Every week someone asks me this, and every week I give the same unsatisfying first answer: it depends. So let me make it useful instead, and explain what it depends on, because once you understand that, you can look at any quote and know whether it makes sense.
Why the same brief gets quoted five different ways
You send the same email to five people. One says $400, one says $2,500, one says $9,000, one wants a call before answering, and one never replies. Nothing is wrong with you or your brief. You are getting quotes from five different businesses solving five different problems.
The $400 quote is usually a template with your logo dropped in. The $9,000 quote is usually an agency, and a large part of that number is not the website at all. It is the account manager, the project coordinator, the office, and the sales process that produced the quote. Both can be perfectly honest prices. They are just paying for different things.
So the real question is not “what does a website cost.” It is “what am I actually buying.”
The five things that actually move the price
1. How many pages, and how different they are
Five pages that share one layout is a small job. Five pages that each need their own design is a much bigger one. A home page, services, about and contact is the standard shape for a service business, and it covers most of what a small business needs.
Where it grows: individual pages for each service, location pages, a portfolio with detail pages, a blog with its own template.
2. Whether it just informs, or actually does something
A site that tells people who you are and gives them a phone number is straightforward. A site that takes bookings, processes payments, runs a multi-step enquiry form, or syncs with your calendar is doing real work, and that work has to be built and tested.
This is usually the single biggest jump in price, and usually the one worth paying for.
3. Who writes the words
People underestimate this constantly. If you hand over finished copy, the build moves fast. If someone has to interview you, work out what your customers care about, and write the whole thing, that is a separate skill and a separate chunk of the budget.
Neither is wrong. But “I will send the content over” and then not sending it is the number one reason projects stall.
4. Where the images come from
Your own photos are free and almost always better. Stock costs a little. A photographer costs a lot more, and for some businesses, a med spa, a restaurant, an interior designer, it is the difference between a site that works and one that does not.
5. Ecommerce, which is its own world
A store is not a website with a buy button. It is products, variations, stock, shipping rules, tax, payment gateways, order emails, and a checkout that has to work perfectly on a phone. Ten products is a different project from four hundred.
What you can safely skip
A few things get sold to small businesses that rarely earn their cost at the start:
- A custom design system. You need a site that looks like your business. You do not need a documented component library.
- Twenty pages at launch. Launch with what you can fill properly. Empty pages hurt more than missing ones.
- An app. Almost never the answer for a small service business.
- Animation everywhere. It slows the site down and impresses other designers, not customers.
- A blog you will not write. Add it when you are ready to publish, not before.
What is worth paying for
The things that quietly decide whether the site brings you work:
- Speed. People leave slow sites. This is not optional.
- The mobile version. Most of your visitors are on a phone. If it works there, it works.
- Being easy to contact. Click-to-call, a short form, a booking link. Whatever suits how you actually take work.
- Owning it. Your domain, your hosting, your site, in your name. This matters more than people realise until they want to leave.
- Someone answering the phone afterwards. Things break. Plugins update. You will want a person, not a ticket queue.
Questions to ask before you accept any quote
These four will tell you more than any price comparison:
- Who is actually building it? At an agency, it is often not the person you met.
- Do I own the domain and hosting? If the answer is complicated, that is your answer.
- What happens if I want to change something in six months? Can you do it yourself, does it cost, is it even possible?
- What is not included? Copy, photos, hosting, and ongoing updates are the usual four.
So why will I not put a price list on this page?
Because it would be wrong for most of the people reading it. A one-page site for a local electrician and a multi-step insurance funnel are both “a website,” and quoting them the same number helps neither.
What I do instead is talk to you for twenty minutes, understand what the site actually needs to do, and then give you a fixed price before any work starts. If the smaller job is the right one, I will tell you that, even when it is the smaller invoice.
That conversation is free, and you get the plan whether you hire me or not.
