How much does a website cost in 2026?

Almost every answer to this question online is either a lead-capture form or a range so wide it tells you nothing. Here are the numbers we actually charge, why they vary, and where the money genuinely goes.

The honest ranges

What actually drives the price

Page count is the thing clients ask about and roughly the least important factor. The fourth page of a template costs almost nothing. Here's what genuinely moves the number:

• →Decisions. If you arrive knowing what the site must do and who it's for, you're at the bottom of the range. If working that out is part of the job, you're not paying for pages, you're paying for strategy.
• →Content. Copy and photography are the single most common reason projects stall and budgets drift. Writing it for you costs money; waiting six weeks for you to write it costs more.
• →Custom vs configured. A designed-from-scratch interface costs multiples of a well-chosen template. Sometimes that's worth it. Often it isn't, and a good studio will tell you which.
• →Integrations. Every system the site has to talk to — CRM, inventory, payments, booking — adds real engineering. Two integrations is fine; nine is a different project.
• →Whether anyone maintains it afterwards. Budgeting only for the build is how sites end up abandoned eighteen months later.

What you can safely skip

Being told what not to buy is more useful than another feature list. In our experience these rarely earn their cost on a first build:

• →A custom CMS. Use an existing one. Building a content editor from scratch is months of work to rebuild something that already exists and is better.
• →A mobile app alongside the website. Almost nobody needs both on day one, and a good responsive site covers most of what an app would have done.
• →Elaborate animation on a site nobody has visited yet. Get the traffic first, then spend on delight.
• →A rebrand bundled into a web project. They're different jobs with different approval cycles, and combining them doubles the ways a timeline can slip.

The cost nobody quotes you

Running it. Hosting, a domain, SSL, dependency updates, security patches, backups, and someone to call when it breaks. Budget $50–$400 a month depending on how much of that you want to handle yourself.

This is the line people skip, and it's why so many sites are three years out of date with an expired certificate. A site is not a purchase, it's a thing that has to be kept alive.

How to compare quotes properly

1. 01Ask what happens when the scope changes mid-project. If the answer isn't 'the document changes first and you approve it', expect surprises on the invoice.
2. 02Ask who owns the code, the domain and the accounts at the end. If the answer is anything other than 'you do', walk.
3. 03Ask what the price does NOT include. This is where quotes diverge most — copywriting, images, SEO setup and post-launch fixes are often quietly excluded.
4. 04Ask for one thing they've built that you can open right now. Not a screenshot, a URL.
5. 05Ask who is doing the actual work, and whether you'll ever speak to them.

The short version

A good website is priced by how much certainty you bring to it. Turn up with a clear idea of what it's for and who it's for, and you'll pay the low end. Turn up asking someone else to work that out, and you're buying strategy — which is fine, but it should be a line item, not a surprise.