Ask three studios what a website costs and you'll get three different numbers, all of them honest. That's not evasiveness. It's because "a website" describes anything from a single well-built page to a store with customer accounts and automated workflows.
This is a breakdown of what actually moves the number, so you can read a quote and understand what you're paying for — and so you can tell the difference between a quote that's cheap and a quote that's incomplete.
The five things that drive most of the price
1. Page count and structure
A one-page site and a fifteen-page site aren't the same project. Each additional page needs a layout, copy, images, internal links and a search-friendly title. Service businesses usually benefit from one page per major service rather than a single "Services" page listing everything, which affects both cost and search visibility.
2. Custom design versus template
Templates are cheap because the design decisions are already made — and they look like it. A custom design costs more because someone builds the type, colour, spacing and layout system around your business specifically. Both are legitimate choices; the difference should be stated plainly in the quote.
3. Content readiness
This is the most underestimated line item in the industry. If you arrive with finished copy, a logo and usable photography, the build moves fast. If copy has to be written and images sourced or shot, that's real work and it belongs in the quote. A surprising number of "delayed" projects are simply waiting on content.
4. Functionality
Booking, online payments, deposits, e-commerce, customer accounts, custom forms and automations each add scope. They also add testing — a booking flow that fails silently is worse than no booking flow, so functionality carries a testing cost as well as a build cost.
5. Integrations
Connecting a site to a calendar, a payment provider, an SMS service, an email platform or a CRM is rarely a checkbox. Each connection needs an account, configuration, a test cycle and a fallback plan for when the third party is having a bad day.
The costs that aren't in the build price
Almost every website carries recurring costs that are billed by other companies, not by your designer. A quote that never mentions them isn't cheaper — it's just less complete.
- Domain registration — an annual fee paid to a registrar.
- Hosting — monthly or annual, depending on the platform.
- Business email — usually per mailbox, per month.
- Payment processing — a per-transaction fee set by the payment provider.
- Scheduling software — free at small scale, paid once you need staff calendars or payments at booking.
- Text messaging — where your provider supports it, billed by that provider and subject to its regional rules.
- Email marketing — typically priced by list size.
- Maintenance and support — optional, and worth pricing honestly rather than assuming.
Our position on these is simple: the accounts are opened in your business name, you own them, and the providers bill you directly at their own rates. Nothing recurring gets set up without being discussed first.
How our own pricing is structured
For context — these are Built Different Design Co.'s starting prices, not a statement about market averages:
- Starter Website — from $249 USD. A simple, professional presence: one to three pages, custom design in your brand colours, mobile-first build, a contact form, map and social links, and basic search setup.
- Business Website — from $697 USD. Multi-page sites with individual service pages, a booking or scheduling workflow, email confirmation setup, lead capture, and analytics.
- E-Commerce & Advanced — from $1,697 USD. Online stores or paid bookings, payments, deposits and subscriptions, customer accounts or a client portal, and custom forms and automations.
"From" means exactly that: it's a genuine starting point, and where your project lands depends on the factors above. Every project is quoted in writing before work begins, so you see the number before you commit. Full details are on the pricing page.
How to compare two quotes fairly
When two quotes are far apart, the gap is almost always in scope rather than skill. Questions worth asking both:
- How many pages, and who writes the copy?
- Is the design custom, or a template adjusted to my brand?
- How many rounds of revisions are included, and what counts as a round?
- Who owns the domain, hosting and accounts at the end?
- What happens if I need a change six months from now, and what does it cost?
- Which recurring third-party fees will I be paying, and roughly how much?
- What's the timeline, and what do you need from me to hit it?
A quote that answers those clearly is usually the safer one, even when it isn't the lowest.
Setting a budget that fits the stage you're at
A new business proving an idea doesn't need a store and a portal. It needs to be findable, credible and easy to contact. An established business turning away work because scheduling is manual has a completely different calculation to make.
The most reliable way to decide is to attach the spend to a specific outcome: fewer no-shows, faster quoting, more enquiries from search, fewer hours on admin. If a feature can't be attached to one of those, it can usually wait for phase two.
Building in stages is normal and sensible. A site scoped properly at the start can gain booking, payments or a store later without being rebuilt from scratch.
Building in phases keeps the first number sensible
You do not have to buy everything at launch. A well-structured site can start as a clear, fast presence with a good enquiry form, then gain booking, payments or a store when the business actually needs them.
Phasing also means each addition has to justify itself against results from the previous stage, rather than being bought on a hunch.