What does a website cost for a self-employed professional or small business?

It is the first question almost every business owner asks, and the honest answer is: it depends. Not because web builders like to be vague, but because websites can differ as much as cars. An entry-level model and a fully loaded company car both have four wheels, but their prices are nowhere near each other. Below we explain what really determines the cost, so you can make an informed choice.

What determines the price

Roughly speaking, four things carry the most weight:

• The number of pages. A well-crafted one-page site is ready sooner than a complete site with separate pages per service, an about page and a contact page.
• The features. An online booking system, a webshop with payments or a members’ area take more work than a shop-window site that mainly informs.
• Bespoke versus template. A design built around your brand takes more time than an off-the-shelf theme, but it also sets you apart.
• Copy and images. If you supply the texts and photos yourself, things go faster. If they need to be created too, that counts as well.

How we approach it at Othala

We work with clear packages so you know where you stand in advance, instead of waiting for a foggy quote. From a Starter Site for those who mainly want to be found and reachable, through a complete site with multiple pages, to a booking system or a bespoke webshop. You choose what you need and you can scale up later, because with us an entry-level choice is never wasted work. The current amounts are simply on our pricing page.

Don’t forget the recurring costs

Besides the one-off build, there are annual costs that come with every website: a domain name, hosting and an SSL certificate for the padlock in the browser. Optionally there is maintenance on top, for example a few text changes per year and keeping the site up to date. Include those recurring costs when you compare budgets, because a cheap build price with expensive mandatory extras is not cheap in the end.

What to look out for most

The lowest price is rarely the best choice. Look at three things that are worth more in the long run than a few tens of euros’ difference: whether you own your site and your domain, whether the site loads fast and works on mobile, and whether it is technically ready to be found in Google. A site nobody finds is expensive, however little it cost.