You ask three people what a website costs and get three answers so far apart you wonder if they're describing the same thing. Mostly they aren't. The gap isn't a rort. It's four different products sold under the same name.
Here's what each way of getting a site buys you, what actually moves the cost, and what you'll be paying after the build. We sit in one of the four, and it isn't the right one for everyone. We don't print prices on our website, so if you want a number for your own site, the quote form is where to ask.
What is a reasonable budget for a business website?
It depends on who builds it and what the site has to do. Building it yourself costs your time, a local studio quotes to the job, and an agency prices in a team and a process. Inside each of those, the number of pages, who writes the words and whether you sell online move the price more than anything else. The sections below say what each approach gets you.
What drives the cost of a website
Whoever builds it, the same few things push the price up or down, so it's worth knowing them before you compare quotes.
- The number of pages. A four page site and a twelve page site are different amounts of work, and every extra page needs its own words and photos.
- Who writes the copy. If you supply the words, that's less work for the builder. If they write them, it's a job in itself, and the better ones need to know your trade and your towns.
- Whether you sell online. A shop with a cart, payments and shipping is a different build from a site that gets people to ring or send an enquiry.
- Separate pages for the towns you cover. Each one takes real writing if it's going to be any use to Google or a customer.
- What gets set up around the site: your Google Business Profile, review links, analytics.
- How quickly you want it. A firm date is a promise the builder has to plan around.
- What happens after launch. Updates, backups and changes are either included in a plan or charged by the hour.
Building it yourself costs your weekends
Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy and Shopify all sell you a template and an editor, usually on a monthly plan, plus a domain. Check the current price when you sign up, because they move.
The subscription isn't the real cost. A first site takes most people twenty to forty hours, spread over evenings, and hour six goes on choosing a font. If you charge out your time, that's not a free website.
Do it yourself anyway when cash is tighter than time, or when you want to test whether a website changes anything before you commit. Keep it to four pages, put your phone number in the header, write your suburbs out in text, use your own job photos, and you'll have something that works. Plenty of tradies from Nelligen to Tuross Head run perfectly good DIY sites, and if that's you, put your effort into your Google Business Profile first.
The cheapest marketplace build is real, and what goes wrong is predictable
You can get a site built very cheaply on Fiverr, Airtasker or an offshore marketplace, and sometimes you get a tidy template fill for it.
What goes wrong is usually the same list. The domain and hosting end up in the builder's account instead of yours. The build is a stock theme with twenty plugins bolted on, which is what breaks a year later. The copy comes from someone who's never seen a switchboard and doesn't know Batehaven from Broulee, so your service area page reads like it was translated. Nobody sets up your Google Business Profile, which is the thing that would have brought calls in. When it breaks in month fourteen, there's no one to ring.
It's a reasonable buy under two conditions. Register the domain yourself first, in your own name, and treat the result as a placeholder. If you're paying the lowest price going and expecting to rank in Moruya, the rebuild will cost you more than doing it once.
A local studio quotes to the job, and we're one
This is a team working locally on your site, and it's what most trades businesses actually want. Here's what we offer, to hold against whatever else you're quoted.
- Websites, quoted to the job. Our starting site is up to six pages, mobile first, contact form, click to call and basic on page SEO, usually live seven business days from deposit and content, with the clock paused while changes are with you. More pages, the copy written for you, or a shop, and the price moves with the work; it's quoted before anything starts.
- Logos, quoted to the job. Three concepts, two revision rounds on the one you pick, and the final files.
Terms are a deposit before work starts, sized to the job and stated on the quote, balance before the site goes live, ownership transferring to you on final payment, unlimited changes within scope while it's built, two in the 30 days after sign-off, and quoted work after that. No GST is added, because we aren't registered for it.
The honest downside of a local studio is capacity. If we're booked, you wait. There's no support desk at 9pm and no big bench of designers to hand your job to. A studio like ours is also the wrong call for a 300 product catalogue or a four-branch business.
We're new, so there's no long client list to point at here. Judge us on what you can check: your price comes in writing before anything starts, the timeline is written down, ownership transfers to you, and when you send us a message you get an answer.
An agency prices in a team, and some jobs genuinely need one
You're buying a team at an agency: a designer, a developer and a project manager who chases everyone, plus cover when one is on leave. The quotes are higher and go a long way up from there, because the process is part of what you pay for.
That's worth real money when you've got multiple locations, a large product catalogue, ad spend to manage against the site, or several people who need to sign things off. For a plumber working one patch from Batehaven, you'd be paying for a process you don't need.
The costs nobody puts in the quote
The build is a one-off. These aren't.
- A .com.au domain renews every year or two. Keep it in your own name.
- Hosting is a monthly or yearly cost, sometimes bundled into a build.
- SSL, the padlock in the address bar, is free through Let's Encrypt and should be included. If someone bills you for it, ask what you're getting.
- Updates, backups and security patches are either your Sunday afternoon or a care plan.
- Content changes are either included in a plan or charged by the hour.
Add it up over five years and the running costs often pass the build cost. That's not a reason to avoid them. It's a reason to know the number before you sign, so ask for each one to be written down on the quote.
The question that decides more than price is who owns it
Ask this before you pay a deposit. Is the domain registered in my name and my email address? Will I have the hosting login? Will I be the owner of the Google Business Profile, with you as a manager? Do the files and the design become mine once it's paid off?
A builder who answers yes to all four is selling you an asset. One who hesitates is selling you a rental, and the rebuild cost when you leave is the real price of that job.
How to pick your approach
No website and no spare cash: fix your Google Business Profile first, then build four DIY pages. Steady work and you want the phone ringing from search: that's a local studio. Selling at volume or running ads: talk to an agency.
If you want a second opinion on a quote you've already got, send it through the quote form with the suburbs you cover and we'll tell you which approach it belongs to, even when the answer is that you should do it yourself.