What a website actually costs, and why nobody will tell you

If you have spent an afternoon looking for someone to build you a website, you have noticed that nobody publishes prices. It is irritating, it feels evasive, and you are left guessing whether the answer is going to be two thousand or twenty.

There are two reasons for it. One is defensible and one is not.

A website is not a product with a shelf price. The same brief — "we need a new site" — covers a five-page brochure that takes three weeks and a booking platform that takes four months. Quoting before understanding which one you are is not confidence, it is guessing, and the guess gets corrected later at your expense.

Any number published on a page would either be so low it is meaningless once scope arrives, or so high it scares off people who needed the cheap version.

The other reason is that some agencies price on what they think you can pay rather than what the work takes. A recognisable company name in the enquiry form changes the number. That is why the request for your budget arrives before any discussion of what you need.

You cannot always tell which kind you are talking to. But you can watch for the tell: if the conversation is mostly about your budget and barely about your problem, you are being sized up rather than scoped.

Five things, roughly in order of how much they move the number:

• How many genuinely different page layouts there are. Twelve pages using three layouts is a small job. Six pages using six layouts is not.
• Whether it needs to do anything, or just say something. Bookings, payments, accounts and search all add real work. A site that only has to inform is dramatically cheaper.
• Whether the content exists. Writing the words is often a bigger job than building the pages, and it is the single most common reason projects stall.
• How many systems it has to talk to. One is fine. Three that were never designed to be connected is where budgets go.
• How many people have to approve it. Every extra decision-maker adds revision rounds, and revision rounds are time.

A fair quote is itemised enough that you can see what you are dropping if you need it cheaper. If the only line is "Website — £X", you have no way to negotiate except asking them to do the same work for less, which nobody does well.

A fair quote also states what is not included. Hosting, content writing, photography, ongoing changes — the absence of these from a quote is not generosity, it is a gap you will pay for later.

And a fair quote comes with a timeline that has your name on it. "Four to six weeks" is a real answer. "As soon as possible" is not.

Rather than "how much is a website", ask "what would you leave out to bring this in twenty per cent cheaper?" The answer tells you two things at once: whether they understand which parts actually matter, and whether they are willing to talk you out of spending money.

Anyone who cannot answer that has not thought about your project. Anyone who refuses to is not on your side.