How much does a website actually cost?

If you ask five agencies to quote the same website, you'll get five numbers that might span an order of magnitude. That's not because four of them are dishonest. It's because "a website" describes a range of things roughly as wide as "a vehicle".

Here's what actually moves the number, so you can read a quote properly.

The biggest driver is templates, not pages

Clients usually describe scope in pages: "we need about twenty pages". Developers think in templates, the distinct layouts that have to be designed and built.

Twenty pages sharing four templates is a small project. Twenty pages that each need their own layout is roughly five times the work. This is why "how many pages" is almost the wrong question, and why a good quote asks what those pages need to do rather than how many there are.

Practically: a marketing site with a home page, a service template, an about page, a contact page and a blog template is five templates, however many service pages you eventually publish.

Content is the line item people forget

Almost every project that runs late runs late on content.

If you have accurate copy that just needs adapting, that's cheap. If someone has to research what your market searches for, draft each page, route it through your review, and revise it, that's frequently the largest single cost on a build, and on content-led sites it's the part that determines whether the site performs at all.

The same goes for photography. Stock imagery is instantly recognisable and it measurably undercuts trust in some sectors. Real photography costs money and is usually worth it.

When comparing quotes, check carefully whether content is included. A quote that excludes it will always look cheaper and frequently isn't.

Integrations are the least predictable part

"Connect it to our CRM" can mean twenty minutes or three weeks. It depends entirely on the system on the other end.

A modern platform with a documented REST API is straightforward. A legacy system where the integration path is a nightly CSV drop is a different project. Booking systems, payment gateways, ERPs, membership platforms and marketing tools all vary enormously.

Any agency quoting integration work without asking what you're integrating with is guessing. Expect that question, and be suspicious if it doesn't come.

Migration and redirects

If you have an existing site, replacing it is more work than building fresh, not less, because everything currently ranking has to survive.

That means inventorying every existing URL, deciding what happens to each page, and building a redirect map that goes live at launch. On a site with years of history that's a real piece of work, and it's the thing most likely to be quietly missing from a cheap quote.

Ask directly: how will you handle redirects? A specific answer means they've done it before. Vagueness here is the single best predictor of a redesign that loses traffic.

What a low quote usually excludes

A quote that's dramatically cheaper than the others is rarely cheaper for the same thing. Usually one of these is missing:

Content (you're writing it, and you'll discover that in week three. Redirects), you'll find out on launch day. Revisions (a fixed number, then hourly. Responsive work), desktop is designed, mobile is whatever the framework does. Testing (it works in Chrome on the developer's machine. Handover), no documentation, no access, no ability to leave.

None of these make a cheap quote dishonest. They make it a different quote. Compare like for like by asking what's excluded rather than what's included.

Hourly versus fixed price

Hourly rates are easy to compare and tell you almost nothing. A $150/hour developer who does it in ten hours costs less than a $60/hour developer who takes forty, and you can't know which you have until afterwards.

Fixed pricing moves the risk of a bad estimate from you to whoever wrote it, which is where it belongs. The trade is that scope has to be defined properly first, and changing your mind mid-project means a re-quote.

For genuinely open-ended work (ongoing maintenance, exploratory development), a monthly retainer makes more sense than either.

What to actually ask for

When you request a quote, include your current URL, what specifically isn't working, roughly when you need it, and a budget range.

That last one makes people uncomfortable, and it shouldn't. A range doesn't get you charged more; it gets you told quickly whether you're in the right place. If your budget is $3,000 and the realistic figure is $30,000, both of you want to know that on day one rather than after two weeks of calls.

The honest answer

There isn't a price list, and any agency publishing one is either selling a template or quietly planning to re-quote you.

What you should expect is a specific number for a specific scope, in writing, before work starts, and a clear statement of what would change it. If a quote can't tell you what's excluded, that's the answer to a different question than the one you asked.