How Much Does a Website Really Cost?
Are you looking for a company to create a website for your business and find very different prices? From almost free websites to quotes exceeding €2,000. At this point, you wonder: how much does your website really cost? Which company can you trust, and who will truly offer what you need?
To shed some light on this matter and as a reference for all our clients, we have decided to prepare this document outlining the main points to consider when programming/quoting a website and how the budget may increase depending on the client’s needs.
1. SERVER AND DOMAIN
To have a website, you need a server (the place where your website content will be hosted) and a domain (the URL of your website, for example: marabelia.com). Both the server and the domain are contracted for one-year periods, and after that time, they must be renewed for another year.
Prices for both vary greatly from one company to another, but don’t be fooled, this is not expensive. Generally, for a standard website, a basic hosting plan with 1GB capacity, 1 database, 2 email accounts, and, if possible, a good transfer capacity (in our case, we offer unlimited transfer to our clients) will suffice. These are our prices:
| BASIC HOSTING | 1 GB | 2 Email Accounts | Unlimited Transfer 1 Database |
€50 |
| MEDIUM HOSTING | 2 GB | 5 Email Accounts | Unlimited Transfer 1 Database |
€70 |
| PRO HOSTING | 3 GB | 10 Email Accounts | Unlimited Transfer 2 Databases |
€120 |
| CUSTOM HOSTING | 5 GB | Unlimited Email Accounts | Unlimited Transfer 5 Databases Multiple websites hosted |
€250 |
| Domain.com or domain.es | €10 |
The prices listed include our management fees, so a small commission for our services is already incorporated. We include the creation of email accounts and a configuration manual for the client.
It is very rare for hosting to cause any problem once the website and email are configured, but if there is an issue, naturally we will take care of solving it without charging the client any extra fees.
2. THE WEBSITE
There was a long time ago when a website was a handcrafted product created from scratch using complex programming languages: HTML, PHP, CSS, SWF… Back then, building a website was a titanic task that could take months of exclusive work. It was logical to understand that websites with some complexity had exorbitant prices.
All this has changed. Except for rare exceptions, any web developer will work on your website using a standardized CMS (Content Management System) that they don’t have to program because it’s already built. The most common CMS platforms are WordPress, Joomla, PrestaShop, etc. Although some web companies create their own CMS platforms to make life harder for the rest of the developers (and for themselves, in the process).
2.1. THE CMS (Content Management System)
We usually work with the WordPress system, which is free, open source, and has countless extensions that improve every day. This greatly eases our work because most of the extensions our website will need have already been developed by others.
WordPress (wordpress.org) is available for free to anyone. So, our role with the CMS is basically to install it on our hosting. For this, we need to perform several steps which, by now, are quite mechanical: creating the database, uploading files to the server, configuring files so the system connects with the database, basic WordPress setup… In short, without getting technical, this is quick (no more than two hours) but not everyone can do it, it requires some learning: You need to know where the screw is and what wrench is needed to tighten it. Continuing with this analogy, we don’t charge for tightening the screw, but for applying the knowledge about which screw to tighten.
| Database configuration, CMS upload and basic WordPress setup | 150€ |
2.2. The Template. Basic website template.
Just like with the CMS, we could create a template (basic design layout) for our website from scratch. But this is neither common nor sensible. Hundreds of developers have created countless themes to build websites, and surely one of those designs fits what we are looking for as a starting point. There are many free themes that WordPress offers to its users, but it is worth investing some money to buy a Premium theme from Themeforest. Premium themes not only provide good support and updates but also offer many design possibilities and are usually well-stocked with shortcodes that generate nice effects and/or nowadays include some visual builder that makes programming even easier.
Just like with WordPress itself, handling a template is not a walk in the park, it requires some knowledge of both the CMS and the template itself, since each developer builds their templates in a particular way.
Web designers (like us) usually make life easier in this regard. Since the overall appearance of the website can always be changed with CSS (I will explain this later), mastering 3 or 4 templates is enough to create countless web designs. So we work from those 3 or 4 themes we know well to offer our clients any possibility.
The cost of the template is borne by the Themeforest developer, with prices ranging from $14 to a lot of money. Our favorite templates are around 59 dollars. Should we buy it? It is recommended to buy it (updates will be automatic, technical support will be available, etc.), but it is not essential. We can keep our template in demo mode forever without problems. So, the decision to purchase the license or not lies with the client. We do not include the license in the price.
Once the Premium template is installed, we must configure it to adapt it to the client’s corporate image. Essentially, what we do is:
- Upload the company logo, which will be displayed on the homepage.
- Upload the favicon (small web icon) that will appear in the browser.
- Define the fonts and colors for the entire website: texts, links, buttons, etc.
- Other settings: Define social networks, menu type, footer type, etc.
Besides the template, we also need plugins to create a more attractive website design. We do not increase the website price for installing these plugins since we consider them essential, but we inform the client that the plugins do not include licenses. Our essential design plugins are:
- Essential Grid: Allows creating grids that are visually very attractive and interactive, with almost any element we have at our disposal.
- Revolution Slider:
- Visual Composer:
| Installation and basic configuration of a premium template + premium plugins* | 150€ |
*License purchase separate.
