the costs that come back every year and the questions to ask before you sign.
The price of your website
A precise figure comes after a first conversation, once I know what the site has to do and what is already ready. Below you will find what it depends on, so you know what to expect.
What makes up the price
Custom design or ready-made theme
A ready-made theme is cheap and goes live quickly. But the site looks like many others and carries code you do not need, which makes it slower. A custom design takes more hours, because every page is designed for your content and your customers. The most common comparison is between WordPress and a custom website.
Page templates, not pages
What counts is how many different pages need designing, not how many you publish. Ten product pages with the same layout are one template. Home, services and contact are three.
Features
Every feature is extra work: contact form, bookings, private area, payments, more languages, site search. Before asking for a quote, split the ones you need now from the ones that can wait.
Content
Ready texts and photos lower the price and shorten the timeline. If they need writing, translating or shooting, that is separate work, and it should appear in the quote.
Integrations and data to move
Connecting the site to your management software, CRM, payments or newsletter takes time. So does moving posts, products or customers from an old site.
Speed, basic SEO and accessibility
A fast, well-built site is easier to find on search engines and loses fewer visitors. Google measures speed with three metrics, the Core Web Vitals. Getting them right from the start costs less than fixing them later.
Costs that come back every year
You pay for the site once. Other, smaller items renew:
- domain, the address of the site;
- hosting, the server that keeps it online;
- email accounts on your domain;
- licences for themes, plugins or external services, if any;
- maintenance: updates, backups, small changes.
How to compare two quotes
Ask everyone the same questions:
- What is included, page by page and feature by feature?
- Who writes the texts and who prepares the photos?
- How many rounds of changes are included?
- Who owns the code, the domain and the logins when the work ends?
- Which costs come back every year, and who do you pay?
- Who updates the site after launch, and at what price?
- When will it go live?
A quote that answers all seven is easier to compare, and usually more reliable.
Why prices vary so much
An adapted theme costs less than a site designed from scratch. An agency has more people and higher fixed costs than a freelancer: the strengths and limits of both are in the guide on freelancer or agency. A low quote may leave out texts, revisions or support, which you then pay for separately. Compare what you get, not just the figure.
I build every site from scratch, without templates. You always talk to me, from the first idea to launch, and I stay available after launch too. You can see how I work on the website development page.
To work out which kind of site you need, read the guide on website, online store or web app. To arrive ready for the first conversation, use the list of what to prepare before building a website.