Ask five agencies to quote the same eight-page brochure site and you will get five numbers that do not appear to describe the same job. That is not usually dishonesty. It is that "a website" is not a unit of work — it is a category, the way "a vehicle" is a category that covers both a bicycle and a freight train.
Here is what genuinely moves the price, in rough order of impact.
1. Custom design versus a template
This is the single largest lever. A template is a finished design you pour your content into. Custom design means someone maps your pages, decides the type scale, builds a component system and draws every state.
Templates are not a moral failing. If you need to be live in three weeks with a limited budget, a well-chosen template beats a custom design you cannot afford to finish. The cost shows up later, when you want something the template was never built to do and every change fights the theme.
- Template, lightly customised: $400 – $1,500
- Template, heavily reworked: $1,500 – $4,000
- Fully custom design: $4,000 – $25,000+
2. How much of it is actually software
Pages are cheap. Behaviour is expensive. A page that displays text costs a fraction of a page that takes a booking, checks availability, charges a card and emails a receipt.
When you are comparing quotes, separate the page count from the feature list. Ten static pages is a small job. Three pages with a multi-step quoting engine is not.
3. Who writes the content
The most common reason projects stall is not development — it is that nobody wrote the copy. Agencies price this very differently. Some assume you will deliver final text on day one. Others include a copywriter and research calls.
If a quote looks unusually low, check whether content is in scope. "Client to supply all copy and images" can quietly add weeks and a freelance writer's invoice to your real cost.
4. What happens after launch
A website is not a delivery, it is a dependency. It needs hosting, TLS certificates, framework and plugin updates, backups, uptime monitoring and someone to call when it breaks at 2am.
Budget $50 – $400 per month for genuine maintenance. Any proposal that ends at launch with no answer to "who patches this in six months" is incomplete, however attractive the headline number is.
What each tier realistically buys
Under $800
A template with your logo and colours dropped in. Fine for validating an idea or a temporary presence. Expect little to no SEO work, generic copy, and limited ability to change the layout later.
$1,500 – $6,000
The bracket most small businesses actually need. Custom or heavily reworked design, five to fifteen pages, mobile-first, real technical SEO, a working contact pipeline, analytics, and training so you can edit it yourself.
$8,000 – $25,000
Bespoke design system, custom functionality, integrations with your CRM or booking tool, professional copywriting, performance budgets and accessibility work. This is where a site starts being an asset that produces revenue rather than a brochure that exists.
$25,000+
Applications wearing a website's clothing. Multi-language, complex permissions, custom back-office tooling, or a platform your business runs on rather than markets through.
Five questions that expose a bad quote
- Who owns the code and the domain when we are done? The only acceptable answer is "you do."
- Can I edit page content without a developer? If not, every typo is a support ticket with a cost attached.
- What is your performance target? A serious answer references Core Web Vitals with numbers, not "it'll be fast."
- What is explicitly out of scope? Good proposals say what they exclude. Vague ones bill it as a change request.
- What does month two cost? Hosting, maintenance and support, in writing.
The genuinely expensive mistake
It is rarely overpaying. It is paying twice — commissioning a site that cannot be edited, cannot be measured and cannot be extended, then rebuilding it eighteen months later. The rebuild costs more than the gap between the cheap quote and the right one ever would have.
Judge a proposal on what you own at the end, not on the number at the bottom.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a small business website cost?
A credible small-business site — five to ten pages, custom design, mobile-first, basic SEO — generally lands between $1,500 and $6,000. Below roughly $800 you are almost always buying a lightly edited template.
Why do website quotes vary so much?
Because "website" describes anything from a one-page template swap to a bespoke application. The three biggest cost drivers are the amount of custom design, the amount of custom functionality, and who writes the content.
Is a cheap website worth it?
A cheap site is worth it when the scope is genuinely small and you own the result. It becomes expensive when you cannot edit it, cannot move it, or have to rebuild it in a year.
