How much does a Website Cost?
At the very beginning, there is an idea for a website! When this idea matures, the question of how much a website actually costs quickly arises.
The average cost of a website,
you need to invest at least:
| Design and Implementation | ca. 200 – 2500$ |
| Maintenance per Month | ca. 5 – 100$ |
| Hosting per Month | 1 – 10$ |
First Overview – How much does a Website cost?
To get to your website, you need to reach several milestones. Everything you hand over to external service providers in the process logically costs money.
| Website, Hosting and Maintenance Costs (entry) | Website, Hosting and Maintenance Costs (professional) | |
|---|---|---|
| Texts | 100 $ | 3000 $ |
| Photography | 100 $ | 5000 $ |
| Web Design / Implementation | 300 $ | 10.000 $ |
| Website Care (monthly) | 30 $ | 300 $ |
| Marketing (monthly) | 50 $ | 4000 $ |
| Total | 500 $ + 80 $ / Month | 18.000 $ + 4300 $ / Month |
How much does a website for club, school project, hobby is?
Here is the answer: With own contribution actually 0$!
Depending on how professional you want the website to look, you can of course always spend as much as you want. On the contrary, it is also possible to create a website completely free of charge.
A longer List of Options for Free Websites can be found here.
How much does a website cost for a business?
A website for a company can easily cost hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars.
The website with design and implementation, which fits the own taste and branding, is with a cheap version at about 400$ and can quickly cost over 10,000$ depending on the claim.
| Company / Website Type | One-time | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Individual and Microenterprises | 200 – 1000 $ | 100 – 2000 $ |
| KMU | 500 – 10.000 $ | 500 – 5000 $ |
| E-Commerce | 1000 – 25.000 $ | 300 – 20.000 $ |
| Web-App / Group Website | 1000 – 500.000 $ | 200 – 50.000 $ |
How much does a Website cost? Listing of the Types of Websites
A more specific view is to look at the website itself. There are certainly quite a few different types. Here I will list common websites and their rough estimated costs.
| Type of Website | Costs for Content, Design, Implementation (entry) | Costs for Content, Design, Implementation (professional) |
|---|---|---|
| Web Business Card | 50 $ | 300 $ |
| One Page Website | 100 $ | 2000 $ |
| Small Website with 4 – 8 Pages | 200 $ | 3000 $ |
| Website with 4 – 8 Pages + Blog | 500 $ | 5000 $ |
| Online Store | 1000 $ | 25.000 $ |
| Portal with User Management | 1000 $ | 50.000 $ |
How much does a Website cost – should we break it down?
Costs incurred with a website and around it can be roughly divided into:
How much does a Website cost and what is important for the website?
Content such as Texts and Images are extremely individual, as you can imagine. To write something about your business, it is important to engage with your business. For this, images of your business and products should be unique.
Web design is the graphic preparation of your idea for a website. It is possible to use standard templates and incorporate your images and texts. At the same time, it is also possible to hire a team of designers here and create a completely individual look.
Infrastructure is composed of several components such as domain, hosting, and the website platform. Few websites are developed from scratch these days. That’s why most of them rely on content management systems such as WordPress and Drupal.
Maintenance, Care, and maintenance are important and must be carried out even after the website has been created. In doing so, you ideally need little effort monthly, apart from major upgrades, which should be infrequent.
Marketing brings visitors to your website after it is online. After all, what good is the most beautiful and best website if you have 0 visitors per month? Accordingly, online marketing for a website can and should be the biggest cost and time for many companies.
How much do texts for my website cost?
Texts, even SEO texts respectively SEO copywriting can be found in many places and from many service providers on the Internet. It can be subdivided here between:
- Text Marketplace
- Freelancer without professional training
- Freelancer with journalistic background
- Agencies
A search on Google for “seo texts” yields “only” 24,100,000 results!
So where to start? How and by whom can you have your SEO texts created?
Text Marketplace
If you also order your products on Amazon, eBay, Etsy, etc., and find your craftsmen via MyHammer, Hagedoo, etc., then you have already gotten used to the marketplace model. For this I have good news for you:
For SEO texts there are also marketplaces where you can find support.
www.content.de
www.textbroker.com
www.twago.com
As with Amazon as well as other marketplaces, you have the advantage here that a lot of work is taken off your hands.
