You asked three studios for a price. You got three numbers that do not overlap, none of them explained. Now you are comparing totals, which is the one comparison that tells you nothing.
A total is an output. What you need is the reasoning that produced it.
What a real estimate contains
A named scope. Not "a website" — a list of pages, and what each one does. If a studio cannot produce that list, they have not thought about your project yet. They have thought about their average project.
An itemised split. Roughly what share is discovery, design, build, content and launch. The proportions tell you what kind of studio you are talking to.
What is excluded. Photography, copywriting and translations are the three most commonly assumed and most commonly missing. Naming them is a sign of experience, not of nickel-and-diming.
What happens when scope changes. A rate, a process, or both, in writing. Every project changes. A quote that pretends otherwise becomes an argument later.
A delivery window, with conditions. Not just a date, but what has to happen on your side for the date to hold.
What the shares tell you
If a quote is 80% build, nobody is doing discovery, and you will pay for that later in changes to work that is already finished.
If it is 60% design, you are buying pictures of a website. Beautiful, and then someone has to build it.
If content is missing entirely, either you are writing it — which is fine if you know that now — or the site launches with placeholder text, which is how sites end up half-finished for a year.
Why the ranges are so wide
Three questions move a website's price more than everything else combined:
Does it take money? Payments mean a provider, a tested failure path, refunds, and a record that survives a dispute.
Does someone need to change it without calling you? Editable content means a content system, permissions, and a preview step.
How many one-off screens are there? Ten pages sharing a template cost roughly what two cost. Ten pages that each look different cost ten times.
Two quotes can differ by a factor of four and both be honest, if one assumed the brochure and the other assumed the platform.
What to do with a single number
Ask for the breakdown. That is it.
A studio that has thought about your project can produce one in an afternoon, because the thinking is already done. A studio that cannot will either produce something invented, or go quiet — and either answer is the information you needed.
When we quote, the scope and the split go in writing before anything starts, which is what our contact form is actually collecting. Not because it is generous, but because a written scope is the cheapest insurance either side can buy.