It is the first question in every phone call, and almost nobody answers straight away. Not out of commercial reticence: because the honest answer to how much a website costs depends on what the site has to do, and at that point in the conversation nobody knows yet.
A site that has to collect quote requests and a site that has to sell three hundred products with variants and shipping are two different objects that share only a name. Asking how much a website costs is like asking how much a vehicle costs.
What we can do is explain what moves the price, so you can read any quote with a clear head.
1. The goal of the site
A site that helps you get found and receive phone calls has different needs from one that has to sell online, which in turn is different from one that has to handle bookings or private access. Every function adds technical work that you cannot see by flipping through the pages.
2. How many decisions are already made
This is the factor that weighs the most and the one nobody talks about. A company that knows who it is speaking to, what it wants to achieve and how it wants to be perceived saves weeks. A project decided while it is being built stretches out in revisions, and revisions are the line that inflates a quote.
3. The content
Text, photography and video made on purpose have a cost. They are also the only part of the site the visitor actually looks at. Using stock images lowers the initial figure and, at the very same moment, lowers the reason anyone should trust you.
4. The integrations
A link to your management software, a booking system, payments, shipping, a CRM. Every connection is work that appears on no screen but exists, and has to be maintained over time. If your project involves a custom management tool, we cover it in our custom CRM service.
5. Measurement
Setting up conversion tracking takes a few hours and decides whether, six months from now, you will be able to say if the site worked. It is the first line to disappear from the cheapest quotes, and the one whose absence costs the most.
6. Life after launch
Updates, security, content changes. A site you can update yourself and one that requires a phone call to change a phone number have very different costs, but the difference shows up a year later, not at signing.
What a quote should never leave out
Whatever the price bracket, some things a site must always have: loading speed, a structure search engines can read, correct behaviour on a phone, the ability to update content on your own, measurement live from day one. If one of these points is missing from the quote, ask about it before signing. They are the same principles we build every custom website on.
How to compare two very different quotes
You often end up with two offers that are worlds apart. The cheapest one almost never contains less work: it contains fewer decisions. No initial analysis, no measurement, no update plan, content pulled from a stock library.
The real cost is not the difference between the two figures. It is the year that goes by before you realise the project has to be redone, plus everything that was not sold in the meantime.
The questions to ask before signing
Who writes the text. Who produces the photography. What happens if a change is needed after delivery. How will I know it is working. Who takes care of the technical updates six months from now.
The answers to these five questions say more than the figure at the bottom of the document.
A serious quote comes from a conversation
A serious quote is born after half an hour of conversation, not before. Tell us what your site has to do and we will tell you what you really need, and what you can safely leave out, starting from the right questions rather than a number thrown out at random.