Price research, interviews, often even the entire project management is all simply done on the marketplaces.
By the way, the quality of the result depends on your instructions and on the competencies of the contractor.
Even regardless of the best instructions, you can sometimes have a bad experience here as well.
Don’t expect too much service or a perfect result right away. Of course, it can always be that everything works perfectly. Therefore, just try it out. For this, you can start with a small text.
Freelancer without Professional Training
Through eBay classifieds, kalaydo.de, and local websites, newspapers, and magazines, you can easily find students who have a penchant for writing and are happy to help.
The effort is higher with this model. The lack of experience among students may have a negative impact on your project effort. On the other hand, the hourly rate is often close to the minimum wage.
Price: Mostly per hour 10 – 40$
Freelancer with Journalistic Background
Most freelancers who have a professional background also have their own website. You can find them via Google with the above-mentioned search for “seo text”, “texts for Websites” and similar keywords. It may make sense for you to search regionally if you want to hand over books as suggestions, for example.
Prices here are around 30 – 120$ net hourly rate and per word usually 0,03$ – 0,60$.
A wide price range, I know. Therefore, what is the best thing to do?
For cheaper offers, you can simply place a test order. For the expensive offers, I would ask for references and call them.
Reviews online are good. However, there is always the possibility that the reviews are not completely honest.
Agencies for SEO Texts and Content Marketing
Consequently, agencies are at the upper end of the price spectrum. Accordingly, here you can expect a lot of experience from a wide variety of projects and usually good customer service.
With an agency, you always pay for the overhead of administration, human resources, etc. when you apply for a service.
Agencies can be more reliable than freelancers and students. However, I have been surprised in some projects how bad the cooperation with an agency can turn out.
Prices here are often around 60 – 150$ hourly rate.
Where should I commission my text?
To put it simply: depending on your budget!
If you budget 1500$ for your website, then you can spend a maximum of about 500$ on texts, depending on what else you need.
Google likes good content. Moreover, customers want to do well with content and the website structure too!
An example calculation:
Let’s say you’d like 10 pages, each with about 800 words per page:
10 * 800 = 8000 Words
500$ / 8000 Words = 0.0625$ per Word
Another way of looking at it is ROI (Return on Investment)
Let’s assume your website and texts are to be online for the next 5 years. Therefore, you plan marketing measures that will give you a constant growth of visitors.
Month 1: 0 Visitors
Month 60: 10,000 Visitors
With a good conversion rate of about 5%, you will receive an average of 8.3 inquiries or orders from 166 visits per month. Depending on your business model, you then know how much revenue and profit you generate from these eight inquiries.
Accordingly, it is possible to calculate when you will reach the break-even point.
Back to the price of professional copy-writers: 10 * 800 * 0,60$ = 4800$.
When should I commission my text?
Very good question! It certainly varies depending on the website. There are several perspectives that need to be considered.
Let’s assume that you believe in something with your start-up and want to achieve something.
First: The Content is King Perspective
A good start for your website is then with the standard content pages that you start with anyway. Beyond that, possibly about three to ten blog articles will provide a foundation for your website.
Accordingly, this content can all be ready before you put your website online.
Second: The SEO Perspective
Similar to what was just described, it makes sense to have a few pages to start with. Accordingly, in addition to the three to ten blog articles, plan directly the next 10 – 20 articles to publish new content regularly.
Third: The Technical Perspective
It is easier for the web designer or the webmaster of your website to build the content pages in a visually appealing way if he has the content.
Therefore, it is best to try to commission well-structured Word texts here. Accordingly, these should contain subheadings and rather short paragraphs.
How much does a Website cost – Conclusion Text
If you, or someone in your team, can write texts yourself it’s ideal!
You know your customers and products best.
Good texts are hard to write and good copywriters are hard to find.
Price does not seem to be a criterion for text quality.
How much does a website cost and how much do photos cost?
Photos, preferably actual professional photos are important to make a good impression.
Fortunately, photos are not quite as individual as texts and you have more options here. The cost of photos can be divided between:
- Supplier / Manufacturer
- Stock Photos
- Pupils and Students
- Photographers / Studios
Supplier / Manufacturer
First of all, very simple: if you purchase goods (or even services) from a supplier, simply ask if they have any photo material for you.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s heating construction, a chemistry lab, or swimming training, partners, suppliers, wholesalers and manufacturers often already have good image material that you can possibly draw on.
