WHAT THINGS COST
How much does a website cost?
The question buyers ask first, answered here with a number.
Short answer · updated
A business website of up to 7 pages costs $3,500 and takes three weeks. That is a published price rather than a range: the scope is a list you can read before paying, and the number does not move after a call.
Why every other answer is a range
Most answers to this question are a range rather than a number. A range is wide because the question hides four different products: a single page, a brochure site, a store that takes money, and an application people log into. Those are not sizes of the same thing, they are different things, and each one has a different floor.
Naming which one you mean collapses the range immediately. A one-page site is a day of design and a day of build. An application is a database, authentication and a deployment that has to stay correct after a thousand people have used it. Quoting both from the same sentence is how a very wide range happens.
What $3,500 buys
Up to 7 pages with a custom design system rather than one layout stretched over every page, which is the difference that shows on page six. No content management system, because a site that changes a few times a year does not need a database, an admin panel and a login to maintain. Clean markup, structured data, a sitemap and page titles that differ from each other. Three consolidated revision rounds across the project.
It does not buy ongoing search work, hosting, e-commerce, memberships, or content written for you. Those are named on the package page rather than discovered later.
What makes it cost more
Anything that stores or changes data pushes a site into application territory, and the floor there is $7,500. Taking payments, letting people log in, personalising what a visitor sees, or replacing a spreadsheet the business currently runs on are all that move rather than a bigger version of a website.
Volume moves it too, but less than people expect. Extra pages after the first 7 are quoted per page and cost less than the first 7, because the design system already exists and later pages are assembly rather than design. Languages, on the other hand, are not cheap: a second language is a second set of copy, a second set of URLs and a second thing to keep correct forever.
What makes it cost less
One page instead of seven. If you are testing an offer or pointing paid traffic somewhere, a landing page at $1,200 does the job in seven days and tells you whether the offer works before you pay for a full site to find out.
Having your content ready also helps, though not in the way people assume: it does not reduce the price, it reduces the elapsed time. The delivery clock pauses while it waits for copy, so content that arrives with the brief keeps the date from moving.
The costs that are not the build
Domain registration and hosting are paid by you, directly, to whoever provides them, and they are not large. Commercial font licences and stock assets are the two that surprise people, because a typeface that looks free in a design tool often is not licensed for a website.
Search work is separate and ongoing. A site built with a technical SEO foundation is a site that can rank; it is not a site that will, and anyone charging a build fee on the promise that it does is selling two things as one.
How to compare two quotes
Ask for the scope as a list rather than a paragraph, and ask what is explicitly excluded. A studio that cannot write the exclusions down has not decided what it is selling. Ask who owns the code when the final invoice is paid, and whether the site can be hosted anywhere or only with them. Ask what one revision round means, because "unlimited revisions" can mean unlimited small ones and a new quote for anything real.
Then compare the numbers. If one is much lower, compare the scope lists line by line: look for a template, work that is subcontracted, or a scope that ends before the parts you assumed were included.
Worked example
| Scenario | How it adds up | Total |
|---|---|---|
| Website only | $3,500 | $3,500 |
| Website + 3 months of Search Retainer | $3,500 + 3 × $1,500 | $8,000 |
| Website + 6 months of Search Retainer | $3,500 + 6 × $1,500 | $12,500 |
| Website + 12 months of Search Retainer | $3,500 + 12 × $1,500 | $21,500 |
Monthly work is paid monthly in advance and can be stopped at the end of any paid month, so a longer row is a choice made month by month, not a commitment.
Included and not included
What each package lists as included, and what its page lists as not included.
| Package | Included | Not included |
|---|---|---|
| Website$3,500 |
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| Landing Page$1,200 |
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| Custom Web Appfrom $7,500 |
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What moves the number
- Pushes it up
- Logins, payments, stored data, a second language, content production
- Pushes it down
- One page instead of several, content ready before the start, an existing design system
- Does not move it much
- Extra pages after the first few, your industry, where you are in the world
Frequently asked questions
Why no CMS?
A CMS is a database, an admin panel, a login and a security surface, and a site that changes a few times a year does not need that. Leaving it out is why the site has no plugin to be attacked through and no admin login to guess. If you genuinely publish often, say so and we will price it in.
What if I need more than 7 pages?
Tell us in the brief. Extra pages are quoted per page and cost less than the first 7, because the design system already exists.
Do you host it?
No. We deploy it wherever you want it and hand over the keys. You are never locked into us to keep your own site online.
When do I pay?
Fixed-price work is paid in full before it starts. Monthly work is paid monthly in advance and can be stopped at the end of any paid month. Prices are in US dollars.
When does the delivery clock start?
A delivery time starts on the first working day after payment clears and the project brief is submitted, not on the day of payment. If we are waiting on content, access or feedback from you, the clock pauses for that time.
Who owns the finished work?
When the final payment for a project clears, the deliverables become yours. We keep the right to use the work in our portfolio, described without naming you unless you agree otherwise. Third-party components (fonts, libraries, stock assets) stay under their own licences.
Can I get a refund?
Before work starts: Full refund, no questions asked. Ask any time before we begin and you get everything back. After work starts, before delivery: You are refunded the part of the project not yet done, assessed against the work completed at that point. If we have finished the design but not the build, you pay for the design and the rest comes back. After delivery: If the delivered work does not match what the package listed, tell us within 14 days. We fix it, and if we cannot, we refund you in full. Deliverables built exactly to the listed scope are not refundable simply because you changed your mind.
Where these terms are defined
- Intro to how structured data markup works Google Search Central
- What is a sitemap Google Search Central
The packages behind these numbers
Each one lists its full scope, what it excludes and how the work runs.
- Website A site of up to 7 pages with a real information architecture. $3,500
- Landing Page One page built to convert, designed and coded from scratch. $1,200
- Custom Web App A working product, not a prototype: auth, data, admin, deployment. from $7,500
The studio behind them: Web design & development.