How much does a website cost? What really drives the price

“How much does a website cost?” is the question we hear most, and the honest answer is: it depends. That’s not a way to dodge it. A website can be a single presentation page or a system with payments, bookings and user accounts, and both are called “a website”.

Instead of giving you a number that won’t fit your case, we’ll explain what makes a quote go up or down. That way you can compare proposals with confidence.

1. How many pages, and how different they are

A one-page landing site is not the same as a ten-section website. But how many different page types there are matters more than the total number of pages.

• Ten service pages with the same structure are designed once and repeated.
• A homepage, a services page, a portfolio, a blog and a quote form are five different designs.

When you ask for a quote, write down the sections you have in mind. It makes the estimate much more accurate.

2. Custom design or a template

A purchased template is cheaper to start with, but your site will look like many others and you’ll have to bend your content to fit it. A custom design starts from your business: what you need to communicate, to whom, and what you want the visitor to do.

You don’t always need the second option. For a business that’s just starting out, something simpler may be fine. For a business competing in a crowded market, a custom design usually pays for itself.

3. The technology

The tool used to build the site also matters. A WordPress site with a template, a custom-built site and a Shopify store have different upfront and maintenance costs. We compare them in WordPress vs. a custom website.

A useful rule: don’t choose the technology based only on what it costs today. Think about what it will cost to maintain, keep fast and change two years from now.

4. Extra features

This is where quotes vary the most. Some examples of things that add work:

• An online store with a catalog, cart and payment gateways like Stripe or Mercado Pago.
• Appointment booking connected to a calendar.
• A client area with logins.
• Integrations with your CRM, invoicing system or other tools.
• Multiple languages, which means translating and maintaining everything twice.

A contact form and a WhatsApp button, on the other hand, are standard and shouldn’t make anything more expensive.

5. Who writes the copy and provides the photos

A point almost nobody considers: content. If you bring ready-to-use text and photos, the project is simpler. If information needs to be written, organized or photographed, that’s extra work, and it’s also what delays projects the most. Here’s a guide to preparing your content before you start.

6. SEO and speed from day one

A site can “work” and still be slow or invisible to Google. Setting up titles, structure, optimized images, Google Search Console and your Google Business Profile takes time. It’s cheaper to do it right from the start than to fix it later. To see why it matters so much, read how a slow website loses you clients.

7. What comes after launch

The cost of a website doesn’t end the day it goes live. There are recurring costs worth knowing from the start:

• Domain, renewed every year.
• Hosting, monthly or yearly.
• Maintenance: updates, backups, security and small changes.

Some quotes look cheap because they include none of this. Always ask what happens the month after launch. We explain it in what your website needs after launch.

How to compare two quotes

When you have proposals in hand, check that they answer the same questions:

1. Exactly which pages and features are included?
2. Is the design custom or a template?
3. Who loads the content?
4. Does it include basic SEO, Analytics and Search Console?
5. What does hosting include and who manages it?
6. How long is support after launch?
7. Will the domain and the site be in your name?

The last point is key: your domain should be registered in your name, not the agency’s.

Cheap and expensive

A very cheap website isn’t necessarily bad, and an expensive one isn’t necessarily good. What matters is whether it solves your problem: getting found, making clear what you do and getting people to contact you. A website that brings no inquiries is expensive, no matter how little it cost.

At Balboa Web we give you a fixed quote based on what your business needs, and we explain what each part includes. Check out our services or get in touch and we’ll go through it together.