If you receive image material, then surely other dealers and service providers do too. Accordingly, you do not have individual images, but standard images with which everyone advertises.
Depending on the importance and marketing efforts, you can replace these photos with individual images sooner or later.
Stock Photos
These are images and graphics that you can search and download via online platforms.
Stock photos are produced in stock (“to have in stock”).
Most major platforms are English and international in nature. Therefore, you need to use English to search for specific terms.
Also, make sure here that culture and image content fit together. This means that images with Japanese license plates are not suitable for a car repair shop in NRW.
Price: 0$ – 50$ / Photo
| Provider | Lowest price per photo | Commercial Use? | License |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unsplash | 0,00 $ | Yes | License |
| Pexels | 0,00 $ | Yes | License |
| Pixabay | 0,00 $ | Yes | License |
| Bigstock | 0,26 $ | Yes | License |
| Stockphoto.com | 0,35 US$ | Yes | License |
| picjumbo | 0,00 $ | Yes | License |
| gettyimages | 50,00 $ | Yes | License |
| iStock | 9,00 $ | Yes | License |
Procedure: Open the pages and search for your desired terms. Once you find great photos, look at the details about cost and license. What are you allowed to do? What is required in return?
Important: If you commission a website and get photos with the website from the web designer, ask for the licenses. It is best to get a license per photo or a statement of where the photos came from with a link to the license.
Pupils and Students
DSLR cameras are cheaper than ever before. Moreover, even smartphones sometimes take great photos thanks to built-in software and AI algorithms.
From a technical point of view, photography is no longer as complicated as it was 30 years ago. In contrast, not much has changed stylistically, for example with image composition.
It just takes some experience to take good photos. Some students are advanced amateur photographers and take super photos. You can research for help here through classified ads, local online magazines, or Instagram.
Price: Mostly per hour 10 – 40$
Photographers / Studios
Photo studios and professional photographers have some advantages that you rarely find elsewhere. For example, they often have many years of experience and good equipment!
Depending on what kind of photos you need, you will get the best results from a studio. Especially with lighting, studios can score here.
Software on the smartphone now provides better results than novices with a DSLR. Still, depending on the lighting and composition, you get spectacular shots from a studio here!
Price: from approx. 10$ per picture
Price: from approx. 90$ per hour
Prices vary greatly, even between People, Product, and Outdoor Photography, as well as studios and photographers. That’s why you carefully compare offers and options.
Impotant: Pay attention to the details when researching prices. Because depending on the photo studio, hours are charged and picture material additionally.
How much does a website cost – Conclusion Photos
If you can work with stock photos, it’s fast, easy, and inexpensive.
With enough budget, give your photo projects to a studio.
If you want to start cheap, try amateur photographers and smartphones.
How much does web design cost?
How do you go about a good design and where do you get it? For this, as before, there are various options.
This section also includes the implementation of your website. In this sense, nowadays design and implementation of the website is done together (“full service”).
- Themes
- Theme + Graphic Designer
- Full Service Web Designer
- Full Service Web Agency
- Design Agency + Frontend Development
The design of your website is very important. In this sense, I have already seen in several projects that we have renewed the design without changing the structure and content.
The result was always a higher conversion rate. In short: more inquiries and more orders merely from a changed design?
For sure! You can easily test this yourself with A/B tests and purchased traffic.
Themes
For the vast majority of CMS (Content Management Systems) / website platforms, there are themes, templates, and ready-made designs that you can install and use. These sometimes have an outstanding advantage (if professionally developed): They work on all devices. Moreover, they are constantly being further developed.
| Provider | Lowest Price | System | Quantity (approx.) |
|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress | 0,00 $ | WordPress | 8000 |
| Drupal | 0,00 $ | Drupal | 3000 |
| Typo3 | 0,00 $ | Typo 3 | |
| Wix | 5,00 $ / Month | Wix | 800 |
| Squarespace | 11,00 $ / Month | Squarespace | |
| Weebly | 10,00 $ / Month | Weebly | |
| October CMS | 0,00 $ | October | 250 |
| Contao | 49,00 $ | Contao | 80 |
| TemplateMonster | 6,00 $ | All | 60.000 |
| ThemeForest | 5,00 US$ | All | 50.000 |
Price: 0 – 500$
Theme + Graphic Designer
If you want to customize your website a bit, I recommend using a ready-made theme, which is already very close to what you have in mind.
