How much does a website cost is the first question most people ask and the one every designer is most reluctant to answer, which is unhelpful and faintly suspicious. The honest reason for the reluctance is that “a website” describes a category as wide as “a vehicle”: a five-page site for a Paignton guesthouse and a five-page site for a Plymouth law firm with online payments, a client portal and forty pages of carefully written content are not the same product. This post explains what actually moves the price, so that when quotes arrive you can tell what you are comparing.
Why quotes vary so much
Two designers quote for your “five-page website”. One is five times the other. Usually neither is cheating you. The cheaper one has assumed you will write the words, supply the photos, use a theme and need nothing beyond a contact form. The dearer one has assumed bespoke design, written copy, a photography day, a proper search set-up and a booking system. Both are quoting honestly for different jobs. The question is which job you actually need, and the only way to find out is to ask each what their price includes.
The eight things that drive the price
- How many distinct pages, and how different they are. Ten pages on the same layout cost little more than five. Ten pages each needing its own design cost twice as much.
- Bespoke design or a theme. A well-chosen theme, properly set up, is the cheapest honest route and fine for many businesses. Designing from scratch costs more and shows in a business with real character. A theme sold as bespoke is the thing to avoid.
- Who writes the words. Copy is the most underestimated cost. If the designer writes it, it is a real job: research, interviews, drafting, revision. If you write it, budget your own time honestly, because unfinished copy is the most common reason sites launch late.
- Photography. Stock photos are cheap and look it. A half-day with a local photographer costs a few hundred pounds and transforms a site; for a restaurant, a holiday let or a maker it is the best money in the whole project.
- Functionality. A contact form is simple. A shop, a booking system with payments and availability, a members’ area, a quoting tool, integration with your accounts package: each is a project in its own right, priced on its own.
- Search work. The foundations (structure, titles, speed, structured data, a Google Business Profile) should be in every build. Ongoing SEO to win competitive terms is a monthly service on top.
- Content migration. Moving forty blog posts, a product catalogue or years of pages from an old site, with redirects so nothing is lost from Google, takes time and care.
- Who is doing it. An agency carries an office, account managers and margin. An independent carries none of that, for the same quality if you choose well. See how to choose a web designer.
The costs that are not in the quote
- Hosting and domain. An annual or monthly cost for the rest of the site’s life. Cheap hosting is a false economy for a site that has to be fast; ask what is included (backups, SSL, email, CDN).
- Maintenance. Software updates, security, backups and small changes. A monthly arrangement is the usual answer; the alternative is paying by the hour when something breaks.
- Licences. Premium plugins, themes, fonts, stock images and some integrations have annual fees. A good proposal lists them.
- Your time. Content, feedback, approvals, training. Budget it, because it is the part most likely to slip.
How to compare proposals fairly
Give every designer the same brief, in writing, and the same budget range if you have one. Then line up the proposals by what each includes rather than by the bottom line: design approach, who writes the copy, photography, functionality, search set-up, hosting, maintenance, training, ownership. A cheap quote that excludes copy and SEO can end up dearer than a complete one once you have bought those separately. And make sure every price is fixed for a written scope, so that the number you agree is the number you pay.
Spending less without spending badly
If the budget is tight, cut pages rather than quality: a beautifully done four-page site beats a thin twelve-page one. Write the first draft of the copy yourself and have it edited. Use a good theme set up properly rather than a bad bespoke design. Launch without the shop or the booking system and add it when the site has proved itself. Keep the photography. And never cut the search foundations or the speed, because a cheap site nobody finds costs everything it cost and earns nothing.
What I do
I do not publish prices, for the reasons above, but I do give a fixed price in writing after one conversation, and the pricing page explains how that works and what a project includes. So, how much does a website cost? Exactly what the proposal says it does, provided the proposal is honest about what is in it.
