How Much Does a Website Cost?

Companies, both large and small, want to know what a website will cost them before moving forward with such an investment. Unfortunately, there is no exact answer that can be provided without knowing their unique set of business needs first. Very much like asking how much a house costs, the answer depends on a variety of factors, including how big it is, what features are needed, the location, and the layout. A website is your business’ online home; how much are you willing to pay for it? While smaller businesses can get away with a relatively cheap informational website ranging from $3,000-$5,000, if the website is the backbone of your revenue model, you can expect that the additional required functionality to increase the cost. Typically, medium-sized business websites in 2016 can cost anywhere from $8k to $20k, while large (or web-based) businesses can expect to pay $10-100k+ for a website. These increased costs are all related to the amount of functionality. The more expensive websites have web application development needs (where specific business, membership, or complex e-commerce tasks are carried out).

Side note: It’s beneficial to be aware that selecting the wrong company can cost you more in the long run; launch delays, missed milestones, poor messaging, and a bad user experience can cost a company even more. Even if the website is built decently, poor coding and optimization can lead to difficulty upgrading and low/bad website traffic. Bad coding inevitably leads to rebuilding the shoddy website from scratch.

In order to obtain a more realistic idea of what a website will cost, companies should first answer the following questions.

What Domain Name Are You Looking for?

Domain names (your company’s “home” address) vary in price depending on a number of factors, but mainly, on whether or not the domain name is currently registered. More than a few savvy individuals have profited from selling a domain name they purchased knowing a company would one day want it. Typically, unowned .com domains cost an initial registration fee of around $1-15, with an annual registration renewal fee of between $12 and $25. However, premium domains (those with common words or phrases) can reach into the tens of thousands. Because premium domains are already owned, companies like GoDaddy also offer brokerage services to help you get in touch with sellers.

Bottom Line: Expect to pay anywhere from $12-25 a year on a domain renewal, plus whatever the initial cost for the domain is. Consider paying more for an SSL if you have sensitive data on your website, or you want a minor boost in your search engine rankings.

Who Will Be Hosting the Website?

Website Hosting fees are essentially like paying rent so that your website can “live” on a computer and be accessible via the internet. Hosting can be paid for on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis (depending on the company), with annual hosting plans typically providing a break in overall price. There are a variety of hosting options to choose from, with prices ranging from $100-$1,200/year to host your website on a shared server (depending on the amount of resources you require). Dedicated servers can range upwards of $3-4k/year and have hardware firewall options, root level access, and dedicated hardware (you have full use of the computer’s processor and RAM, whereas “shared” servers share those resources among numerous websites). Higher prices typically offer an infrastructure to support higher volumes of traffic, bandwidth and storage—in addition to redundancy, which usually includes RAID systems to protect against hard drive failure as well as a myriad of data protection and backup options. Typically, an actively managed server costs more, as the datacenter also has staff maintaining your system, updates, and managing security notifications.

Shared hosting provides the lowest costs because your website will be on a server with a number of other websites that affect overall performance. Conversely, dedicated hosting services cost more because they provide a high quality hosting experience that results in faster page loading time, higher security, and a better technical support staff. To view the hosting plans offered by Green Group Studio, click HERE.

Bottom Line: For shared hosting plans, expect to pay anywhere from $75-200 a year. For dedicated hosting plans, expect to pay anywhere from $250-700.

Website Design or Redesign?

A major determining factor in estimating the cost of a website is whether a company needs a completely new design and infrastructure, or if they simply need to upgrade their existing one. Much like with trying to build a new home or upgrade your current one, the price difference can be pretty significant, and there are pros and cons to each. Websites that have an existing (solid) structure, branding, and content are naturally less expensive to update than a website that needs to be developed from the ground up. Often times, a rebuild (with porting over existing content) makes more sense than fighting with old technology of a dated website. The new infrastructure will allow for the use of the latest technologies and give your website a longer “shelf life.”