Based on this theme, work with a graphic artist or designer to customize details.
As a result, the layout and functionality come from the theme itself and possibly colors and various elements from a designer.
Price: 30 – 800$
Full Service Web Designer
Most web designers or web programmers who offer some sort of full service will do both for you.
You often get a ready-made theme, which may be customized with individual elements, and add your supplied visuals.
Be sure to check the focus of the service provider here before awarding your contract!
With a technical background, the focus will also be on technical implementation. Whereas for a service provider with a design focus, the visual aspect applies.
A balancing act is difficult here, but you often get good value for money.
Price: 100 – 2500$
Full Service Web Agency
The agency differs from full-service web service providers sometimes by the number of employees as well as their specializations.
When commissioning an agency, you have the advantage that often several experts with your individual focus work together on your project. Thereby web design, web development, hosting, and often SEO come together.
Depending on the agency, there are of course also different focuses and so it may be that you will find communication and strategy in your package as well.
Price: 1500$ – 20.000$
Design Agency + Frontend Development
Let’s stay specific with the design.
If you have individual ideas and needs for your website and want to implement them, then your project will go towards frontend development.
Depending on the agency, you may work out wireframes here. Afterward, you may receive mock-ups. Finally, the templates are developed. You need this combination, for example, if you want to develop a web app or even a native app.
Price: 2000$ – 30.000$
How much does a Website cost – Conclusion Web Design
Try to rely on existing themes if possible.
You can usually expect smaller websites to be competently covered by full-service freelancers.
When developing your own ideas and special designs, invest more time in planning and comparing quotes.
Infrastructure / How much does the Technical Side of a Website cost?
The infrastructure and technical part of your website can be cheap. Bottom line is that prices depend mainly on the technical skills in your house. The more you take on yourself, the cheaper it becomes. Moreover, open-source software can reduce initial investment costs.
- Hosting
- Server
- SSL
- CMS / Builder
- Maintenance
Hosting
Hosting your website refers to the service around the necessary infrastructure to keep your website always fast and accessible online.
There are in Germany approx. 2 Million m² Data Centers. 7 of the 10 largest data centers are located in Frankfurt.
Within these are servers from web hosting companies like 1&1, Strato, Hetzner, AllInkl, etc. You can rent hosting from these companies. These are virtual parts of a server, from which your website is then delivered worldwide.
For a standard website of a sole trader to a small company, a small hosting package for a few euros per month is usually sufficient.
Nevertheless, a short comparison of the most important components makes sense; it is best to create a table for this purpose.
| Provider 1 | Provider 2 | … | |
|---|---|---|---|
| SSL | … | ||
| Databases | |||
| Duration | |||
| Support Times | |||
| PHP Version | |||
| … |
Large hosters are:
| Hoster | Cost (approx) | Standort |
|---|---|---|
| 1&1 | 4,00 $ / Month | Germany |
| Strato | 4,00 $ / Month | Germany |
| Hetzner | 2,00 $ / Month | Germany |
| Hosteurope | 5,00 $ / Month | Germany |
| World4You | 5,00 $ / Month | Austria |
| Hoststar | 2,00 $ / Month | Austria |
The largest hosters are not necessarily the best for you!
I have made the experience in several projects that small hosters can respond to their customers with more flexibility. It also often happened that there were special requirements that large hosters simply do not meet.
Small hosters can be a better fit for your project. They are more flexible than the big ones.
Especially when it comes to the price, you will also find cheaper prices with smaller hosters. This depends on what the hosters specialize in.
On the other hand, if you want to host multiple websites, then larger hosting packages and even your own VPS (Virtual Private Server) can make sense. Even with your own root VPS, the costs can be quite low.
Price: 1 – 300 $ per Month
SSL Certificate
Google sets SSL as a Ranking Factor since August 2014. This is to make the web a little more secure. SSL means that your data is transmitted encrypted from your browser to the website. If this is not the case, your browser will indicate this. There is a visual hint to the left of the URL.
