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How much should your website cost?

February 10, 2010

Whenever you ask someone how much a website costs, it seems you can't get a straight answer. Responses might be:

• It depends what you want
• It depends how many pages you need
• Do you want a CMS (content management system, that lets you update it yourself)?
• How much of the content are you going to supply yourself?
• £50

All of the above are valid (although if someone offers to build your site for £50, run away fast). The fact is, a website can be super simple or super complicated. The cost of your website also depends on the following (which you won't get told unless your agency is unusually honest):

• We are going to overcharge you because we lost a lot of money on the last project
• We'll charge you more if we think you're going to be a massive pain in the bum
• Anything we sort out for you like stock photography, domain name and hosting will have a markup
• We'll up our prices if we think you are loaded

When you're looking for someone to build your site, always make sure to get lots of quotes. Don't necessarily go for the cheapest (the old adage about peanuts and monkeys is particularly true in web design. Actually, you can pay in buckets of jewels and still end up with a website that's a bag of washing, if you're not careful).

Next, compare your quotes. See if one company is offering more for the money. Is there support included? What sort of limits do they impose? Has one company guaranteed a minimum level of accessibility, and if so, why can't they all do that?

That should narrow the field down a lot, but if you still can't make a decision, go with your instinct. Or just look at the websites in their portfolio, phone the numbers on them, and get their former clients to dish.

I'm sorry I can't give you a definitive answer to the question 'How much will should your website cost?' Perhaps a better question would be 'How will the website recoup this cost?' To answer that, have a read of some of the other articles on this site.