Strategy · 7 min read

The honest breakdown agencies won't give you — what drives cost, where budgets get wasted, and how to scope a site that pays for itself.

StrategyJune 18, 20267 min read

The real price ranges

After scoping over a thousand projects, the honest answer is a range: a focused landing page runs $1,500–$4,000, a corporate site $5,000–$15,000, e-commerce $8,000–$40,000, and custom platforms start around $25,000. Anyone quoting outside these bands is either cutting corners you'll pay for later or padding scope you don't need.

What actually moves the number isn't page count — it's the three multipliers below.

The three cost multipliers

First: design origin. Template customization is cheap; bespoke design costs more but converts measurably better — our redesigns average a 2x conversion lift. Second: integrations. Every system your site must talk to (CRM, payments, inventory, booking) adds engineering and testing time. Third: content operations. A site your team can edit without a developer costs slightly more upfront and dramatically less forever.

  • Design: template (~$0) → custom (+$2–6k) → award-level (+$6–15k)
  • Each integration typically adds $800–$3,000
  • CMS setup pays for itself within months of content changes

Where budgets get wasted

The most common waste we see: paying for features before validating anyone wants them, rebuilding twice because SEO was ignored the first time, and choosing the cheapest bid then paying a second team to rescue it. The cheapest website is the one built right once.

Scope the outcome, not the artifact. 'We need 40 pages' is a guess; 'we need 30 qualified leads a month' is a brief a good team can engineer against.

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