Ask three studios what a website costs and you will get three numbers that do not overlap. That is not because two of them are lying. It is because "a website" describes a brochure with five pages and it also describes a booking system that takes payments in three currencies, and those are not the same object.
Here is how the money actually breaks down, so you can read a quote instead of comparing totals.
What you are actually paying for
Almost every quote is some mix of five things. The proportions tell you what kind of studio you are talking to.
| Line | What it covers | Typical share |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery | Working out what the site has to do | 10–15% |
| Design | Layout, typography, how it feels to use | 20–30% |
| Build | Turning that into working software | 35–50% |
| Content | Words, photography, migration of what exists | 10–20% |
| Launch and aftercare | Testing, going live, the first month | 5–10% |
If a quote is 80% "build", nobody is doing discovery, and you will pay for that later in changes. If it is 60% "design", you are buying pictures of a website.
Why the range is so wide
Three questions move the number more than anything else.
Does it take money? A site that accepts payments needs a payment provider, a tested failure path for when a card is declined, and a record of what was bought. That is a different category of work from a page with a phone number on it.
Does someone need to change it without calling you? Editable content means a content system, permissions, and a way to preview a change before it goes live.
How many one-off screens are there? Ten pages that share one template cost roughly what two pages cost. Ten pages that each look different cost ten times.
The most expensive thing in any build is a decision that gets reversed after the
work is done. Discovery is not overhead — it is the cheapest place to change your
mind.
What a real estimate looks like
An estimate you can trust has three properties.
- It names a scope. Not "a website" — a list of pages and what each one does.
- It says what is not included. Photography, copywriting, and translations are the three most commonly assumed and most commonly missing.
- It says what happens when scope changes. A rate, a process, or both. Every project changes; a quote that pretends otherwise is a quote that becomes an argument.
If you get a single number with no breakdown, ask for the breakdown. A studio that cannot produce one has not thought about your project yet.
The questions worth asking
- Who owns the code and the domain when this is finished?
- What happens if the site breaks at the weekend?
- Can I edit the content myself, and what exactly can I edit?
- What is the plan for the second year?
That last one separates a project from a purchase. A website is not a thing you buy once; it is a thing that needs looking after. Studios that have thought about the second year will have an answer ready.
Where we sit
We build custom — no templates — which means discovery is a real phase and the number depends on what we find in it. If you want a straight answer for your specific case, tell us what the site has to do and you will get a scoped estimate rather than a range.