The short version
- Website quotes vary enormously because the word “website” covers about six different products.
- Design is rarely the expensive part. Integration, bespoke functionality and content are.
- The cheapest quote is usually the one with the most assumptions hidden in it. Ask what is excluded.
- Budget for the year, not the launch. A site that is never updated stops earning within months.
Ask three agencies to quote for a website and you will get three numbers that are nowhere near each other. This is not because two of them are trying it on. It is because “a website” is not one thing, and each agency has quietly assumed a different scope.
Here is what actually drives the number, so you can compare quotes properly and ask better questions.
What you are really buying
Most quotes are built from five components. Knowing which ones you need is most of the work.
Design
Everything from applying an existing theme through to a bespoke design system with a full set of page layouts, components and states. The gap between the two is large and it is mostly a question of how many original screens somebody has to draw.
Build
Turning the design into a working, fast, accessible site with a content management system somebody in your office can actually use. A good build is invisible when it is done well and expensive to retrofit when it is not.
Content
The most commonly underestimated line. Copywriting, photography, video, and the unglamorous work of migrating what already exists. Many projects that are described as late were finished on time by the agency and delayed for months waiting for content.
Integration
Connecting the site to the systems that run your business: CRM, accounts, stock, booking, payment. This is where the cost lives on most serious projects, because it is real software work rather than page assembly.
Bespoke functionality
Anything that does not come out of the box. Portals, calculators, configurators, quoting tools, member areas. Priced as software, because that is what it is.
When comparing quotes, ask each agency to list what is excluded rather than what is included. Inclusions are marketing. Exclusions are where the surprises live, and the answers will be far more revealing.
Rough shapes of project
Broad categories, to help you work out which conversation you are in. Our own starting points are on the pricing page.
- A credible brochure site. A handful of pages, a clear structure, decent design, a contact form, sensible SEO foundations. Suitable for a business whose website supports the sale rather than makes it.
- A lead generation site. The above plus proper conversion design, service pages built around what people search for, tracking and attribution wired in, and a form that feeds your CRM. This is what most B2B businesses actually need and often do not ask for.
- Ecommerce. Adds catalogue, payment, delivery rules, tax, stock and post-purchase communication. Cost scales with the number of products and the complexity of the rules, not with the design.
- A site with a system behind it. A public website plus a portal, quoting tool or member area. At this point you are commissioning software with a website attached, and it should be scoped and priced that way.
Five things that quietly multiply the cost
- Migrating a large site. Two hundred existing pages is two hundred decisions about whether to keep, rewrite, merge or redirect. That work is real and it is rarely in the quote unless you asked.
- Integrations with older systems. If your CRM or accounts package has no modern interface, connecting to it is a bespoke job. Ask this question early because it moves the number more than anything else on this list.
- Multiple languages or regions. Not double the cost, but considerably more than one, and it affects structure, content workflow and search setup.
- Accessibility done properly. Worth doing, and cheap when designed in from the start. Expensive when bolted on at the end. If you are supplying the public sector it is not optional.
- Approval by committee. Every extra decision maker adds review rounds. This is a genuine cost and honest agencies price for it.
Trying to work out what your project should cost? Tell us what the site needs to do and we will give you an honest range and the reasoning behind it, before anyone talks about design.
The costs that come after launch
A website is not a purchase, it is a commitment. Budget for the running of it or the build money is wasted.
- Hosting and domains. Modest, but the cheapest hosting will cost you in speed, and speed costs you in rankings and conversions.
- Maintenance. Core, plugin and dependency updates, backups, uptime monitoring, security. Neglected sites do not degrade gracefully, they get compromised. We have seen the results of a site left untouched for years and the clean-up is always more expensive than the maintenance would have been.
- Content. New pages, new case studies, keeping service pages current. This is what makes the difference between a site that gains search traffic and one that slowly loses it.
- Improvement. Testing and refining the pages that carry the most commercial weight. A site that never changes after launch is at its best on day one, which is the wrong way round.
Questions worth asking any agency
- Who owns the code and the design files when the project ends?
- Can we host it wherever we choose, or is it tied to your platform?
- What happens if we want to leave in two years? What do we take with us?
- Is the CMS one our team can use without calling you for a text change?
- What is your assumption about who writes the content?
- How is tracking and attribution set up, and is it included?
- What does support cost after launch, and what does it cover?
The answers to the first three matter more than most people realise. A cheap site you cannot take with you is not cheap.
Common questions
Is WordPress cheaper than a bespoke build?
Usually, for a content-led site, because you are not paying to reinvent things that already work well. It stops being the obvious answer when the site is mostly application rather than content, at which point a bespoke build is often cheaper to own over time.
Why do some agencies charge monthly instead of a project fee?
Some are spreading a build cost over a contract, which is a finance arrangement. Others are selling an ongoing service that includes improvement. Both can be reasonable. Ask what happens at the end of the term and who owns what, then decide.
Should I use a website builder instead?
For a very small business that needs a presence and nothing more, yes, and there is no shame in it. The limits appear when you need real integration, unusual functionality, or serious search performance.
How long should a website last?
A well-built, maintained site should serve for several years with periodic refreshes. What ends a site’s life is usually not its design but the moment the business outgrows what it can do. Our web design and software pages set out how we approach both sides of that.
