How much should a website cost, and why the quotes vary so wildly

A website quote bundles together several things that have nothing to do with each other. Separating them makes the range make sense.

The design. Is this a template with your logo and colours dropped in, or is somebody looking at your business and deciding how it should be presented? A template is a real, legitimate option. It is also perhaps a day of work versus several weeks.

The build. Is it assembled in a page builder, or written? A builder is faster and cheaper up front and slower and heavier forever after. Written code costs more at the start and is smaller, faster, and cheaper to change later.

The content. Who writes the words? This is the most commonly skipped line in a quote and the most common reason projects stall for months. If nobody is booked to write the words, the words do not get written.

The functionality. A brochure site is not the same job as one that takes bookings, processes payments, syncs with your stock, or serves customer accounts. Each of those is its own project.

What happens afterwards. Hosting, updates, security patches, backups, someone to call. A price with no ongoing arrangement means you own all of that.

These are ranges, not quotes, and they move with your market.

Template, self-assembled — the cost of the subscription. Squarespace, Wix, Shopify with an off-the-shelf theme. You do the work. This is genuinely the right answer for a business that is testing an idea or has no budget yet.

Template, professionally set up — low hundreds to low thousands. Someone picks a good theme, configures it properly, gets your content in, and makes it fast. You end up with something better than most DIY attempts for a fraction of a custom build.

Custom design, custom build — several thousand upward. Somebody designs for your business specifically and writes the site. Reasonable for a business where the website is a main route to customers.

Custom with real functionality — considerably more. Bookings, payments, integrations, accounts. The cost is in the logic and the testing, not the pages.

The most expensive website is the cheap one that has to be rebuilt in eighteen months, because you pay twice and lose the time in between.

Ask every quote the same five things. The answers separate them faster than the price does.

1. Who writes the content, and is it in this price?
2. What happens if I need to change a price or add a page — do I do it, or do I call you, and what does calling you cost?
3. Who owns the code and the domain when we are finished?
4. What is the ongoing monthly cost, including hosting and any plugin or platform licences?
5. What does it cost to add something significant in a year?

A quote that cannot answer these is not cheaper. It is less specified.

Almost every overrun I have seen came from the same place: the content. The build finishes and the site sits empty for three months because nobody wrote the about page.

If you take one thing from this, take that. Before you accept any quote, decide who is writing the words and when. Put a date on it. It is the difference between a project that lands and one that becomes a running sore.

If your customers find you entirely through word of mouth, or an established marketplace, or foot traffic, and your website is a formality — say so, and buy the cheapest thing that looks respectable and loads fast.

Not every business needs a custom site. Every business does need to know which one it is.