Trying to Band-Aid an old infrastructure may work in the short term, but if it is many versions behind, it may be better to cut your losses and start with a fresh install of your CMS and go from there. This is especially important when upgrading a website that is not mobile friendly. Speak with your programmer about the tradeoffs of a new website versus upgrading an existing one. This will help you save money, time, and frustration in the long run.

Bottom Line: New websites can cost anywhere from $3,000 to more than $100,000. Upgrading websites can cost anywhere from $2,000 to $6,000 depending on the complexity and scope of the changes.

Custom or CMS?

The maintenance of a website is important to consider. Content Management System (CMS) websites, including WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal, need regular updating or they become vulnerable; not unlike an outdated Windows computer. This is another tradeoff to consider: the convenience of the built-in functionality and plugin availability that a CMS offers, versus custom coding a website that may take longer and cost more to build, but won’t need nearly as many updates (because custom-coded websites don’t have published vulnerabilities online, which is essentially what happens when a software patch is released).

Why are updates important? Simply put, you can be hacked–and not just by a competitor. Most hacks are automated by “botnets” (an array of computers that are, knowingly or unknowingly, running a programmed hacking routine to scan websites and exploit various vulnerabilities). This is often done to get user and/or credit card info and email addresses, but can also be set up by hackers just to damage a website for “fun” or to get notoriety in the hacking world.

Some CMS websites, like WordPress, offer automatic updating options. However, this can be dangerous because a WordPress update may make a WordPress plugin incompatible (because WordPress plugins have to play catch-up with updating their code to work with the latest version of WordPress). Therefore, it is best to update manually to ensure that functionality is not broken with automatic updates.

Bottom Line: Ongoing security updates to a CMS can run you approximately $215/month. You can also speak with your developer about patching on a quarterly or semi-annual basis to reduce your costs (at a slightly higher risk). However, not updating your website can cost you more if you need to reverse engineer a hack (which can also hurt your reputation and lose customers). It is best to make an informed decision of the maintenance needed, vs. the efficiencies and conveniences gained that a CMS offers.

How Many Design Options Will You Need?

Another factor in the price of a website is how many comps or “blueprints” the client needs to consider before choosing an overall website design. If a company has existing branding, this could make the design process go by faster. However, if a company has yet to determine a direction, a few design options may be needed in order to determine what fits best.

Bottom Line: Expect to shell out up to $900 per design concept.

Number of Unique Page Layouts?

Unique page layouts can essentially be compared to the different rooms in your home. For example, the kitchen layout is very much different from the bathroom layout. Each has its own unique features and layout suited to the rooms purpose. Your online home is made up of a number of different pages, some with the same format and features (for example, your service pages may be the same) while others are completely different, like your blog and homepage. These unique layouts take time to design and develop, so the more you have, the more the overall cost of the website will be.

Bottom Line: On average, each unique page layout will add around $600 to the overall cost.

Custom-Coded or Customized Template?

The template type you choose will have a major impact on your site’s security, look, and end price—just like the decision between purchasing an existing home blueprint or having one custom-made. While purchased templates are definitely the cheaper option for companies, they do come with some pretty significant downsides. In addition to limiting your ability to edit the design, purchased templates aren’t unique (as many companies have downloaded the same template) and pose a security risk (as hackers are attracted to them since hacking one means you’ve hacked all of the companies who have the same template). Purchased templates should only be used by companies that are looking for a simple, informational website and are ok with the template as-is.

Custom-coded templates are generally the favorite option for companies that want complete control over a website’s design and functionality. Because custom-coded templates are just that, custom coded, a company can change elements of the design however they see fit. Custom-coded templates are perfect for more complex sites with the potential to grow, and don’t have the restrictions of commercial templates (including where and how content can be placed).

Bottom Line: Customizing a purchased template runs from $2,500-$6,000, depending on the amount of custom graphics, pages, stock photography, and additional features and plugins that need to be customized and stylized to match. Custom-coded templates increase this cost by +/- $900 for each unique page design type (and less for derivatives, such as an inner page based of an approved homepage, which could be used for multiple webpages).

