How Much Does a Website Cost?
9 Minute Read
Wondering “how much does a website cost?” Join the club. This is one of the most common questions we get, and it’s no secret why. Your website should be your hardest-working employee and, just like hiring any employee, you need to know that your investment is going to pay off.
But the answer to how much a website costs isn’t a straightforward one. It’s like asking how much a car costs. Well, it depends on what you want: a standard model to get you from A to B, or a super deluxe vehicle with all the bells and whistles. It’s the same way with website pricing. You can purchase a generic template for a few hundred bucks, or you can spend more on a custom site that aligns with your brand and drives results for your business.
So, how much does a website cost? Twelve Three Media is ready to answer that question based on your needs and goals. We provide world-class website design and development for clients across multiple industries.
What Costs Go Into Building a Website?
The cost of building a website usually isn’t prix fixe. It’s more like a la carte. Effective websites need to fulfill multiple roles. This requires in-depth knowledge of the key components that help websites run, look good, and meet KPIs.
The major elements that make up the cost of upgrading your website include:
Website Design
Designing the perfect business website is a combination of art and science. A website design cost breakdown will reflect the number of designs needed. At minimum, you should have a comp for desktop and mobile designs. (If you’re working with an agency and they don’t give you a mobile comp, RUN.)
The number of designs you’ll need depends in part on the demographics of your customer base. If your customers come from different backgrounds and have different needs when they arrive on your website, you need to make sure the design speaks to each of these different audiences. This will require more design time, which translates into added website design cost.
It is also important to factor in the cost of designing “money” pages that align with your goals. This may include custom graphics and/or full designs for service or product pages, contact forms, online checkouts, and more.
Website Content
You may write content yourself or have one of your employees create content for webpages. This will cost you time, but not money. If you need new content for your website and you’re looking for a professional touch, this will increase the cost (but probably save you and your team a lot of time). The more pages you need, the higher the price.
Content should be informative, engaging, and optimized for online search. You get what you pay for. Hiring a reputable SEO content marketing agency likely costs more, but it should help your site rank better and result in more leads and sales.
A couple of additional considerations when it comes to the cost of website content:
- Don’t limit your idea of web content to pages, blog posts, etc. Custom videos, graphics, and other types of content can make your website more engaging and even help with search rankings.
- As always, investing in additional content leads to a higher cost—but it will likely improve the site as a whole.
- Sometimes it may be beneficial to switch content management systems (CMS) when rebuilding your website. Your website’s CMS allows you to add and update pages, blog posts, etc. Common CMS platforms include WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, etc.
- Keeping your current CMS will save you money, while moving from one CMS to another will add to the cost of development.
Website Development
Many agencies use WordPress, Wix, and other website builders. These should be treated as a starting point, not a nearly-finished product. A “developer” monkeying around with a drag-and-drop editor, adding text and images, and selling it back to you is not what most businesses are looking for.
Serious developers work with you to fully understand the functionality you need, then scope out website development cost from there. Most business websites require some amount of custom coding, instead of relying solely on an out-of-the-box template. Complex websites may require multiple page templates, which will increase the price tag.
Ultimately, it is important to be clear about what you need from your website—both specific pages and the site as a whole. Sophisticated capabilities cost more to develop, but they can also go a long way toward getting the site closer to your business goals.
For example: It would take a lot of custom coding to create an ecommerce company website that personalizes the homepage for returning users. You’d pay quite a bit upfront for this kind of complex work, but imagine the increase in sales and decrease in abandoned checkouts!
Much of the website development cost boils down to functionality and complexity. A website that is effectively just an online business card is going to cost a lot less to develop than something robust and interactive.
Integrations
Does your website need to talk to Salesforce or other third-party platforms? Integrating these setups correctly takes time, which means added development costs.
Other integrations might include:
- Privacy/cookie scripts and services
- Accessibility functionality and services
- Multi language service
- CDN, firewall, caching, and other security services
Likewise, moving a website from one development platform to another and removing unnecessary plugins and functions also adds time and cost. We use tools like the following to see what website builders and plugins sites are using and how they’re affecting load times and performance:
Often, we find that sites have a number of extraneous resources that cause pages to load slowly and put the user experience straight in the toilet. Identifying these liabilities is a key part of scoping out the cost of website development.
Twelve Three Media is obsessive about site speed, as we know users won’t wait for websites to load. We pride ourselves on building cutting-edge websites that balance speed and modern functionality.
Additional Costs
Once your website is designed, developed, and approved, it’s time to think about the final touches that will keep the site accessible and running smoothly. These include:
- Domain name: Your domain name or website address is what users type in to get to your site. What you pay for the domain depends in part on how popular the domain name is. New domains are roughly $10–$12 per year. The most expensive website domain of all time is Cars.com, which was purchased for a whopping $872 million back in 2014.