Price: 0 $ – 4000 $ per Year
Site Builder / CMS
It is no coincidence that just under 39% of all Websites on the Internet on WordPress run. It is a simple CMS with many plug-ins to extend functionalities.
In addition, there are other systems such as Drupal, Joomla, and Typo3 that are also represented in the CMS category.
There are also page builders such as Wix, Squarespace, Weebly, Jimdo, and more. These try to make it even easier to create your own website.
There is even a hybrid solution from both sides:
CMS as page builder, where for example WordPress.com customizes a WordPress and offers it as a kind of CMS page builder.
The effort of maintenance, updates, and further development is taken over by the company behind the page builder and you can use your CMS as SaaS (Software as a Service).
Something similar exists from the other side:
Many hosters offer WordPress and moreover various other systems as 1-click installation. Thus, the complexity of the installation is taken over by the hoster. Nevertheless, you get your own CMS and thus have all the freedom of your own hosting.
In the vast majority of cases and for simple websites, many of the systems mentioned are perfectly adequate, often even oversized.
Special cases are, for example, if you want to offer a web app or some kind of industry calculator. Accordingly, it may well be that a standard CMS does not cover all the functions you need, either in the backend or in the frontend.
Table Site Builder / CMS
Price: 0 – Any $ / Month
How much does a Website cost – Conclusion Infrastructure
Costs can be quite low, it starts at a few euros per month!
With minimal technical basics, you can already do a lot yourself.
Pay close attention to anything that exceeds $50 – $100 per month to see if it is the best solution for you.
How much does a Website cost – Maintenance and Care
How much does a website cost per month after the actual creation and go-live?
- Maintenance
- Updates
- Upgrades
- New features
After your website is online and live, there are certainly still costs to come!
These costs are quite different in nature and need not have anything to do with content and marketing at all.
If you have chosen a SaaS provider or modular system such as Squarespace, Jimdo, Wix, Weebly, etc., then you have reduced the monthly technical effort to a minimum.
For systems with more control and data sovereignty, you incur more expense.
Maintenance
This area is not strictly delimited and can also contain parts of the following areas. An important point for this, which I think of directly, is back-ups.
I have already experienced in some (fortunately few) projects how with only a few clicks a few days of work were deleted by several team members.
Not all projects had backups. And even fewer had up-to-date backups that could be restored without any problems.
Depending on how often data changes on your website (images, texts, contact requests, comments, orders …) regular backups are important.
Especially for the big systems (WordPress etc.), there are quite simple plug-ins in this sense, which can be configured quickly and work well.
Back-ups should then be made available on media to which quick access exists.
For most websites, a simple backup strategy is certainly sufficient.
For more complex sites and platforms, more complex scenarios with hot standby and encrypted offsite backups are conceivable. More complex strategies may require greater capacity in IT.
For this, I would like to start from smaller websites and blogs, which certainly represent the majority of websites on the Internet.
Price: 0$ / Month – 50$ / Month
Updates
With SaaS CMS and modular systems, updates are applied without you having to do anything. That is, the provider takes care of everything.
With your own CMS, on the other hand, it’s a little different. You are responsible for keeping your system up to date.
Outdated CMS and plug-ins are the #1 security vulnerability that website owners risk. Code injection and other attacks occur for this reason and through such kinds of vulnerabilities.
For example, your website will be partially equipped with content or features that are harmful to your reputation on Google as well as to your visitors.
For larger websites, it is difficult to quantify the cost of website downtime alone.
On the other hand, the cost of the service to “repair” or restore the website is quite easy to figure out. There are sometimes various emergency service providers that start to help from about 100$.
Some content management systems have automatic updates and 1-click updates. These reduce the monthly effort.
However, with automatic updates, you also have little control over when and what happens to your website.
Allow approximately 1 hour – 1 day for updates each month (depending on website complexity).
Price: from approx. 30 $ / Month
Upgrades
You can view these separately from the updates. Especially with the larger CMS, it happens from time to time that a “major upgrade” becomes necessary.
This is often due to technical reasons such as a “rewrite” of the code and an upgrade of the underlying framework.
Consequently, upgrades and especially major upgrades can cause considerable effort. This is especially true if you use a lot of plug-ins, use your own theme, and have developed custom features.
