The short answer
A website for a business that runs on appointments, a clinic, a salon, a studio or a trade, costs somewhere between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars to build, and then something every month to keep it working. Where you land in that range depends on five things, and none of them is how pretty it looks.
Our own prices are on the pricing page: $500 for a site that needs to be findable and bookable, $1,500 for a site that runs on online booking with deposits and reminders, and a custom quote for anything with several locations or unusual rules. This article is about how to read any quote, including ours.
The five things that move the price
1. How many pages, and who writes them
A page is not expensive to build. A page is expensive to write. When a quote says "up to 8 pages", the real question is who produces the words on them. If the answer is you, budget your own time, because a business owner writing eight pages of copy is usually the thing that delays a launch by two months. If the answer is the studio, expect the price to reflect a conversation with you, a draft, and a round of changes.
For most booking-led businesses, eight pages is enough: home, about, a page per main service, prices, booking, contact, and one page for the questions people always ask. Twenty pages is for a practice with several practitioners or treatments that each deserve their own search result.
2. Whether booking is included, and how deep it goes
An enquiry form costs almost nothing. Online booking wired to the calendar you already use, with deposits taken by card and reminders sent automatically, is real work: choosing a system that fits how you run the diary, connecting it, testing the emails so they do not land in spam, and training your staff. That is the single biggest jump in most quotes, and it is the one that pays back fastest, because it takes bookings while you are with a client.
3. Whether you can edit it yourself
A site where prices and staff live in a list you can change in thirty seconds costs more to set up than one where every change goes back to the developer. Over a year, the first is far cheaper. Ask specifically: can I change a price, add a staff member, and swap a photo without calling anyone?
4. Speed and the phone
Most people who find you are on a phone. A site that loads in under two seconds on a mid-range phone on mobile data takes real care with images and scripts. A quote that does not mention speed usually delivers a site that looks fine on the developer's laptop and loses people in the car park.
5. What happens after launch
Every website needs updating, backing up and fixing. If the quote does not say what happens after launch, the answer is nothing happens, and in eighteen months the contact form has quietly stopped sending and nobody knows the login. A monthly care plan, ours start at $99, is the difference between a site that works for years and one that decays.
What is usually left out of the quote
Three costs are almost always paid separately, and a fair quote says so:
- Domain and hosting. Typically $10 to $30 a month combined. Pay for these yourself, in your own name, so you own them. A studio that insists on holding them is building a lock-in.
- Stock photography or a photographer. Your own phone photos are often better than stock for a local business, and we say so, but if you want a shoot, it is extra.
- Paid plugin or booking tool licences. Booking systems charge monthly. Some site features need a paid licence. Neither should be hidden inside a "website" price.
Anything else that appears on an invoice after the quote, without your agreement, is a problem with the studio rather than with websites.
Fixed price or starting point
"From $500" can mean two very different things. It can mean a fixed price for a defined scope, where the number does not move once work starts, or it can mean a starting point that grows once you are committed.
The test is simple: ask what is included, ask what would make the price go up, and ask whether the number is fixed once agreed. A studio that can answer all three in writing is quoting a fixed price. A studio that needs "a call to understand your needs" before it will name any number is not necessarily dishonest, but you are about to buy an hourly rate with a friendly face.
We publish our numbers because the first thing you want to know is whether we are in your range, and making you book a call to find out wastes your time and ours.
How long it takes
Two weeks for a site that needs to be findable and bookable. About four weeks for one that runs on online booking. Nearly all of the variance is on the client side: how quickly the conversation about the business happens, how fast photos and any existing copy arrive, and how long approval takes. A studio that promises a week is either templating or guessing.
What a good quote looks like
A good quote for a small business website has a fixed number, a list of what is included, a list of what is not, a live date, and a sentence about what happens after launch. It tells you who owns the domain, hosting and logins. It says who writes the words. It mentions the phone.
If you have a quote in front of you and it is missing more than one of those, ask. If you would like a second opinion on it, send it over. We will tell you whether it is fair, including when it is fairer than ours.