What a custom website actually costs

Why there is no single price

A website is not a product with a list price. It is a scope, and the scope is mostly determined by how many distinct templates you need and how many content types you have to support. A five-page site where every page uses the same layout is genuinely a one-template build. A five-page site with a homepage, a work index, a case study, a service page and a pricing page is five templates, each with its own responsive behaviour, empty state and edge cases.

That difference is why two quotes for “a five-page site” can be $2,500 and $9,000 and both be honest. They are not pricing the same job.

What actually moves the number

In our own scoping, four things account for almost all of the variance. Everything else is rounding.

• Templates, not pages — a new template is a new set of decisions; a new page inside one is an afternoon
• Whether the content exists — we write and structure copy, or we receive it finished
• Whether the team needs to edit it — a CMS is a product with its own UI, permissions and failure modes, not a checkbox
• Motion and media — a hero video, an animated sequence or a custom illustration is its own workstream

The part nobody quotes

The cheapest quote usually omits the same three things: a real QA pass across devices, performance work so the site is fast on a phone on a train, and any kind of handover. None of those show up in a design comp, and all three show up in month three.

So when you compare quotes, do not compare totals. Ask each studio what happens after launch — who fixes the form when it stops sending, and what it costs to add a page in six months. The studio that can answer that without hesitating is the one pricing the whole job.