Web
What should a small business website actually cost?
Ask this question anywhere and you will get answers spanning several orders of magnitude, which tells you the question is underspecified rather than that everyone is lying.
Why the range is so wide
A website can mean a template with your logo dropped in, or a site built around how your business actually gets enquiries, with copy written from interviews and photography shot for it.
Both are honestly described as a website. The word is doing no work. Comparing two quotes without comparing scope tells you nothing, which is the position most business owners are in when they start.
The six things that move the number
How many pages, and whether they are genuinely different or variations of one layout.
Who writes the copy. This is the biggest hidden variable. Copy written properly takes interviews and drafting, and clients who agree to supply their own frequently never do, which is how projects stall for months.
Whether photography and video are included, or whether the site will use stock images of somebody else's business.
Template or custom. Templates are not shameful and are often correct. The difference should be reflected in the price.
Whether it needs to do anything beyond inform. Booking, payments, and account areas are software rather than pages.
What happens afterwards. Hosting, updates, and whether you can change your own opening hours without paying someone.
What to ask before agreeing to anything
Who writes the words. Who owns the domain, the files and the accounts. Whether you can edit it yourself. What happens to your existing search rankings when the old site is replaced. What the ongoing cost is.
The last one catches people out constantly. A low build cost attached to a maintenance arrangement you cannot leave is not a low cost.
The cheapest real risk
It is rarely that the site looks bad. It is that you cannot change it, do not own it, or that nobody ever considered whether it could be found.
A site nobody visits has a visibility problem rather than a design problem, which is worth establishing before commissioning anything. That distinction is the whole of whether you need a rebuild at all.
Common questions
Why do website quotes vary so much?
Because the same word covers wildly different amounts of work. A template filled in with your logo and a site designed around how your business actually gets enquiries are both called a website. The number tracks the scope, and the scope is usually the part nobody explains.
What actually drives the cost of a website?
How many pages, whether the copy is written for you or supplied by you, whether photography and video are included, whether it is built on a template or from scratch, whether it needs booking or payments, and who maintains it afterwards. Those six explain nearly all the variation.
Is a cheap website a bad idea?
Not automatically. A simple, fast, accurate site beats an elaborate one that never gets updated. The risk with the cheapest option is usually that you cannot edit it, do not own it, or that it was never built to be found in search.
What should I ask before commissioning a website?
Who writes the copy, who owns the domain and the files, whether you can edit it without going back to the developer, what happens to your existing search rankings, and what the ongoing costs are. Those five separate most quotes quickly.