"How much does a website cost" has the same answer as "how much does a building cost": it depends entirely on what you are building. But the variables are knowable, and understanding them lets you budget honestly and read a quote for what it is.
What actually drives the price
Scope — the number and type of pages
A focused site of five to ten well-designed pages is a different project from a fifty-page site with filtered listings, a resource library and gated content. Most of the cost is in unique templates and interactions, not in duplicating a page.
Design — from template to bespoke
Adapting an existing theme is fast and cheap and looks like everyone else. A custom identity and layout designed around your brand and content takes longer and is where a lot of the value sits.
Content — who writes it
A site is only as good as its words and images. If you provide finished, structured content, the build moves fast. If the agency researches, writes and art-directs it, that is real work and real cost — often underestimated.
Functionality
A marketing site is straightforward. The moment you add e-commerce, memberships, integrations with a CRM or booking system, multilingual content or a custom application, the engineering effort — and the testing — grows accordingly.
Performance, accessibility and SEO
Doing these properly is not a line item you can remove; it is how the work is done. A cheaper quote that skips them is not cheaper — it is unfinished.
Ongoing costs people forget
- Hosting and domain
- Maintenance, security updates and backups
- Content updates and small changes after launch
- Analytics, and someone to actually read it
How to compare quotes fairly
Two quotes with very different numbers are usually describing different projects. Line them up by scope: same page count, same content responsibility, same functionality, same standards for speed and accessibility. When the scope matches, the prices usually converge. When one is far lower, ask what is not included.
In short
Price follows scope, design depth, content ownership and functionality. A responsible partner will size the project to your goal and budget rather than quote a number in the dark. Tell us what you need and what you can spend and we will be straight about what fits — or see the range of what we do first.