How to Price a Website

A Few Things About Websites

The Average Website Lasts 2.7 Years

I feel like this is an important fact that people who buy and sell websites need to understand. Websites don’t last long, but I know from experience that investing in a quality website build can push that 2.7 years to 7 or 8 years (if you’re lucky). I see a lot of brands getting a new website every 2 years. These same brands think spending 100k on a website is crazy-expensive, but that’s exactly what they spend over the course of 6 years (by purchasing three 35k websites). So there is definitely an advantage to investing more up front. I would add that there is a tremendous value in working with an agency that can continue to support and evolve a website over time. It’s important to remind prospects of this value.

Websites Are Just Weird

Much of the difficulties with negotiating the value of a website is the fact that websites are pretty intangible things. Websites are primarily instructions written in code. And it’s our computers, operating systems, and browsers that actually create websites out of those instructions. And the results are often-or-always different across devices and computers. And there’s no permanent cure for this because our devices and softwares are constantly updating and changing. Thus it’s quite common for one person to find a website completely horrible and un-usable while another to find the the same website to be an A+ experience. This makes it very difficult when a client tries to apply the same logic to their website as they do to the air-fryer they brought home that broke. You really can’t compare everyday consumer experiences to purchasing a website. There’s really nothing else like it.

Websites Are Under-Valued and Under-Priced

Sadly, the value of a website tends to far exceed what a client ends up paying. A website is key business infrastructure that most businesses can’t live without. And yet, a website’s perceived value seems to be influenced by both the glut of agencies and freelancers undercutting each other, the availability of cheaper overseas work, and likely a lack of understanding on how important a website’s role is in businesses revenue generation.

This last point is something to remind prospects about. When I ask client (or potential client) how much a conversion on their website is, 85% say they don’t know (or they just take a guess). This makes it hard to have a conversation about value-based pricing.

Pricing Your Website Project

There’s no one way to price a website, but there are some common dials and levers. Generally, I’ve relied on hours estimations and an hourly rate. But you should always include buffers and value-based calculations on top. I’ll get to that later. Let’s look at all the things that affect price first.

Ways to Price

• By the Hour: This is a safe way to price when you are starting out, but you may find that some clients get nervous that hourly means they can’t predict the final cost. So you will likely need to pair hourly with an estimate. And if you start to exceed that estimate you will need to be in good communication with client about why.
• Flat Rates: Flat rates enable both parties to focus on the ultimate value of the deliverable. However, there’s a risk of underestimating how much time and effort you’ll need to spend on a project in order to satisfy the client. Websites often go over budget, so be sure to estimate and track hours even if you don’t share that info with your client.
• Split Estimates: If you are doing custom development, you know that coding time is somewhat dependent on the strategy and design process. You can choose to estimate charging for development until the design is close-to-done which will allow you to make a better estimate. Though you will still likely need to set expectations with the client with a range in the beggining.
• Monthly Rates: Some freelancers or agencies bill a monthly fee for design, build, and maintaining a website. It’s like amortizing the cost of a website project over a period. I’d recommend 2 or 3 years. And if the website lasts longer, you may end up with passive income. But again, you still need to track hours and limit the hours your client can use each month if you want to avoid doing more work that you anticipated.

How Humans Affect Website Price

Stakeholders

The number of stakeholders and the complexity of approval processes can significantly impact the cost of a website project. I usually put a maximum of 4 stakeholders in proposals by default and then increase the price if they need to add more people. When multiple stakeholders are engaged, each with unique perspectives and requirements, there’s often an increase of time spent teaching, explaining, and gathering consensus, which increases hours and lengthens the project timeline. Lookout for complex approval proccesses that require several stages or layers of sign-off. And always beware the shadow stakeholder that appears half-way through the project and disrupts everything!

A streamlined approval process, ideally with a single point of contact, helps keep the project efficient, reducing the overall cost and ensuring a smoother workflow. Our contracts always outline that we need a single point of contact and consolidated written feedback. (Ask me about the client who only provided feedback in 45-minute videos someday if you want a good website project horror story).

Number of Employees

Adding people, whether it’s on the client side or the agency side adds time and complexity. Every person adds more hours to your project, more people to your meetings, and more time needed for communication.

Meetings and Presentations

Meetings and presentations are expensive. 3 employees in a meeting or presentation should be your hourly rate x 3. It’s not a bad idea to have limits in your contracts on number of meetings, because some clients will expect weekly checkins, or multiple presentations to various stakeholder groups and that should cost extra.

How Project Management Affects Website Price

If you have a dedicated project manager on a project, expect %10-20 of your project hours to go to them.

How Strategy Affects Website Price

A website is a critical piece of business infrastructure. So strategy matters a lot! So it’s important to consider all that can go into it.

Journey Mapping Workshops

A journey mapping workshop is about understanding your audience’s goals, preferences, and pain points to shape the design and content strategy. A Journey Mapping process could range from $2,000 to 25K.

In journey mapping, you’ll:

Analyze Data: If available did into analytics of the clients current site for insights.
Create User Personas: Define the key audiences for your website.
Map User Goals: Outline what each user aims to accomplish on the site.
Visualize User Pathways: Identify the steps users will take from landing on the site to completing a desired action, like a purchase or sign-up.

Sitemap Rounds

The sitemap lays out the website’s structure, defining page categories, relationships, and navigation flow. I’ve found it usually takes sitemap 2–6 hours per round. But large sites may need more.

Key elements of sitemap creation include:

Page Hierarchy: Organizing pages into primary and secondary levels.
SEO Structure: Ensuring the site is structured for easy indexing by search engines.
Navigation Flow: Making it easy for users to find essential content and actions.

