How much does website development cost?

Twenty pages that share three layouts cost far less than eight pages each with its own layout. What drives cost is the number of distinct designs and content structures, not the raw page count.

This is worth knowing when you compare quotes: a supplier quoting per page may be cheaper for a large site of similar pages and far more expensive for a small site of bespoke ones.

A purchased template configured with your branding is the cheapest route and looks like what it is. A customised template sits in the middle. An original design — built for your business, your content and your conversion goal — costs the most and is the only option that will not look like three competitors' sites.

None of the three is wrong. What is wrong is paying original-design prices for a configured template, which happens more often than it should.

Content is the most common reason website projects run late, and often the largest hidden cost. If you supply finished copy and images, you save budget and time. If you need copywriting, that is a real per-page cost, and professional photography is another.

Placeholder text is not a solution: a site launched with filler copy is a site that will not rank and will not convert, so the cost arrives eventually either way.

Everything changes once money or accounts are involved. A catalogue with variants, a checkout, payment integration, courier booking, stock accuracy, order management, returns — each is real engineering with real testing. The same is true of any site where users log in and see their own data.

As a rule of thumb, a transactional site is a multiple of a brochure site rather than a percentage more.

Payment gateways, courier APIs, CRM, accounting software, email marketing platforms, WhatsApp Business, booking systems — each carries authentication, error handling and testing. Two integrations is a normal project; six is a different project.

Three costs continue after launch, and a quote that hides them is incomplete. Hosting and domain renewal, which should be in your own name. Maintenance — dependency and security updates, backups, occasional fixes. And SEO or content work, if you want the site to gain traffic rather than merely exist.

The third one is optional. The first two are not, and a site left unmaintained for two years becomes a security liability.

Ask each supplier: is the design original or template-based; who writes the copy; how many revision rounds are included; can we edit content ourselves afterwards; whose name are the hosting and domain in; is Analytics and Search Console setup included; and what does maintenance cost.

The hosting question is the revealing one. A supplier who keeps your domain and hosting in their own name has made leaving them expensive, and that is worth knowing before you sign rather than after.