The short answer
A single landing page costs $350. A site of up to five sections costs $750. Keeping it updated, backed up and monitored costs $59 a month. Those are our prices and they are on the pricing page, so if a number was all you wanted, you can stop reading here.
The rest of this is about why the next quote you get might say $300 or $6,000 for what sounds like the same thing. Until you can tell those two apart, three quotes are three numbers and not a decision.
What actually moves the price
- How many pages. One page that does one job is a different build from five that each have to earn their place. This is the largest single lever, and it is the one most quotes leave vague.
- Who writes the words. A site is mostly text. If the text comes from you, the build is shorter. If somebody has to interview you and write it, that is separate work and it belongs on a separate line of the quote.
- What has to connect to what. A contact form is cheap. A booking calendar, a payment, a CRM that receives the lead: each one is an integration that can break, so each is priced like something that has to be looked after.
- Whether anyone will find it. A site that loads fast, can be crawled and is structured so Google can read it is not the same build as one that merely looks finished. It is also the difference between a site that produces enquiries and a brochure nobody opens.
What is not inside the number
Three costs sit outside almost every build price, and a quote that hides them is not cheaper. It is less honest.
- The domain. Around $15 a year, and it should be registered in your name rather than your developer’s. That matters more than it sounds: it is the one asset you cannot rebuild.
- Hosting. For a static site ours costs little enough that we do not bill it separately, but ask anyway, because if nobody tells you, you find out the day it expires.
- Photographs and content. Stock images are free or close to it. Photographs of your actual work are not, and they convert better than anything a designer can do with a template.
Five questions that make three quotes comparable
- How many pages, and what happens when I need a sixth?
- Who writes the copy, and is it inside this price?
- Whose name is the domain registered in?
- What happens the week after launch, and what does that cost?
- Will it load fast on a phone on mobile data, and can you show me a site you built that does?
Ask all five of all three. The spread between the answers explains the spread between the numbers, and usually one of the three quotes stops looking cheap.
When the cheaper site costs more
The failure is not a site that looks bad. It is a site nobody can change: built on a platform you have no login for, by somebody who has stopped answering, with the domain sitting in their account. That site costs whatever it cost, plus the whole thing again in eighteen months.
Which is the real reason to ask about the week after launch. Not because maintenance is expensive, but because the answer tells you whether you are buying a website or renting one from somebody who may not be there.