Every client asks the same question in the first message. How much does a website cost?
The honest answer is a range, and the range is wide. I have built sites for $100 and I have built sites for ten times that. Both were the right price for what they were. The difference was never the number of pages.
Here is what actually moves the price, what each price band really gets you, and how to read a quote before you pay anything.
What you are actually paying for
A website is four things stacked on top of each other. Most quotes only describe the second one.
- The thinking. Who is this site for, what do you want them to do, and what has to be on the screen to make them do it. Skip this and you get a pretty page that sells nothing.
- The build. Design, pages, forms, payment, speed, mobile.
- The invisible work. Security, backups, search engine basics, structured data, image compression, accessibility. Nobody sees any of it. Everyone feels it when it is missing.
- The aftercare. Updates, monitoring, and someone who answers when something breaks at nine at night.
The three quotes you will get
The very cheap quote
Someone will offer to build your site for twenty or thirty dollars. That price is real, and so is what it buys. A pirated premium theme, a demo imported in an afternoon, your text pasted into someone else’s layout, and no handover.
The site will look acceptable on launch day. The problems arrive later. Pirated themes do not receive security updates, which is how a large share of the hacked sites I clean got infected in the first place. There is no documentation, no logins handed over, and often no way to reach the builder in six months.
The middle quote
This is where most real business sites sit. A proper build on a licensed theme or a page builder, your own structure, your own content, working forms, decent speed and a handover that actually includes your passwords.
At this level the question to ask is not about design. It is about what happens after launch.
The serious quote
Ecommerce with real stock, custom functionality, several user roles, payment gateways, or a corporate site that has to survive an audit. The price goes up because the hours go up, and because the cost of getting it wrong goes up with it.
Why the cheapest quote usually costs more
I rebuild sites for a living, and a large share of that work is rebuilding something that was bought cheap eighteen months earlier.
The pattern almost never changes. The site gets hacked, or the theme stops working after a WordPress update, or the owner wants one new page and nobody can edit it. The original builder has moved on. The client now pays twice, and the second time includes the cost of recovering whatever was lost in between.
Cheap is not a problem. Cheap with no handover, no licence and no plan is the problem.
What belongs in every quote, at every price
Whoever you hire, make sure these are written down before you pay:
- Who owns the domain and the hosting account. It should be you, in your name, with your email on it.
- Which theme and which plugins, and whether each licence is genuine and in your name.
- What happens to your content. Who writes it, and how many rounds of changes are included.
- What the handover contains. All logins, a backup, and a short note on how to edit the site.
- What is covered after launch, for how long, and what it costs after that.
- How long the build will take, and what happens if it runs late.
If a quote cannot answer those six points, the price on it does not mean very much.
What I charge
I keep this simple and public, because hiding it wastes everyone’s time.
- A business or portfolio website starts at $100.
- An ecommerce store starts at $300.
- A corporate website starts at $500.
Every one of them includes the invisible work. Security hardening, backups, speed, search engine basics and a clean handover are not extras on my quotes. They are the reason the site is still standing two years later.
The five questions to ask before you pay
Send these to anyone quoting you, including me.
- Will the domain and hosting be in my name?
- Are all themes and plugins licensed, and are the licences mine?
- What exactly do I receive on handover day?
- What do you do about security and backups?
- What does support cost after the first month?
The answers will tell you more about the price than the price will.
Want a straight number for your project?
Tell me what the site has to do and I will give you a real figure, not a range. If your project is better served by something smaller and cheaper than what you asked for, I will say that too.