- Website hosting: You can buy low-cost web hosting for less than $10 per month. But this isn’t the place to go cheap. The web host you choose must be able to handle the traffic to your site, provide secure browsing, and enable pages to load quickly. Paying a little more to keep your site operational and provide a better user experience is worth it in the long run.
- SSL certificate: The secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate is what transforms websites from HTTP to HTTPS. Concerns about security when using a website have never been higher, so an SSL certificate is mandatory when developing a website—especially if you handle online payments and other sensitive info.
These are usually recurring costs, not one-and-done. It makes sense to think of them in light of building a new website because they are so important, but they aren’t part of the process per se. You don’t want to risk losing your domain, web host, or SSL certificate, so be sure to keep up on these payments after your site launches.
All of these elements need to be taken into account when answering the question “how much does a website cost?” Told you the answer wasn’t simple. Understanding these items should give you a sense of what your website needs to do, and how much it might cost to build the site.
Read More: How Often Should You Redesign Your Website?
What Is the Average Cost of a Website?
Average website price doesn’t really matter when the figure on the low end is a few hundred dollars and hundreds of thousands of dollars on the high end. You’re likely not a one-man operation or a multinational corporation, so the cost of your website is probably somewhere in between.
There are a few different paths you can take on your journey toward a better website, each with pros, cons, and varying costs:
Off-The-Shelf Theme/Page Builder
- Average cost: $500
- Pros:
- Upfront cost is minimal.
- Some templates are very basic, which might be enough for small businesses that don’t need anything fancy.
- Cons:
- You are doing all the dev work with an editor of sorts.
- There is no guarantee of performance or reaching your KPIs.
- Basic templates are often loaded with unnecessary plugins that can slow down the site and compromise security.
- You might not use a lot of the built-in functionality, which can make the site difficult and time-consuming to use.
- Free or low-cost website builders offer minimal tech support, which could mean more downtime and a lot of bugs.
Website templates can be purchased on the cheap from a number of online vendors. You’ll save some cash upfront, but you’ll probably pay more in the long run—in terms of money, time, and aggravation—trying to get it to work for your business needs.
Custom-Built Website
- Average cost: $10,000+
- Pros:
- A custom website offers bespoke solutions for your needs and business operations.
- Multiple agencies offer website development services, with options for different budgets.
- Maximum flexibility—websites developed with your needs in mind should offer the most robust options for maintenance and updates.
- Cons:
- Obviously, custom websites cost more.
- It’s easy to overload a custom website with unnecessary features and plugins if you (a) don’t know what you’re doing or (b) rely on a less-than-reputable agency to build the site for you.
Did you know that 95% of people stick to the default options on their devices and the programs they use? You need to break free of this habit when it comes to your website, and the agency you hire should be in that 5% as well.
Just because it’s the default doesn’t mean it’s the best for your business or your customers. Partners who offer custom website pricing must be able to look beyond the box, strip out unnecessary features, and custom-tailor the site so it serves your purposes.
Premium Website Features
- Cost varies; examples include:
- Online chat agents
- Call tracking
- Email hosting
- User accounts and profiles
- Ecommerce functionality
- Online payment portals
- Third-party website integrations (see above)
- Pros:
- These and other premium features may be mission critical for your business goals and KPIs.
- Premium features give you a lot of the data you need to measure the effectiveness of your website and any marketing efforts.
- Cons:
- It’s easy to go overboard and add too many features, which can slow down the site and disrupt the user experience.
- Proper integration is key; subpar developers and agencies may screw up the integrations, resulting in bad data and underperformance.
Successful websites are a delicate balance of carefully managed resources and robust technology. Agency partners should be prepared to work with you to identify the features you need and integrate them so the site can run smoothly.
How Much Should I Pay Someone for a Website?
If you’re expecting to drive millions of dollars in business, your website needs to be able to do that work. That may require a significant upfront investment in website design, content, and development. However, you should get back what you put in and more when the site is set up for success.
Our advice for determining how much you should pay a developer or agency for a new website:
- Look at your current website. What improvements do you want to make?
- How does your website look and behave on mobile devices?
- Does the website have a modern look, or does it appear outdated?
- Are you ranking in online search results for your most important keywords?
- Is your website supporting the goals you have for your business?
Ready to Take Your Website to the Next Level?
If you’re asking how much does a website cost?, be prepared to dig a little deeper. Top agencies want to know more so they can provide you with an accurate quote and optimal service when building your site.
Twelve Three Media provides comprehensive website solutions for businesses of all sizes across the globe. We take a holistic view and do everything in-house, from web design and development to content and search engine optimization to ongoing maintenance and monitoring—no crappy templates, no outsourcing to overseas developers, and no half-assing on what matters most for your website and your business.