What Features Do You Need?

Just as with home features like hardwood floors, stainless steel appliances, and granite countertops, the more features you add to your website, the more it will cost. Some features may be optional for your company, like reviews/ratings, social media integration, and photo galleries, while others might be a necessity, like ecommerce, log in access, and responsive design (mobile and tablet friendliness).

Other Popular Features Include:

• Forums
• Event Scheduling
• Calendar System
• Booking (hotel, conference rooms, assets)
• Marketing Platform Integration
• Language Translation
• App Integration
• Media Players
• Online Directories
• Mass Email Functionality (to users or prospects)
• Email and Website Hosting
• SEO Plugins and/or Services
• Custom Web App Development

Features are added to websites via plugins, extensions, and custom-coding. For plugins, the bulk of the price doesn’t come from the initial purchase of the feature, but from the time it takes to install/integrate it, perform testing, and make any edits to the code in order to make the plugin function as-needed (which, in some cases, can end up costing more than having the feature custom-coded from the start).

Bottom Line: Features can range in price depending on the type. For example, ecommerce can easily add around $2,000 to a website. Expect to pay an initial investment of anywhere from $150 for basic add-ons and a few thousand for complex features.

Who Will Provide the Content?

What would your online home be without the items that fill it and give it meaning? Images, videos, and copy make up the content of your website, and these items have to come from somewhere.

Your website’s copy not only informs customers about a variety of factors regarding your company, products, and services, but it also has a large impact on your SEO. Will your company be writing the copy? Will you have an outside source review it? Will you hire a professional copywriter? Obviously the cheapest option is to have someone within your company write the website copy (this is actually preferred; who knows your company better than you?). However, we always recommend that you have someone outside of your organization review the copy to make sure there aren’t any errors and that the copy contains the necessary keywords.

Images are one of the key components of a website that add visual interest. Obviously, providing your own images (one’s that you’ve taken yourself) is less costly than having to purchase images from a stock site like iStock or hiring a professional photographer to capture the images for you. However, if you don’t have experience with photography, you could inadvertently cause your site to look cheap and unprofessional by uploading low quality images. NEVER take an image off of the internet that you haven’t paid for; this could open up your company to a lawsuit.

Bottom Line: The cost for a professional copywriter depends on the number of pages on your company’s site, as well as the depth of the copy. Realistically, expect to spend around $135 a page for a professional writer. For stock photography images, expect to pay $12-$36 for a great image and around $300-$400 for a really high-end one (Getty Images). If you expect on making more than 10,000 runs of an item, you’ll likely need to pay for an “extended rights” license.

Who Will Edit and Maintain the Site?

Before a website is launched, companies should consider who is going to maintain and manage it.

An important consideration is how the content will get onto your site. Web design companies are usually willing to provide training to their clients on how to navigate the CMS of their website (although training time is billed, or included in a flat rate) so that a company’s employees can upload and edit content as they please. Or, as most companies do, you can have your web design company manage and edit the content for you.

In addition to having fresh content, maintenance is also required. Just as with any home, things break and need to be repaired or updated over time. Software, templates, and features need to be monitored, updated, and fixed. Often times, these updates have to do with protecting your website from emerging threats like hackers, so updating your website is not an option, but a necessity.

Bottom Line: Expect to pay anywhere from $400-$2,000+ a year on maintenance services (the higher end of the spectrum is typically for websites that weren’t built correctly in the beginning).
As a reminder, the values above are only estimates. Depending on who your company works with, where they are based, what their overhead costs are, what value they place on their services, and so on, the price will vary significantly. Remember that with web design and development, you truly get what you pay. If you only want to pay very little for your online home, expect to receive very little—along with a whole bunch of headaches.

For a free quote or more information about the web design and development process, call Green Group Studio today at 561-594-7336!