Pricing

How much does a website cost?

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A lot of designers flinch at that question, but it’s a fair thing to ask. It’s also unfair to dismiss it with a counter question like “How much does a car cost?” Most clients have a good idea of what a car costs, but they may have never purchased serious design work before, so they have no idea what a website costs.

Designers need to lighten-up a bit and try to be more helpful. That’s what we’ll try to do here. Remember, these are our prices and opinions; other designers will have their own theories.

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Our prices

In a nutshell, these are current baseline prices for our website design, usability review, and support plans. For more details please review our website services page.

Service	What we do	Starting cost	Learn more
Review	Website review and suggestions	$500	Usability review
Create	Build you a brand new website	$5,000	Design FAQ
Support	Manage your website for you	$200/mo	Support options
Promote	Manage your organic social media	$400/mo	Social media

Sticker shock

Shortly after a client calls we do a bit of research and come up with an estimate on cost. We also clearly list our baseline fees here, and on our Services page. Obviously, we can’t be exact at this stage, but if a potential client is going to have sticker shock, we try to get it over with as soon as possible.

But how do you know how much work will be involved until you’re more familiar with it? That’s a great question. That’s why we call it an estimate. As we gain more insight into your project, we’ll get more precise with that figure.

Hopefully, by the time you get a proposal, it’s a number you won’t choke on (much). And, if we get deeper into the project and discover that it’s more complex than you originally described, we’ll discuss it together.

What’s your budget?

Of course, the flip-side to the “How much does it cost?” question is: “How much do you want to spend?” This question makes most clients nervous because they think that the designer is trying to trick them into disclosing their budget so that they can take all of it. That’s only partially true.

Give us a number and we’ll tell you what you can get for that amount. Then we can talk about whether you need that much design. But most of all, that number tells us how to guide you toward the best solution and avoid designs outside of your price range.

Don’t make it a secret

Design is a solution to a problem within a set of constraints. There is no bigger constraint than your budget. So don’t make it a secret, don’t make it a mystery. It’s a budget, not a missile launch code. It’s the biggest data point you have, and we need to know what it is.

The proposal

If you ask five designers for estimates on the same project, you’ll get five prices that vary wildly. We know this can be disturbing. We’ve seen amazing websites built for less than $1,000, and crappy ones that cost over $1 million (see below). You’d be tempted to think designers just make these prices up. Let’s see how this happens.

Websites are complicated. Pricing can have a lot of variables:

01 Scope

The degree of difficulty. The goals, size, and complexity of the project. How much horsepower is needed to solve the problem. A website for Lockheed Martin will cost more than one for Donna Does Nails. The bigger the scope, the bigger the check.

02 Experience

Experienced designers cost more. And experience rarely means programming skills. It means a broad understanding of the web and how people use it. Reducing complex systems into simple interfaces that work on dinky screens is a skill that improves with practice.

03 Value

The more positive impact the website has on your organization — and the more you profit by it — the more the work should cost. A well-built website is not an expense, it’s not an investment. It’s a profit center. You’ll make far more money from your website than we ever will.

04 Availability

Supply and demand are always factors. How busy is the designer currently? How far out are they booked? How badly do they need the work? How much do they want this?

05 Coolness

Yes, being hip is a real factor. But coolness is in the eye of the designer. Some designers like building avant-garde art gallery sites, others prefer pawn shops and diners.

06 Bureaucracy

The size and structure of your organization have a direct impact on project management. Coordinating schedules and communication takes longer with twenty people than five. Committees and partners can suck the life out of projects — and usually do.

07 Timeline

We need it ASAP. Please don’t tell a designer that. It means nothing any more. Everybody wants it yesterday. Oddly, the single biggest obstacle to an on-time launch is the failure of the client to deliver content on schedule. Go figure.

08 Expenses

The digital design business doesn’t really have a “cost of goods sold” like a retail store does. However, we do need computers, servers, software, mobile devices, support, connections, subscriptions, and endless education. Not to mention doctors, lawyers, rent, food, insurance, beer, therapy, and salaries.

09 Compatibility

Let’s face it, you pretty much know within 10 minutes whether or not you’re going to work well with somebody. Designers are people too — They do their best work for clients they like. That doesn’t mean we cut our fees if you smile at us, but it doesn’t hurt either.

10 Asshole tax

Sorry, but this is a real thing. Sort of the inverse of the “Compatibility” variable. It’s a surcharge for being a rude or obnoxious client. We don’t charge this fee, because we don’t work with mean people.

11 Entropy

In simple terms, entropy is the natural tendency of any system to suffer a gradual decline into disorder and chaos. Entropy is why bubbles are round and not square. It’s also why they pop. The thing to remember about entropy is that it can only stay the same or increase — Never decrease. The greater the potential for your project to run amok, the more it will cost.

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Scope creep

Aside from entropy, the proposal’s biggest component by far is the project’s scope. If we have an idea of the type of work you’re after and know your budget, we can tailor the solution to meet that budget. The important thing about scope is that once it gets agreed upon, it doesn’t increase — We’re building what we’re building.

Client resources

Any decent design solution takes your resources into account, and one considerable cost we haven’t touched on yet is website management. Who in your organization is going to be maintaining and updating your website on a daily basis? Unless otherwise agreed upon, we don’t manage websites, we just build them.

So, we need to know how you work as a group. How many people will actively edit or maintain the website? How much time can they commit to it? We also need to know their skill sets.

For example, if a client says, “We want a newsletter sign-up form,” our next question is, “Who’s going to write the newsletter and manage the email list?” If we don’t get a clear answer, or the designated person lacks the skill set, the newsletter will probably fail.

If we build a system that you can’t sustain, we’re not doing our job. We haven’t solved a problem; we’ve created one. Good designers don’t deliver systems that they know can’t be effectively managed.