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What a company website costs: the drivers behind the price
Two companies ask the same question, how much does a website cost, and receive quotes that differ by a factor of ten. Both quotes can be right. The price follows from what the website has to do, and most of that is decided before a designer opens a file.
Photo: asternecky, public domain (CC0)
In this guide
Why nobody can answer “how much does a website cost” in one figure
A website is not one product. The same word covers a six-page presentation of a workshop and a bilingual site with four hundred products, a quote request form connected to a CRM and a customer area. Asking for a price before describing the scope is like asking what a vehicle costs.
What you can do is understand the drivers. Once you know which of them apply to your site, you can describe the scope precisely, and two quotes for that scope will be comparable. That is the purpose of this article: not a price list, but a way to read one.
The eight drivers of website cost
Every quote for a company website is, in the end, hours of work plus a few things bought in. The hours come from these drivers.
| Driver | What makes it more expensive | What keeps it cheap |
|---|---|---|
| Number of page types | Many layouts designed one by one | Few layouts reused across many pages |
| Content production | Texts written, photos taken, drawings made for you | Finished texts and usable photos supplied by you |
| Languages | Each language translated, checked and kept in step | One language, or translations you supply |
| Integrations | CRM, ERP, newsletter, payment, calendar connected | Forms that send an email |
| Custom functions | Configurators, calculators, customer logins | Standard pages and forms |
| Photography and visuals | A photo day, retouching, illustrations | Existing material, a few stock photos |
| Legal and compliance | Cookie consent, accessibility checks, several jurisdictions | One country, standard pages |
| Hosting and care | Monitoring, updates, backups, support hours | Shared hosting, you update it yourself |
Two of these are regularly underestimated. The first is content production. Texts for twenty-five pages do not exist in most companies, and “we will write them ourselves” is the most common reason a website is late. The second is page types, not page count. A site with sixty pages built from four layouts costs little more to design than a site with twelve pages built from twelve layouts. Count the different kinds of page, not the pages.
A multilingual site multiplies the content work, not the design work. Every text has to be translated, checked by someone who knows the trade, and kept in step whenever the original changes. How that is organised is a subject of its own, covered under multilingual websites.
An illustrative example: the same drivers, two scopes
The figures below are illustrative. They show working days, not prices, for two invented projects, so that you can see where the effort goes. Your own project will differ; the shape of the comparison is what matters.
Scope A is a six-page site in one language. The company supplies finished texts and uses a handful of stock photos. The only function is a contact form that sends an email.
Scope B is a twenty-five page site in two languages with a catalogue of 150 products imported from a spreadsheet, a quote request form connected to the company’s CRM, and a photo day at the premises.
| Part of the project | Scope A | Scope B |
|---|---|---|
| Planning and page structure | 1 | 3 |
| Design | 2 | 5 |
| Build | 3 | 8 |
| Content and translation | 1 | 10 |
| Catalogue and integrations | 0 | 6 |
| Photography and image preparation | 0 | 2 |
| Testing, launch and legal pages | 1 | 2 |
| Total | 8 | 36 |
Scope B has about four times the pages of Scope A and takes four and a half times the days. The interesting part is where the days go. In Scope A, design and build are 5 of 8 days. In Scope B they are 13 of 36, little more than a third; content, translation, the catalogue, the integrations and the photos take 18 days, half of the project. When a quote for a larger site looks expensive, it is usually these parts, not the design, that you are paying for.
Illustrative example: working days by part of the project
The catalogue deserves a word on its own. 150 products in a tidy spreadsheet with one row per product and consistent columns import in a day. The same products scattered across PDFs, with sizes written three different ways, take a week of cleaning before anything is imported. The state of your data is a cost driver you control; see product catalogues for what “tidy” means in practice.
One-off price or monthly fee: what each model includes
Website offers come in two shapes, and many quotes mix them without saying so.
| Question | One-off project | Monthly fee |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay for | Design, build and launch, once | Build spread over a term, plus hosting and care |
| What happens after launch | Separate care contract, or nothing | Included, within the stated scope |
| Who owns what | Usually you, if the contract says so | Check: files, design and domain must be yours |
| When it suits | A site that will stand for years with few changes | A site that changes often and must be kept running |
| What to watch | Costs after launch are not in the figure | The small print on term, exit and what “unlimited” means |
Neither model is better in itself. A one-off price looks lower because it stops at launch; hosting, updates, backups and the inevitable small changes come on top, and they do not stop. A monthly fee looks higher because it contains those things. Compare them over three years, with the care costs added to the one-off figure, and the gap usually shrinks. Our own plans are built the second way, and what the care part covers is described under care.
What a quote must itemise
A quote you cannot check is a quote you cannot compare. Before you accept one, make sure it answers each of these.
Questions to ask before you sign
Six questions separate a careful supplier from a quick one.
- “Which three decisions in this quote would change the price most?” A good supplier can name them at once: usually content, languages and integrations.
- “What do you need from us, and by when?” The answer tells you how much of the project depends on your own staff’s time, which is a cost the quote never shows.
- “What does this site cost to run in year two?” Hosting, care, licences and the changes you will certainly want.
- “If we add a product catalogue or a second language next year, what changes?” The answer shows whether the site is built to grow or to be rebuilt.
- “Who owns the domain, the files and the design?” The reply should be “you”, in writing.
- “What is not included?” The honest list is often the most useful page of the quote.
Questions we hear often
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