The number of pages tells you almost nothing
Page count is the first thing most quotes lead with and close to the least useful thing in them. Five pages of plain text about a service you already sell is a short job. One page that has to explain a complicated offer, hold a booking flow and survive being the only page anyone ever sees is not. Ask what each page has to do, and the number stops mattering.
What actually moves the price
- Who writes the words and takes the pictures. If the text and the photographs exist and are good, a large part of the work is already done. If they have to be produced, that is a project of its own sitting inside the project.
- How much of the design is decided in advance. Working within a system that already exists is quick. Making something that has never existed before takes rounds, and rounds take time.
- Whether anything has to talk to anything else. A booking system, a shop, a payment provider, a stock file. Every connection is a place where two systems have to agree, and they rarely agree on the first attempt.
- Who owns the mess afterwards. A site handed over with no plan for maintenance is cheaper on the day and more expensive within the year.
The trap in the word “from”
A starting price is the cheapest thing the seller can imagine you asking for. It is not dishonest, but it is not an estimate either. The useful question is not “how much does it start at” — it is “what would my job cost, and what would make that number go up”. A quote that cannot answer the second half has not been thought about.
One-off cost and running cost are different questions
The build is paid once. The domain, the hosting, the certificate, the updates and whoever answers when something breaks are paid every year, for as long as the site exists. Comparing two quotes on the build alone compares half of each. Ask both numbers, from both suppliers, before comparing either.
How to compare two quotes honestly
- Put the scope side by side, not the totals. If one quote lists what is not included and the other does not, that is not the cheaper quote — it is the vaguer one.
- Count the rounds of revisions, and read what counts as a revision.
- Find out who owns the domain, the hosting account and the site files when the work is finished. If the answer is not “you”, the price is not the price.
- Ask what happens six months later: who updates it, what it costs, how quickly someone answers.
How we price
We write the scope before the number. Standard work is a fixed sum for a scope agreed up front. Signature work is priced against a written brief. Custom systems are quoted against what the work actually is. The figures for this market are still being set — when they are, they will be published on the pricing page, in full, with what each level covers.
Until then, the fastest way to a real number is to tell us what you need. You get a written scope with its boundaries — what is in, what is out — and a price for that scope.