· 5 minutes read
What a website actually costs: a real price, not a range
Published ranges run from $10 to $100,000 and cannot be used. Here is a firm price, what it includes, what year two costs, and what you own at the end.
$2,997 is where a website from this studio starts, and the configurator will give you the exact figure for your build before you speak to anyone.
That sentence is unusual, and the rest of this page is about why.
The published ranges are not answers
Here is what the highest-profile pages on this question currently say a website costs:
| Source | The range it gives |
|---|---|
| WebFX | “$10 to $100,000+” |
| Superside (for a branding package) | “$1,000 … to more than $100,000” |
| Wix | “as little as $17 per month” to “more than $10,000” |
| Kinsta (annual, self-built) | $50–$300 personal, $500–$3,000 small business, $10,000–$50,000+ custom |
A range spanning four orders of magnitude is not information. You cannot budget from it, compare with it, or check it.
It gets worse where the numbers are internally inconsistent. WebFX reports that 22% of its survey respondents said agency web design costs $501–$1,000 per year, on the same page that prices WebFX’s own web design services starting at $8,000/month. Both numbers are on the page. Wix answers the question “what does a freelancer cost?” with the price of a Wix subscription, $19/month for Wix Studio.
None of this is dishonest exactly. It is what happens when the page has to serve every reader and sell something at the same time.
Five questions none of them answer
Reading the four best-ranked pages on this topic end to end, these are the gaps.
1. What scope does the number buy? Not one range is attached to a deliverable. WebFX puts basic web design at “$6,500 – $15,000”, which tells you nothing about how many pages, how many rounds, or what happens when you want a sixth page.
2. How much work is it? Nobody states days or a day rate, the two facts that make a price checkable rather than arbitrary. Kinsta comes closest with a section on your time, and notes it is the part every guide skips.
3. What does year two cost? Ranges here are worse than useless. WebFX gives website maintenance as “$5 to $5,000 per month”. Wix’s honest and genuinely useful contribution is that renewal rates on third-party hosts are often two to three times the introductory price, and you should compare year-two costs.
4. What do you own? Of four publishers, two of whom sell the build, exactly one raises ownership at all: Superside, in a single checklist bullet advising you to confirm you get source files rather than flattened exports. It does not say what Superside grants you.
5. What does leaving cost? Silence, everywhere.
The answers, for this studio
Scope. The configurator lists every item with its own price. A brand kit is $997 and the items inside it sum to exactly that. A website starts at $2,997 and the items sum to exactly that too. Switch on a shop, a booking system, more languages, and the number moves while you watch. Switch everything off and it says nothing.
Work. A brand system, logo correction, a custom WordPress theme and a trilingual website for Bonatar, a machinery safety practice in Belgium, was $3,997, fixed, delivered in three days. That is a real engagement at a real price, not a bracket.
Year two. Nothing in the price recurs. There is no hosting line and no maintenance line in the configurator, because neither is sold here: hosting you buy in your own name, from whoever you like, and that bill is between you and them. Retained work exists as a separate product at $4,997 a month, chosen rather than attached.
Ownership. You get the theme source. What the GPL covers is a page of its own, including the clause your contract has to answer: under the GPL the CSS and the artwork stay with whoever drew them, unless the agreement says otherwise.
Leaving. $100, ticked by default. Ownership transfer and admin handover is a line in the configurator like any other, so you can see it, price it, and untick it if you would rather own less. The case-study record for each engagement also lists what was delivered and what was still open at handover, including the things that did not exist yet.
What moves the price
Three things, and they are the three the configurator asks about:
- How many pages, because pages are the unit of work.
- How many languages, because a second language is not a translation job, it is a second version of every page that has to stay in step with the first.
- What the site has to do: a shop, bookings, a lead magnet, a CRM connection. A brochure site and a shop are different products.
A deadline is the fourth, and it is a multiplier rather than a line item. The multipliers are published with everything else: inside three weeks is 1.15×, inside one week is 3×, because one week means every other job stops.
Who should not buy from us
- You need it for under $1,000. Buy a good template and spend the difference on photography. That is genuinely the better purchase at that budget.
- You want the cheapest possible site. We publish our prices; someone will always be below them.
- You are not sure what you need yet. The configurator will give you a number either way, but a number for the wrong scope is not useful. Write down what the site has to do first.
The one-line version
Everyone else publishes a range because a range cannot be wrong. A price can be wrong, which is why it is worth more.
Price your build. Firm, itemised, payable on the spot.
Next: What a brand guide costs · What a custom WordPress theme is · Who owns your website
The prices are on the site
A brand guide, a website, or both.
One person does the design and writes the code that ships it. You will not need a call to find out what anything costs.