Why nobody will tell you what a website costs
The word website covers at least three different products, and until a builder knows which one you need, any figure is a guess. Here is what actually moves the number, and how we set ours.
One word, three different products
Ask what a website costs and you are really asking three questions at once. A promotional site that presents a company in a handful of pages, an online store that has to take money and manage stock, and a web application with accounts and logic behind a login are three different products that happen to share a name.
That is the honest reason nobody quotes on the spot. It is not secrecy and it is not a sales tactic. Until a builder knows which of the three you mean, the range is so wide that any figure would be theatre.
What actually moves the number
Once the type is clear, most of the remaining spread comes down to a short list of decisions. These are the ones we walk through with every client before we commit to a figure.
- How many pages, and who writes them? Design scales with the number of distinct layouts, and copy that does not exist yet is work someone has to be paid for.
- Is the design drawn for you or adapted from a template? Both are legitimate; they are simply different amounts of work, and a quote should say which one it prices.
- Does anyone log in? Accounts, payments or an admin panel quietly turn a website into a web application, and the budget should turn with it.
- How many languages? Every language multiplies the content, and someone has to keep the versions in step after launch.
- What happens after launch? Hosting, backups, updates and small changes are a running cost that a launch price does not cover.
What the cheap quote leaves out
A low figure is rarely a lie; it is usually a narrower scope. What it typically omits: the performance work that decides how the site feels on a phone, the security headers and HTTPS configuration that browsers and search engines now judge openly, the basic SEO that makes the site findable at all, and any plan for backups.
There is a quieter omission too. Ask in whose name the domain is registered and where the site will be hosted. If the answer is the agency's account, the price of leaving them later is part of the real price; it is just not written down.
The most expensive websites we have seen were not the ones with the biggest budgets. They were the ones whose owners could not leave: the domain, the hosting and the code all sat in someone else's account.
How we set a figure, and how to check it
We do not publish a price list, for the same reason as everything above: the answers to those questions move the number more than any list could usefully express. What we commit to is the process: you describe the project, we ask the questions above, and the scope and the price arrive together, in writing, within a day.
Checking a builder takes five minutes and no technical knowledge. Ask for the scope in writing, ask that the price be fixed against that scope, and ask for the timeline alongside it. Then run the builder's own website through a free audit tool such as the one on this site: how a company treats its own site is a fair preview of how it will treat yours.