How much does it cost to build a website?

How much you should expect to pay for a company website depends on a wide range of variables. Like many business decisions, the range in cost is nearly infinite; from zero dollars to as much money as you can imagine.

On the low end of the spectrum you have a plethora of companies to choose from including web.com, wix.com, weebly.com, and countless others. These service providers represent the do-it-yourself market, so if you have more time than money, and you’re technically inclined, any of these options should suffice.

The high end of the spectrum involves custom web development. As you might expect, anything custom-built will be expensive, although multi-million dollars websites like the infamous healthcare.gov project are the exception. So what are the variables that impact the cost of a website? Here’s a breakdown of considerations: design, development, content, hosting, and maintenance.

Design

Web design requires a graphic artist. Whether you choose a low-cost template for your WordPress website or you opt for a custom website design that better reflects your brand identity, someone with formal graphic design training was or should be involved to make decisions about layouts, colors, fonts, etc.

Development

Web development requires a programmer. Once again, whether you’re working with a content management system (software that is used to build and maintain websites) or you’re considering a custom website, someone who knows a variety of programming languages has to apply the design or write code from scratch to make your website work.

Content

Web content is king. Content includes everything that goes into your website – most commonly words and pictures – but it also incudes logo files, video files, audio files, graphic files, and downloadable files for anything from PDFs to PowerPoint presentations. It doesn’t matter if you’re building a low-cost template website or a high-end custom website. Somebody has to create the content.

Hosting

Web hosting requires a server. Once again the range in cost goes from virtually free to a serious line item in your annual marketing budget. It will depend on your website traffic and what files are being “served.” Heavily trafficked websites like Expedia and those serving lots of large files like YouTube take up far more bandwidth and require more server space.

Maintenance

Web maintenance is mandatory. Like any “brick and mortar” property, web properties require upkeep. Whether it’s uploading new content, updating the software that runs your website, or keeping up with technology trends (such as the latest web browser or integrating with social media), someone needs to be responsible for maintaining your website.

With all of these variables affecting the cost of a company website, how much should you expect to pay? That’s a great question. We build custom-designed websites on a hosted content management system that cost between $2,500 and $25,000. If you would like to learn more please complete the online form or contact us to start a conversation.

Until next week,

Matthew Anderson, President
Milestone Marketing Associates, Inc.