Three quotes come back for the same job, and the highest is four times the lowest. The first thought is that somebody is trying it on.
Usually nobody is. Usually it means three people read one sentence of yours in three different ways, and all three costed honestly against what they read.
The number of pages is not the price
The most common enquiry we get goes like this: "build me a five-page website, how much?"
That sentence says almost nothing about cost. Consider two versions:
- Five pages of text and pictures. Home, two service pages, about, contact. The text already exists. A couple of days of work.
- Five pages where one has a booking calendar, another a price calculator and a third a link to your stock system. Same page count. A couple of months of work.
If a quote arrives before anyone has asked which of the two it is, that quote is a guess.
Three things that actually move the price
1. Content: who writes it
The most common hidden cost, and the most common reason a project drags.
If the supplier produces the words and images, that is one price. If someone is waiting on you for them, that is another, and it is only cheaper on paper. What happens in practice is that you do not have three spare weeks to write eight pages of text, the project stalls for two months, and stalling costs too: in your own time and in the enquiries you did not get.
In our experience this single question predicts how long a project takes better than any technical detail. Always have the quote state which version it assumes.
2. Functionality: what has to work, not what has to look good
A form that sends an email is cheap. A form that checks a calendar for free slots, takes a deposit, sends a confirmation and a reminder the day before is a different animal. On screen they look almost identical.
The most useful thing you can do before asking for a quote is to write a list of the things that genuinely have to work. Not what has to look a certain way. For example:
- a customer can book a slot and cancel it themselves;
- a new enquiry lands in email and in our CRM;
- I can change the price list myself without you.
Forgetting that last point costs the most. More on it below.
3. Connections to other systems
Every link to accounting, stock, a CRM or a payment provider is a separate piece of work with its own testing and its own faults. Two integrations can cost more than the rest of the site put together, and that surprises almost every client.
The reason is simple: the site is under your control and the other system is not. When their API changes, it becomes your problem.
Four ways the same job gets priced
Two numbers can differ even when the work is identical, because the pricing model differs. There are four of them, and we sell more than one ourselves, so read this as a map, not a recommendation.
A fixed price for a written scope
This suits you when you know fairly precisely what you want: the supplier carries the risk. What goes wrong is everything that is not written down: each change turns into a negotiation, and when the scope is loose the price carries a contingency you pay for. Ask how many rounds of revisions are inside the number.
An hourly rate
This one suits vague or continuous work, and it suits you when you are running the project yourself. What goes wrong is that there is no ceiling: 45 euros an hour is dearer than 80 if the first person takes three times as long over the same thing. Ask for an estimate in hours alongside the rate.
A fixed package
This suits you when your need really is an ordinary one. What goes wrong is a package bought before anyone asked whether your one exception fits inside it. Read the part that says what is not included first.
A monthly fee with the build inside it
This suits you when cash flow is tighter than the total price. Over three years it almost always costs more, because you are buying the financing too. Ask before you sign what happens to the site if you end the contract.
One-off cost and running cost are two different things
A quote almost always shows only the first. The second comes back every year, and is worth asking about before you sign rather than after:
- the domain;
- hosting;
- the security certificate, if it is not included in hosting;
- updates, backups and monitoring, in other words maintenance;
- licences for whichever tools ended up inside the site.
The last is the one asked about least. If five paid plugins went into the site, you pay for them every year, even when nobody told you so.
How to split a budget three ways
Most people split a budget the same way: all of it goes into the build. The site comes out good-looking and empty. Split it three ways before you ask for a single quote.
- The build. Design, development, setup. The biggest slice, but not all of the money.
- The content. Words, photographs, translation. Almost nobody plans for it, and everybody pays for it later anyway.
- The first year. Hosting, maintenance, and the first small changes.
The content slice is cut first, and it hurts most later. This is how sites are born with three sentences per service: a search engine has nothing to tell you apart with, and an assistant has nothing to quote. We wrote about thin content separately on the blog. And if writing is not your job, it is a service in its own right.
An example of why cheap gets expensive
Take two sites finished in the same month. The numbers are invented and deliberately round, but the ratio is one we genuinely see.
- Site A cost 1500 euros, with no maintenance, because that seemed unnecessary.
- Site B cost 3000 euros, with maintenance at 40 euros a month.
Three years on, site B has cost about 4400 euros and works. Site A has cost 1500 euros, but has outdated plugins, a broken contact form nobody noticed, and needs replacing. The replacement costs 1500 to 3000 again.
A cheap build with no maintenance is not a saving. It is a payment plan whose instalments all fall due at once in three years.
What makes a project expensive in the middle, not at the start
The argument about price happens at the start. The money that goes over plan is spent in the middle, and almost always in one of four ways.
- The scope grew a piece at a time. No single request was large, and ten small ones are a different project. The dangerous change is not the big one somebody decides on, it is the small one nobody does.
- A decision waited three weeks. In the meantime the team took the next job on. A two-hour decision cost a month of calendar.
- The text arrived late. The site is technically finished and sits there with empty pages.
- A fourth round of design changes that nobody wrote down. On the fourth round people start undoing what the second round changed, and nobody remembers why. Starting from a ready-made design cuts the number of rounds.
Two of those four are entirely under your control: how fast you answer, and when the text is ready. That is good news. You have more influence on the price than you thought, and it costs you nothing but attention.
