Website quotes vary by an order of magnitude for apparently the same thing. Here is what actually drives the number, and how to compare two very different proposals.
Two agencies can quote wildly different numbers for what sounds like the same website. Usually neither is wrong — they are quoting different things. The variable is almost never "design quality"; it is scope, content, integrations and who does the work after launch.
What actually drives the number
Number of unique templates, not number of pages
A 200-page site built from six templates costs less than a 12-page site where every page is bespoke. When you get a quote, ask how many distinct templates it covers. That is the real unit of work.
Who writes the content
This is the most common reason projects overrun. If the quote assumes you will supply final copy and images, and you cannot, the timeline doubles and someone has to be paid to write it. Decide up front and price it in.
Integrations
A brochure site is self-contained. The moment it needs to talk to a CRM, a booking system, an ERP or a payment provider, you are building software, and the cost profile changes. Each integration carries discovery, error handling, and someone's time when the other end changes their API.
Who owns it afterwards
A site your marketing team can edit without a developer costs more to build and far less to run. A site that needs a developer for every change is cheaper on day one and more expensive by month six.
Three honest tiers
| Tier | What it is | Right when |
|---|---|---|
| Template build | A quality theme, your branding, your content | You need to exist online credibly and move on |
| Bespoke marketing site | Custom design system, CMS your team runs, measured against leads | The site is a primary sales channel |
| Web product | Accounts, data, integrations, ongoing releases | The site is the service |
Most disappointment comes from buying the first and expecting the second.
The line items people forget
- Content migration from the old site — genuinely laborious if there are hundreds of pages
- Redirects. Skipping these is how a redesign loses hard-won search rankings overnight
- Accessibility. Cheaper designed in than retrofitted, and in many sectors a legal requirement
- Analytics and consent configured properly, not just a tag pasted in
- Hosting, domains, certificates and who renews them
- Post-launch support — the first month always finds things
Ask every bidder the same question: "What is not included in this price?" The quality of that answer tells you more about how the project will go than the number does.
How to compare two proposals fairly
- Normalise the scope — count templates, integrations and who writes content
- Add twelve months of running costs to each
- Ask what happens if you need a change in month three, and what that costs
- Ask who owns the code and the design files
- Ask what success is measured against — if nobody mentions a metric, that is a flag
If you want a starting point on performance expectations, Core Web Vitals covers the technical standard any new build should be held to.
Frequently asked questions
Is a template site a bad idea?
No. For many businesses it is the right call — fast, cheap and perfectly credible. It becomes the wrong call when the site needs to do something specific to your business that the template was never designed for.
How long should a website project take?
A template build, two to four weeks. A bespoke marketing site, eight to sixteen. A web product is continuous rather than finished. Content readiness is the usual bottleneck, not development.
Will a redesign hurt my search rankings?
It can, if URLs change without redirects, or if content is cut. Insist on a redirect map and a pre-launch crawl comparison. Handled properly, a faster, better-structured site usually helps.
