Most small business sites fall between a few thousand and the low tens of thousands. What moves it is the number of page types, whether content and photography are included, and how much of the work is thinking rather than building.

Why the range is so wide

The same brief can honestly attract quotes an order of magnitude apart, which makes buyers assume somebody is overcharging.

Usually nobody is. The quotes are for different things, and the differences are not visible in the words used to describe them.

A website can mean a template with your logo and text you supplied, or it can mean research, content, photography, a custom design, and a system your staff can operate.

Both are websites. One is a fortnight and one is three months.

Rough ranges

These are broad and they vary by market, and the shape is what matters rather than the figures.

Anything substantially below the relevant band is either a smaller job than you described or work that will need doing again.

What actually moves the number

Six things, and they explain almost every gap between quotes.

The number of distinct page types, which is different from the number of pages. Twenty pages built from four templates is a small job; eight pages that are all different is a larger one.

Whether content is included. Writing thirty pages properly is weeks of work and is frequently assumed to be the client's job in the cheap quote and priced in the expensive one.

Whether photography is included, which is a separate craft with a day rate.

Whether anything needs to be integrated: bookings, payments, stock, an accounting system, a supplier feed.

How much design is original rather than configured.

And how much thinking is involved before anybody builds anything, which is the least visible and often the most valuable component.

Content is the hidden half

The single largest cause of a project costing more than expected, or arriving late, or arriving thin.

Most quotes assume the client provides the text, and most clients do not realise they have agreed to write thirty pages.

What then happens is that the site is built, the content never arrives, and either the launch slips for months or the pages go live with placeholder material and the supplier's summary of what the business does.

Establish early who is writing it, and if the answer is you, be honest about whether that will happen.

Paying somebody to write it costs real money and is frequently the difference between a site that works and one that looks finished.

A worked example

A firm sought quotes for a fourteen-page site and received three: a low four-figure sum, a mid five-figure sum, and one in between.

The cheapest was a template configured with supplied content and stock imagery, quoted at three weeks.

The most expensive included a fortnight of discovery, original design, professional photography, all copy written from interviews, and a booking integration.

The middle quote was a custom design with client-supplied content and no photography.

None was wrong and none was comparable to another.

They took the middle quote and separately paid a photographer, which brought the total close to the highest quote and gave them control over the sequence.

The useful step was writing out what each included, side by side, which took an hour and revealed that the cheap option had assumed they would supply eleven thousand words.

Cheap has a specific failure mode

Not that the work is bad, which it frequently is not.

The failure is that the parts left out are the ones that determine whether the site produces enquiries: the thinking about who the customer is, the content that answers their questions, and the photographs of your own work.

You end up with a competent, attractive site that says what every competitor says, which is exactly the site that produces nothing and gets rebuilt in two years.

The money was not wasted on bad work. It was spent on the half of the job that was never the constraint.

Expensive has one too

Worth stating for balance, because the argument usually runs one way.

Larger agencies carry overheads that a small business is paying for without benefiting from: account management layers, formal process, and a scale of engagement that a fourteen-page site does not need.

There is also a category of expensive work that is expensive because of design ambition rather than commercial effect, producing a site that wins approval internally and is no better at getting a plumber phoned.

The question to ask of any quote, at any price, is which part of this changes whether somebody contacts us, and how.

A supplier who can answer that specifically is worth more than one whose quote is simply lower.

The costs after launch

Frequently omitted from the comparison and material over a few years.

Hosting, the domain, any platform subscription, and any paid plugins or licences.

Maintenance: updates, backups, and somebody available when something breaks.

Changes, which every business needs and which are either included in a retainer or billed hourly.

Ask for the annual running cost alongside the build cost, since a cheap build on an expensive platform can cost more over three years than the reverse.

The counter-case

There are businesses for which the cheapest option is correct.

A new business testing whether an idea works should not spend heavily on a website before knowing whether anybody wants the thing.

A business whose customers all arrive by referral, where the site exists to confirm you are real, genuinely needs a few good pages and nothing more.

And a sole trader whose entire marketing budget is a few hundred dollars a year is better served by a modest site plus a complete listing and photographs of their work than by a site that consumes the lot.

Spend proportionately to what the site has to do. The failure is not spending too little, it is spending without knowing which half of the job you have bought.

Before you compare quotes

  1. Count the page types, not the pages.
  2. Decide who writes the content, honestly.
  3. Decide who takes the photographs.
  4. List anything that must integrate.
  5. Ask each supplier what is excluded.
  6. Ask for the annual running cost.
  7. Ask which part changes whether somebody contacts you.

Steps two and three account for most of the difference between quotes and most of the projects that stall.

Whether to rebuild at all is covered in deciding to rebuild instead of repair.

Frequently asked questions

Why do website quotes vary so much?

Because they are for different things. A template configured with your text and a custom site with research, content, and photography are both called websites and differ by an order of magnitude.

What moves the price most?

The number of distinct page types, whether content is included, whether photography is included, any integrations, how much design is original, and how much thinking precedes the building.

What is usually excluded from a cheap quote?

The content. Most quotes assume the client writes it, and most clients do not realise they have agreed to produce thirty pages, which is where projects stall.

What is wrong with a cheap site?

Often nothing about the build. The parts left out are the ones that produce enquiries: the thinking, the content, and photographs of your own work.

Can an expensive quote be wrong too?

Yes. You may be paying for account management layers and design ambition rather than commercial effect. Ask which part changes whether somebody contacts you.

What about costs after launch?

Hosting, domain, platform subscriptions, licences, maintenance, and changes. Ask for the annual running cost, since a cheap build on an expensive platform costs more over three years.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Comparing three quotes?

Write out what each includes side by side. The gap is usually content and photography, not skill.

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