Accordingly, get ready for a major project and evaluate early on whether a Migration to another Version or System would not make more sense than an upgrade.
Fortunately, major upgrades occur only once a year or less for many systems.
Price: 200 $ – 10.000 $
The points listed so far are always a kind of nuisance and a necessary evil. Non-functional requirements for systems. Surely, no one likes to spend money for nothing to “look better”, yet almost everyone knows how necessary back-ups and updates are.
Features
New features are much more interesting than backup strategies and you notice them in the conversion rates!
Here, new functions can be added to the website on a monthly or quarterly basis. This depends, for example, on how the market and projects are currently developing.
On the one hand, this is certainly quite simple via the installation of a plug-in. On the other hand, some effort may have to be put into the development of such features.
The vast majority of websites enjoy few new features over the months and years following launch.
However, if you have ideas that you want to implement on your website, then that’s great. The costs are then of course dependent on the feature and project itself.
Price: 0 $ – Any $
Marketing / How much should I spend on marketing per month?
If you initially ask yourself: what does a website cost, then you should not forget about marketing.
Although these costs are not incurred during website creation, they are incurred afterward.
- SEM / SEA
- Blog/Website Sponsorship
- PR
- Profile / Directory Advertising
Of course, you can put a website online completely without marketing. Then, in short, you will have only a few visitors on your website per month. This then raises the question of why you initially invest money in a website?
When you ask yourself or service providers, ” how much does a website cost”, it’s best to also ask about the monthly costs involved.
Not doing marketing is a lot like developing a product and then hiding it in the basement instead of selling it.
How much does Marketing for my Website cost?
There are different types of marketing. A good overview of possibilities more visitors to your side, the Book Traction.
Some possible and simple ways for small websites I will briefly list here.
SEM / SEA
Probably the most common way to get visitors to your website is certainly SEA. Search Engine Advertising is accordingly best known via Google Ads.
You have the possibility to use your keywords there to bid on the display of your advertisement. In simple terms, the highest bid is displayed at the top above the search results.
If you have worked out and know your marketing funnel, then as a result, this type of advertising can provide a good return on investment.
For example: You buy ads for 2000$ per month and generate orders for 10.000$ per month from them.
Search engine advertising is the fastest way to get visitors to your website. However, a big disadvantage of this type of advertising is that it is not sustainable.
As soon as you reduce or even stop the 2000$ budget per month, your turnover will also reduce.
How to get started with SEM?
First, go to Google Ads, then register your account, deposit your payment method, create your first campaign and lastly launch it.
Price: from 5$ / Month – Any $
Blog / Website-Sponsorship
There are many ways you can attract attention on the Internet!
A link to your website is ideal to be found through organic search results. For this, you can collaborate with bloggers and other websites to publish content. Make sure that as a result, you get a link to your website.
This can work, for example, via guest posts and also via purchased posts. There are significantly more possibilities here, such as sponsoring local events, from whose website you then receive a link.
Price: 0$/ Month – Any $
PR
Public relations is a very good activity for a small company. This involves being mentioned in newspapers, online magazines, and other media. Here again, there are different approaches.
Place advertisements with the media to be mentioned there with your website.
Alternatively, you can offer a story or something that has something special to tell and try to get that across to employees of the media company.
To be found by journalists, give HARO. In German-speaking countries, this idea has been tried several times, but never successfully established it seems.
You are left with manual research and networking with journalists.
Simple in principle: research journalists who publish in your field (industry, region, etc.). Contact them and offer your expertise.
Price: 0$ / Month – Any $
Profile / Directory Advertising
There are directories in many industries and language areas where you can advertise your profile or that of your company.
This is particularly interesting for their Local SEO – the Local Search Engine Optimization. Links from directories can of course also provide national and even international traffic to your own website.
Price: 0$ / Month – Any $
How much does a Website cost – Conclusion for Marketing
As you can see, the maximum prices in marketing and some other areas are not easy to quantify.
It is always possible to proceed quite cheaply, partly on your own. On the other hand, it is also possible to work with several agencies and to use gigantic advertising budgets in the 5 – 6 digit range.
A good guideline for small businesses is certainly between 50 – 500$. If you invest this constantly in several channels, you will see success accordingly in the medium and long term.