Who builds it, and what that costs
In short
The price follows who builds the site and how much of the work they take on. A builder plan costs a monthly fee and your own hours, while a freelancer or a web design company charges for its hours or for the project.
A builder plan is the cheapest way to get a site live, and the time it takes is yours: you pick a template, write the pages and keep them current, with the hosting inside the plan. It suits a site whose job is to say what you do and how to reach you.
A freelancer or a web design company does that work for you. Rates differ with who you hire and where they work, and a project price follows the scope far more than the look. Further down this page, the sources say how that work is priced, by the hour or by the project, each with a link to its page and the day it was read.
| Who does the work | What you pay for | What moves the price | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A builder plan | You, on the builder's templates | A monthly or yearly plan, and your own hours | The plan you pick and the time you put in |
| An independent designer | A freelancer, often by the hour | Their hours, or a project price | Their rate and the hours your scope takes |
| A web design company | A team, usually for a project price | The project, set out in a written scope | The pages and what the site connects to |
Swipe sideways to see every column
What moves the price
In short
The price moves with what the site has to do rather than how it looks: how many pages it carries, and what happens after someone fills in a form or books a slot.
Pages come first. After that, each feature that handles something for a customer adds its own step, such as bookings, card payments, online ordering or a client portal, and a portal, or payments together with bookings, takes a project past a website and into an app.
Words are the other lever. A quote that assumes you supply the text and photos costs less than one where the pages are written from scratch, because a page someone has to research and write takes longer than one that arrives finished.
Running costs after launch
In short
After launch a site costs its hosting and its domain, paid to the providers on your own card. Care for the site and GEO, the monthly answer-engine work, are both optional.
Hosting and the domain are the two costs you cannot skip, and they go straight to the companies that provide them, at cost, with no markup from us. Keeping them on your card also keeps them in your name.
A care plan pays for the upkeep a live site needs, and GEO for the monthly checks and pages that help answer engines name you. On a site we build, each is priced in the written plan, and you can take the site without either.
A worked example (hypothetical)
In short
A small bookshop with an events calendar and an inquiry form needs a small site whose forms send email, with no CRM behind it.
Picture an independent bookshop that wants eight pages: the shop, the hours, a page per reading group, an events calendar and a form for school orders. Every form sends an email and nothing needs a CRM, so the scope stays small, and the written plan prices it line by line.
Hosting and the domain run on the shop's own card. If the shop later wants to sell books online, that is a new feature priced in writing before anything is built, not a surprise in the first bill.
What this means for a small business
In short
Price the jobs the site must do before you price the site. A written list of the pages and what each form does lets you compare any two quotes line by line, ours included.
Not every small business needs a custom site. The SBA Office of Advocacy counts 36.2 million small businesses in the US, 82.3 percent of them with no employees, and for an owner working alone a builder plan run by the owner can be the right first site.
The case for a build grows with the work the site does, such as bookings that must land in your calendar or inquiries that must reach the right person. Projects start at $2,500. Book a call and we ask what the site has to do, then send a written plan with the exact price before anything starts; in the Los Angeles area the planning can happen in person.