How to write the enquiry so the answers are comparable
The cheapest way to get three comparable quotes is to send three suppliers exactly the same text. Half a page, eight things.
- What your company does, and for whom. Two sentences.
- Who the reader of the site is, and what they have to do there. Call, book, look at a price.
- Which pages you need. A list, not a number.
- What has to work. The same list as above.
- Who writes the text, and where the images come from. The honest answer, not the hopeful one.
- The deadline, and why. "Before midsummer, because that is when the season starts" is usable information. "As soon as possible" is not.
- A budget range.
- What happens after launch. Who keeps the site in order, and whether marketing is part of the plan.
The budget is where most people stop, because naming a range feels like a trap: surely the quote comes back at exactly the top of it. Our experience is the opposite. A range is not a trap, it is the fastest way to find out whether the two of you are in the same conversation. If your ceiling is 3000 and the supplier starts that kind of work at 15 000, better to know on the first day than at the third meeting.
Four questions that make quotes comparable
Ask every supplier these four things, and three very different numbers suddenly become readable.
- Who writes the text, and where do the images come from? If the answer is "you do", add two weeks of your own work.
- What is the total annual running cost? Domain, hosting, licences, maintenance. One number.
- Who owns the site, and can I edit the content myself? More precisely: can I change a price, add a page and swap an image without waiting for an invoice?
- What happens if I want to move to a different partner in a year? Can I take my content? In what format? Is the domain registered in my name?
The last one matters most and gets asked least. We think the answer to it says more about a supplier than the rest of the quote put together. A vague answer is a price you pay later.
Red flags in a quote
None of these proves anybody is bad. They are places to ask one more question. Three of them at once is a pattern.
- A quote with no written scope. One number and the sentence "website including design and setup". Every argument this project can produce comes out of that sentence. What the words on the second page of a quote actually mean is written out separately.
- A timeline with no line about you in it. "Ready in six weeks", with no note of when your text and your approvals are needed. A timeline like that never holds, and afterwards it is unclear whose fault that was.
- "SEO included", with no statement of what that means. Does it mean headings and a sitemap, which belong to building a site anyway, or monthly work too? The difference is set out on the SEO service page.
- The domain registered in the agency's name. Usually convenience rather than malice, but this is where partings get ugliest. The domain goes in your company's name with your email address, and you can ask for that while the work is under way.
- Not one sentence about what happens after launch. Who updates, who takes backups, who answers on a Saturday evening, and what that costs.
- A price that arrived before anybody asked a question. If the quote comes back within the hour and nobody asked you anything in between, your job was not priced. An average job was, and yours is not average.
And one thing treated as a red flag that is not: a supplier who asks questions and then says they cannot give you a price yet. That is usually honesty rather than stalling.
What we think about all this
We dislike the cheap-versus-expensive argument, because it is the wrong axis. The right question is not what a site costs, but what it costs to not have one, or to have one that does not work.
For a small service business where one client is worth a couple of thousand a year, three months of "we are still building the new site" is not a small thing. Which is why our advice is usually the opposite of what people expect: start smaller than you planned, but actually finish that part and put it live. The rest can be added once you know what customers really ask.
Our own numbers
They are on the pricing page, because publishing a price is one of the things we recommend to clients too. If you have something specific in mind, ask for a quote and bring the list you wrote under point 2. The quote is free and carries no obligation.
If you are still working out what kind of site you need, start on the websites page.
Frequently asked questions
The number of pages says almost nothing about the price. Five pages of text and pictures, when the text already exists, is a couple of days of work. Five pages where one has a booking calendar, another a price calculator and a third a link to your stock system is a couple of months, even though the page count is identical. If a quote arrives before anyone has asked which of the two it is, that quote is a guess. Very different numbers usually mean three people read the same sentence three different ways.
Three things, and the page count is not one of them. Content: if the supplier produces the words and images that is one price; waiting on you for them is cheaper only on paper, because the project stalls. Functionality: a form that sends an email is cheap, while one that checks a calendar for free slots, takes a deposit and sends a confirmation is a different animal, though on screen they look almost identical. Connections: every link to accounting, stock, a CRM or a payment provider is separate work with its own testing and faults.
A quote almost always shows only the one-off price. What comes back every year is the domain, the hosting, the security certificate if it is not included in hosting, and updates, backups and monitoring, in other words maintenance. Of these, licences are the one asked about least: if paid plugins went into the site, you pay for them every year, even when nobody told you so. Ask for the total annual running cost as one number before you sign rather than after.
Four questions for every supplier. Who writes the text and where the images come from: if the answer is "you do", add two weeks of your own work. What the total annual running cost is, as one number: domain, hosting, licences, maintenance. Who owns the site, and whether you can change a price, add a page or swap an image without waiting for an invoice. And what happens if you move to another partner in a year: whether your content comes with you, in what format, and whose name is on the domain. The last of the four is asked about least.
Name a range. This is the point where most people stop, because naming one feels like a trap: surely the quote then comes back at exactly the top of it. Our experience is the opposite: a range is not a trap, it is the fastest way to find out whether the two of you are in the same conversation. If your ceiling sits well below where a supplier starts that kind of work at all, it is better to know on the first day than at the third meeting.
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