Wireframe Rounds

Wireframes are simple, black-and-white layouts that show where content, buttons, images, and other elements will go on each page. They’re essential for organizing information before diving into full design. Expect 10–30 hours for a round of wireframes.

Wireframes provide:

Layout Structure: Determining where key elements will appear.
Content Priority: Ensuring high-priority items are prominently displayed.
Feedback Iterations: Allowing stakeholders to provide input before design begins.

How Design Affects Website Price

Design Rounds

The time it takes to deliver X design rounds is a factor as well as the number of layouts shown in each round. The first round is usually a concept round. I recommend only showing the homepage in a few different directions to avoid wasting time on building out too many layouts in round 1. Then subsequent rounds can show all the layouts.

Layouts

I find that around 15-20 layouts is a good amount to show in a design round. Though you may need more than that to build the actual site. Developers just need to see all the modules, so you don’t always need to mockup every layout.

Mobile

Clients will tell you they need mobile-first and then start yawning as soon as you start presenting mobile mockups. In general. I’ve found that clients like seeing the big full-screen designs and don’t mind if you limit the number of layouts shown in mobile. We often just mock up all the modules for mobile instead of doing layouts.

How Features and Tech Affect Price

Features add a great deal of complexity, especially because they often involve integrating disparate technologies and services. I generally consider anything beyond “text, photo, button” a feature. And assign it a number of hours. In my web price calculator I use a concept called “module points” which establishes a number of hours per point and then I give each feature a value of 1-5.

I Draw the Line at API

API integrations can be a time-suck, so unless a client has asked specifically for an API integration I just say “API integrations not included” as a protection in contracts.

Tech Stack

There are all sorts of potential related costs based on the tech stack you choose. Commonly these are CMS costs and plugin fees. Some content management systems are free and some come with some hefty prices. Shopify goes from about 20 bucks a month to 3k a month for their pro plan. Contentful (A CMS we’ve used) can cost 100k a year or more. Make the client pay for these directly. Yes, you can mark it up and charge them, but then you have to manage a hundred different services for your clients and some of them could be critical business infrastructure. It’s a lot of responsibility, a lot of logins, and a lot of headache once you’ve been building websites for a good number of years to keep track of. We did this at my agency, and it was a bad idea. So learn from our failure. Bill for your time and let your clients put their credit cards on all those third-party services.

Illustrations, Animations, Icons

Custom designs and interactive features will add hours to your project. I tend to scope things like illustrations and animations as a separate deliverable. I also limit the number of icons included.

Additional Services

Of course there are all sorts of add-ons like SEO optimization, photography, content migration, and ongoing maintenance needs. I recommend keeping these separate.

Hours, Wowers, and Buffers

At my agency, we have a concept called “wowers” which is a bucket of hours that can be used for something special. We also have buffers for strategy, design, and dev. These buffers can be adjusted based on perceived risk or value. Remember, using every hour you budgeted for is not the goal. Left-over hours could be profit or more realistically, they will fill in the gaps for the projects that do over-budget.

So why use hours at all? Well, hourly-billing is a whole can-of-worms and maybe worth addressing in another article, but for me, breaking a project down into hours is a tool that can help the client understand value (and time) involved and it also helps my project managers plan the project.

Types of website projects and cost ranges:

1. Simple Websites (5-15 layouts)

Small business sites or personal blogs often only need a handful of pages and basic functionality. Here, you may opt for a low-code platform like Webflow or a simple template-based CMS like Squarespace or Wix. You may also be able to build a static website (No CMS) in this range.

Freelance: $2,500–$5,000
(You can sometimes get away with skipping sitemap, wireframes, and concept round on a small project, especially if it’s freelance).

Small Agency: $8,000 – 20,000

Established Agency: $10,000 – $50,000

Hours: 25–300 hours
Ideal For: Personal blogs, portfolios, small business websites with minimal custom needs.

2. Mid-Range Business Websites (15-25 layouts)

This category covers larger organizations with anywhere from 10 employees to 1000s and the price can vary widely. These projects have a lot of process and people to manage.

Freelance: $4,000–$8,000

Small Agency: $10,000 – 40,000

Established Agency: $30,000 – $80,000

Hours: 100–400 hours

3. eCommerce or Websites With Increased Complexity (20-30 layouts)

These websites are often highly interactive and include user accounts, complex content relationships, and integrations.

Freelance: $10,000–$20,000

Small Agency: $30,000 – 60,000

Established Agency: $75,000 – $200,000+

Hours: 200–1000+ hours

Understanding Hourly Rates (U.S.)

Hourly rates vary significantly based on the expertise level and the type of provider. Here’s a rough breakdown:

• Freelancers: $50–$75 per hour

• Senior Freelancers: $75–$130 per hour

• Small Agencies: $130–$160 per hour

• Established Agencies: $150–$300 per hour

It’s helpful to think in terms of hours rather than just dollars. For instance, a single round of revisions on a complex website could easily add 10–20 hours, impacting your overall budget.

Did I Miss Anything?

Website pricing is more of an art than a science. It takes practice. Don’t get discouraged when you end up going over budget, because we’ve all been there. In fact, you should probably assume a certain number of your website projects will go over budget. As long as most of them don’t you can still turn a profit.

Even more important than pricing well, managing client expectations, and charging for change orders, is often the key to a priofitable project. Because no matter how well you price your site, your clients will try to get more than they paid for and if you don’t play scope police very carefully you will go over budget before you know it!

Ok, now go try out my website pricing calculator and tell me what you think!