What a website actually costs, and why nobody wants to tell you

Almost every enquiry I get starts the same way: "roughly, what would something like this cost?" It is a completely fair question, and I understand why designers avoid answering it, the honest answer really does depend on what the site has to do. But "it depends" is no use to you when you are trying to work out whether to bother emailing me at all, so here is how I think about it.

What I am actually pricing

I am not pricing pages. I am pricing decisions. A five page site where every page is a different problem takes far longer than a fifteen page site built from three well made templates. When I quote, I am estimating how many genuinely different things have to be designed, built, tested and then handed over in a way you can look after yourself.

The things that move the number

• How many genuinely different page layouts there are, rather than how many pages
• Whether the words already exist, or whether I am writing them with you
• Whether you have usable photography, or we need to shoot or source it
• Whether anything has to talk to another system, bookings, payments, a stock list, a CRM
• How many people need to say yes before something is signed off

Content is the one that quietly doubles timelines. I have had projects with a full set of copy and decent photos go from kick off to live in a few weeks. I have also had projects sit for months waiting on an About page that nobody wants to write. If that sounds like you, tell me early and I will price the writing in rather than pretend it will appear.

A rough shape, in plain numbers

For the small businesses and independents I mostly work with in Dorset and further afield, a focused one page site sits at the low end. A proper small business site, home, services, about, contact, a few supporting templates, built so you can edit it, sits in the middle. Anything with ecommerce, logins, or a lot of ongoing content sits above that, because you are paying for the ongoing behaviour of a system rather than a set of layouts.

I would rather give you a real range in the first call than a beautiful proposal you cannot afford. If a number is going to be a problem, it is a problem now, not after three weeks of design.

What I would ask any designer for

• A fixed price in writing, with what is and is not included
• What happens if the scope changes halfway through
• Who owns the files, the domain and the hosting at the end
• What it costs to keep the thing running each year

That last one catches people out. A site is not a one off purchase, there is hosting, a domain, and the occasional bit of maintenance. It is usually small, but you should know the figure before you commit, not discover it in month four.