Fri Aug 07 2026
Ask three agencies for a quote and you'll often get three very different numbers, sometimes an order of magnitude apart. That's not necessarily anyone being dishonest — it usually reflects real differences in what's being built. A template-based site with a handful of pages is a different job from a custom-designed site with unique layouts, animations, integrations, and ongoing content structure. The number on a quote is really a proxy for hours of design, development, and testing, so understanding what drives those hours helps explain the spread.
A few factors tend to move the price more than anything else: the number of unique page templates (not total pages — ten blog posts using one template cost far less than ten uniquely designed pages), whether the design is custom or built from an existing template, how much content needs to be written or migrated, and whether the site needs custom functionality like bookings, logins, payments, or integrations with other software. Ongoing costs matter too — hosting, maintenance, and future updates are often left out of an initial quote but add up over the life of the site.
The most common overspend is building custom functionality for something a existing tool already does well — a booking system, a newsletter signup, an e-commerce checkout. These often have reliable, affordable off-the-shelf options that plug into a site rather than needing to be built from scratch. The second most common overspend is scope creep: adding 'just one more feature' mid-project, which is almost always more expensive than planning for it from the start, because it usually means reworking something already built.
The more clearly you can describe what you need — page count, must-have features, examples of sites you like, and a rough timeline — the more accurate a quote will be. It also helps to ask directly what's included: is content writing part of it? How many rounds of design revisions? Is hosting and maintenance separate? A good developer or agency should be able to walk through these line by line rather than handing over a single number with no breakdown.
