Website pricing is opaque because the deliverable is not a physical object. Two agencies can quote wildly different numbers for the same brief and both be honest — they are pricing different amounts of thinking, custom design and long-term risk.
What drives the price
Four things, in order of impact: how much is custom-designed, how much content has to be created or migrated, how many integrations are needed, and how strictly accessibility and performance are verified.
Typical ranges
- Template build (5–8 pages): $2,000–$5,000. Fast, competent, visually generic.
- Custom design system (10–20 pages): $6,000–$15,000. Unique design, CMS, SEO baseline.
- E-commerce or portal: $12,000–$35,000. Integrations, roles, payment, testing.
- Ongoing care: $150–$600/month. Updates, backups, monitoring, small changes.
Questions that reveal the real proposal
- Who writes the content, and what happens if it arrives late?
- What is the Lighthouse performance target, and who is accountable for hitting it?
- Which CMS, and can my marketing team publish a page without a developer?
- What is included after launch — and what is billed hourly?
- Who owns the code and the hosting account?
Where cheap gets expensive
The costly part of a cheap website is rarely the build; it is the rebuild eighteen months later, when the theme is unsupported and every content change needs a developer. Buy the maintainable version once.
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