What a company website costs and what you’re really paying for

Two offers for “a website” can differ several times over, and both can be fair. One is a ready-made template with your content swapped in; the other is a site designed around what the company sells, with a CMS, analytics and code that belongs to you. Below we break the price of a website into its parts, so you can compare offers on the same terms.

What you pay for

Every company website is made of the same layers. They differ in how much work goes into each:

1. Structure and content. What the site has to sell, to whom and in what order. This is where it’s decided whether the site will bring in inquiries.
2. UX and design. How a user gets from the first screen to getting in touch, on a phone and on a computer.
3. Design system. A set of components that all pages are built from. It means new pages don’t have to be designed from scratch.
4. Build. Production code that’s fast, works with screen readers and shows up correctly in search.
5. CMS. A panel where your team changes content on its own.
6. SEO and analytics. Heading structure, metadata, a sitemap and analytics from day one, so you know where customers come from.

Our scope, from $9,600 / €8,800 net, covers all of these layers: up to 8 pages designed mobile-first, a headless CMS, SEO, analytics, green Core Web Vitals and code you own.

What changes the price most

• The number of templates, not pages. Ten similar service pages are one template. A home page, a blog, a pricing page and a form are four different ones.
• Content. Whether you provide the copy and photos, or we write and prepare them.
• Integrations. CRM, newsletter, bookings, payments. Every connection to another system is separate work and separate testing.
• A store. A cart, payments and product management are a different scale from a site with a contact form.
• Languages. Each language isn’t just a translation, but also a URL structure, metadata and content adapted to the market.
• Animation and custom elements. Effects that make the site stand out, but need design and code built from scratch.

Costs after launch

The project price isn’t everything. Before you sign, check what maintenance will cost:

• Hosting and domain. Usually a small amount, but ask whose name the accounts are registered in.
• Updates and security. Especially with popular systems whose plugins need regular updates.
• Content changes. If every change needs a developer, you pay for it with every campaign.
• Further development. New pages and features. A good design system makes them cheaper.

Who owns the website

This question often comes up only when a company wants to switch providers. It’s worth asking earlier:

• Will I get the code repository and documentation?
• Whose name are the domain and analytics accounts registered in?
• Can I move the site to other hosting without the provider’s help?
• When does the copyright pass to me?

With us the answer to all four is simple: we hand over the repository, the domain, analytics and documentation, and the copyright to the code passes to you once payment is received. You host the site wherever you like.

How to compare offers

Ask each provider to break the scope down into the layers from the first part of this article, with a week-by-week schedule. Compare offers that describe the same thing. If one is much cheaper, check which layer is missing from it.

With us, after a free 30-minute call, you get a proposal in three options: scope, schedule and price. Read more about how we design and build websites.