2.3. The design of a basic website.
What is a standard web page?
For us, a basic website is one that has the following elements:
| Home or Homepage | Logo + main menu
Slider (slideshow) with photos that change automatically. Featured section (usually 3) with interactive image links + brief explanatory text. Footer: Page footer with social media and copyright. |
| Basic page the company | Title. A brief description of the company with a photo. Laid out in two columns. |
| Basic page the product | Title. A brief description of the product being sold with one or two photos. Laid out in two columns. |
| Basic page contact | Title. Contact page with interactive map (Google), contact details, and contact form. |
Assuming that the client will provide all the graphic and textual material to create the website contents, the design work will not be very elaborate, so we will probably have this website ready in a couple of days. For this work, we will charge an additional 200€, which will be added to the previous costs, so the price for a basic website will be as follows:
| BASIC HOSTING 1GB + 2 EMAIL ACCOUNTS + UNLIMITED TRANSFER | 50€ |
| DOMAIN PURCHASE .COM OR .ES | 10€ |
| Database configuration, CMS upload, and basic WordPress setup | 150€ |
| Purchase, installation, and basic configuration of a premium template
+ premium design plugins |
150€ |
| Content design for a basic website
(Home + 3 simple layout pages) |
200€ |
FINAL WEBSITE PRICE* |
560€ |
*Prices do not include VAT.
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2.4. Extras: What increases the price of my website?
2.4.1. Design extras
| Extra page | Add a new page to the menu and the website with basic format:
2 columns with text + 1 image |
30€ |
| Extra block on a page | A new block within the same page that can be differentiated with a background of another color or separated from the previous one by a parallax image.
This block can have 1, 2, 3, or more columns and some image or highlighted text. |
10€ |
| CSS change | Changes in the CSS code of an element | 5€ |
| Slide with layers | Animated slide design up to 3 layers. For example:
With entry and exit animations. |
15€ |
| Custom grid | Custom grid design (Interactive element for featured content, blog, products, etc.) | 30€ |
2.4.2. Plugins
Although most of the plugins we will use on your website are free, our know how (knowing which plugin is best to use in each case) and the plugin configuration have value.
Below we list some of the free plugins we use on our websites and the implementation cost.
| SEO Yoast | Essential for online positioning. Allows modifying the title and description of our website pages for Google.
It is a basic plugin since the layout usually uses code that Google interprets and should not be included in the description of our pages. Our work with SEO Yoast includes generating the appropriate snippet with key terms for up to 10 pages of the website. |
50€ |
| Antispam Bee | If you don’t want to receive spam comments galore, you will need a plugin like this. It blocks spammers based on different selectable criteria (includes a blacklist database), automatically deletes spam, and shows spam statistics in a main panel. A highly recommended basic plugin. | 15€ |
| Google Analytics Dashboard | The plugin installation includes registering the website in Google Analytics and connecting it with the plugin. Additionally, we register the website in Webmaster tools and upload the sitemaps.xml to Google.
With this plugin, you will know how many people visit your website, where they go, how long they stay, where they come from, and much more! |
60€ |
| Wordfence Security | Security plugin to block web attacks (massive login attempts) and detect possible weaknesses on our website. It notifies us by email of each new access providing the IP and location. We can configure it to add new security barriers. A preventive plugin that is always useful. | 15€ |
| Cocorico Social | Adds social media icons in the footer (or header) of your blog posts so users can easily share articles on social networks. It can include a share counter to see how many times an article has been shared. | 10€ |
| Loco Translate | Another essential for your website if you want to translate the parts of the blog that come by default in English. | 15€ |
2.4.3. The Online Store: WooCommerce
There are many web templates specifically designed for WooCommerce, so if your website is going to be an online store, it is best to start from a template prepared for it.
The extra complexity of designing a website with an online store is not so much the website design or the implementation of the store but the internal configuration of WooCommerce in aspects such as:
- General WooCommerce configuration: VAT on products, shipping/sales zones, etc.
- Payment methods: Configuring payments through Stripe, PayPal, or virtual POS.
- Shipping costs: Configuring shipping costs by zones and defining free shipping if applicable.
- Creation and configuration of pages: my account, cart, checkout…
- Creation of the store’s sidebar menu with product categories and filters.
- Uploading 10 products and testing the store.
| Installation and configuration of WooCommerce and launching the online store | 350€ |
2.4.4. Plugins for the online store
We will not go into detail in this section as we have detailed the topic of plugins for online stores in our blog article “Add-ons for Online Stores”.
You can visit the article for more information; however, it is worth mentioning that most useful add-ons for online stores are paid and require advanced configuration, so depending on the type of plugin and the complexity of its programming, the price of the online store can increase by up to 600€ more.
2.5. Advanced and Custom Design
We can do wonders and cutting-edge design on your website, but this comes at a price. Innovating means creating an exclusive product based on something that does not exist. Therefore, innovating in the web environment means designing with a high level of creativity (hours and hours of work, testing, revisions, discards, and madness) and writing code from scratch. The price of a bespoke design and programming website is difficult to estimate, as one never knows how many hours it will take to do something never done before. But as a guideline, we can say that a website with a high degree of design and programming can cost around 1500€.
