How much does a website cost?

Why website quotes vary so wildly

Ask five web people what a website costs and you will get five different numbers. Some quote a few hundred dollars. Some quote tens of thousands. The gap is not all about quality. It comes from what each person thinks they are selling you.

An agency is quoting for a team: a designer, a writer, a project manager, a developer and someone to handle your account. You pay for all of those people and for the meetings between them. That is a real service, but most local businesses do not need it.

A freelancer quoting a few hundred dollars is usually quoting for a template with your logo on it, and you supplying the words and photos. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as you know what you are buying. The number alone tells you almost nothing.

• How many pages you need, and who writes the words on them.
• Whether you supply photos or someone has to shoot them.
• How many rounds of changes are included before it costs more.
• Whether you buy the site once or pay for it every month.
• How much of the work happens before you are ever quoted.

What actually drives the cost

Almost every quote is built from the same short list of items. Once you can see them, the numbers stop being mysterious and start being comparable.

Notice what is not on this list: making the site work on a phone. That should not be an upgrade. If someone quotes you extra to make your site usable on a phone, that is a warning sign, not a line item.

• Pages. Five pages is a normal small business site. Twenty pages is more work, more words and a bigger menu to organise.
• Content. Someone has to write what you do, where you work and when you are open. If you write it, the price drops. If they write it, you pay for the time.
• Photography. Stock photos cost nothing and look like every other site in town. A photographer costs money and makes your work look like your work.
• Custom features. Booking systems, quote calculators, logins and online shops are software. Software is where quotes get big fast.
• Ongoing fees. Hosting, page builder subscriptions, plugin renewals and support plans all show up on a card every month.

A site you own or a site you rent

The biggest difference between two quotes is often not the price. It is whether the site is yours at the end.

A one-time build means you pay once and the site sits on your own domain. A monthly plan usually means the site lives on the company's platform and you keep paying for as long as you want it online.

Monthly can be the right choice if you need a shop with changing stock or a booking calendar. For a five page business site the maths is simple. At $40 a month you have paid $480 in a year, and after three years you have paid more than a one-time build and still do not own the site.

• One-time build: pay once, the site is yours, no contract.
• Monthly plan: lower up-front number, a bill that never stops.
• Ask what happens if you stop paying. With most monthly plans the site goes dark.
• Ask who owns the domain. It should be you, in your own account.

What a cheap website quietly costs you later

A low price is not the problem. A low price with hidden costs is. These are the costs that never appear on the quote you were sent.

None of this shows up in the first number. It shows up later, in the calls that did not come and the customer who rang someone else.

• A slow site. If a page takes five seconds to open on a phone, most people leave before they see it.
• A site that is hard to use on a phone. Buttons too small to tap, text you have to pinch and zoom, a phone number you cannot click.
• Getting locked in. If you cannot move the site to another host, the next conversation is not a quote, it is a price.
• Changes that cost money. Hours that changed last year because nobody could edit the page without paying someone.
• A domain in their name. If the domain is registered to them, they hold the address your customers already know.

Where a flat $600 one-time build fits

Our price is $600 flat, one time. Five pages: home, services, about, FAQ and contact. Your own services, your area and your opening hours. A real map, a tap-to-call button, and phone-first design that loads in under a second. Live on your own existing domain within 24 hours of you saying yes.

There is no retainer, no monthly fee for the first year, no contract and no sales call. You see the finished site before you pay anything. If you do not want it, you keep the preview and owe nothing.

We are cheap for two reasons, and neither of them is a smaller site. The first is that the work happens before we contact you. We build the whole site first, then send the owner a free preview. There is no discovery call, no quote and no back and forth, so there are no hours to pay for.

The second is volume. Same five pages, same layout, same speed rules, with your services and your town dropped in. We already know how the pages are shaped, so the second hundred site takes a fraction of the time the first one did. You are not paying for a design invented from scratch.

Of the local business websites we checked across eight US metros, 27% were broken. A broken site, a missing site and a site nobody can use on a phone all need the same five pages. You can look at real rebuilds at https://preview.localsiteshop.com/

Questions to ask any web person before you pay

Whatever the price, ask these before any money moves. The answers tell you more than the number does, and any honest person will answer them straight.

If someone will not answer these plainly, that is your answer.

• Who owns the domain, and whose account is it registered in?
• Is this a one-time price or a monthly one? If monthly, what does a year cost?
• What happens if I stop paying?
• Can I move the site to another host later, and will I get the files?
• Who writes the words, and who takes the photos?
• Will it open fast on a phone, and can people call me with one tap?
• How many changes are included before you charge more?
• Is there a contract, and how do I get out of it?

Questions we get about this