What a website should cost — and why nobody tells you

Ask a web design agency what a website costs and you will usually get one of two answers. Either a number so wide it is useless — “anywhere from two to fifty thousand” — or a request for a call before anything can be discussed.

Both are frustrating, and only one of them is unreasonable. The wide range is genuinely honest, because the question as asked cannot be answered. The refusal to explain why is the part that deserves criticism.

So here is how agencies actually arrive at a number, what pushes it up, and the questions that get you a straight answer.

Why nobody publishes a price

A website is not a product with a price. It is a set of decisions with wildly different costs attached, and the two projects that sound identical on a phone call are routinely weeks apart in reality.

“I need a website for my business” could mean a five-page brochure site with a contact form, or a sixty-page catalogue with filtering, multiple languages, a booking system and a payment gateway. Both are websites. One is a fortnight and one is three months.

Published package prices solve this by being wrong on purpose. The bronze tier is priced to look cheap and scoped to exclude anything you will actually need; the gold tier exists to make silver look sensible. When the real work turns out not to fit the package, the difference arrives as extras.

That is the real objection to package pricing. It is not that it is expensive — it is that the published number is not the number you pay.

What actually drives the cost

Roughly in order of impact.

How many pages, and how different they are

Not the raw count — the number of distinct layouts. Forty pages using four templates is a much smaller job than twelve pages that all look different. Ask any agency to price by unique layouts rather than pages and you will get a more honest number.

Whether the content exists

This is the single most underestimated line. If you have finished copy, real photographs and organised brand assets, the project moves. If the agency has to write the words and source the images, that is a different job with a different price — and if nobody does it, the project stalls for months waiting on you.

Be honest with yourself here before you brief anyone.

Functionality beyond publishing

Anything with logic costs disproportionately more than anything with layout. User accounts, bookings, payments, filtering, calculators, integrations with software you already use. A site that displays information is straightforward. A site that does something is software, and software is priced like software.

Who maintains it afterwards

A site you will edit yourself needs a content management system, editor training and guardrails so a well-meaning change does not break the layout. A site the agency maintains can be built more simply and cheaply. Neither is wrong, but deciding late is expensive.

Integrations you have not mentioned yet

Your CRM, your booking software, your accounting system, the spreadsheet that runs your inventory. Every connection is work, and these are the things clients most often forget to raise until the build is underway.

The questions that get you an honest quote

These are the ones we would want a client to ask us. If an agency deflects on several of them, that tells you something.

• “Is this quote itemised?” A single number invites you to accept or reject the whole thing. An itemised quote lets you remove what you do not need and see the total drop by exactly that amount.
• “What is explicitly not included?” More revealing than what is. Hosting, content, photography, ongoing maintenance, training, third-party licences.
• “What happens if the scope changes?” The answer you want is that changes are quoted separately and approved before work starts. The answer you do not want is vague.
• “How many revision rounds, and what counts as one?” “Unlimited revisions” is only meaningful alongside a definition of what a revision is versus new scope.
• “What do I own at the end, and what happens if I leave?” You should own the code, the content and the domain. Ask specifically about export and migration.
• “What does it cost to run per year?” Hosting, domain, licences, maintenance. A cheap build with an expensive subscription attached is a financing arrangement, not a bargain.
• “Who actually does the work?” Not to catch anyone out — subcontracting is normal — but you should know.

On the cheapest quote

When three quotes come back and one is half the others, the usual explanation is not that someone is more efficient. It is that they have scoped less, and the difference will arrive later as extras — or it will not arrive at all, and you will get less site.

The reverse is not automatically true either. The most expensive quote is not the most thorough by default. What you are looking for is the quote that shows its working, because that is the one you can actually interrogate.

A reasonable expectation

For a small business brochure site with professional design, a handful of unique layouts, proper technical setup and content you supply, most competent studios in Western markets land somewhere in the low-to-mid four figures. Below that you are usually buying a template with your logo on it, which is a legitimate purchase but a different one. Above it, you are usually paying for functionality, content production, or a brand exercise.

That range is deliberately wide, and anyone who narrows it without knowing your project is guessing.

The thing to take away is not a number. It is that you are entitled to see how the number was built. An agency that will not show you the maths is asking for trust it has not offered you first.