Per the latest report, currently about two-thirds of the global population is connected to the World Wide Web for varied activities, like shopping, entertainment, communication, and business. This elevates the unstoppable demand for fully functional website development.
With a website, you can widen your business visibility and thereby the reach making you grab high profit shares. What is the cost to build a website?
The website development cost depends on numerous factors, and so forth, is variable. Also, based on different industry verticals, the figure differs. How can we know the website development charges?
Well, it can be tricky to evaluate the exact cost, but this post will help you out with an average cost of website development, factors affecting the cost, cost breakdown per industry, website type, stages, and more.
Let’s get started!
Why Do Businesses Invest in Website Development?
Varied reasons exist that will explain why to invest in website development. Let’s unveil some below:
1. Boost Brand Awareness and Reach
Acting as a 24/7 marketing solution, your website will be visible to everyone exploring online. Following effective SEO approaches can enhance your search engine ranking, and drive potential customers who caught your brand through organic searches.
2. Establish Credibility and Brand Presence
An official website acts as a digital storefront that displays your brand identity, products, or services, and builds trust with potential consumers. It’s a demonstration of your legality and commitment to offer the best quality online experience.
3. Generate Leads and Increase Sales
Websites offer a platform that enables businesses to grab leads through email signups, contact forms, and ecommerce functionality. Further, they transform the website visitors into paying consumers via targeted marketing efforts and calls to action.
4. Competitive Edge
In this digital world, owning an informative and well-designed website is a new benchmark to set to stay competitive. A robust online presence lets the brands display their offerings perfectly and stand ahead of the curve leaving behind the ones that lag following robust digital strategy.
5. Cost-Effective Marketing and Advertising
Websites emerge with a more cost-effective option to reach a wider customer base compared to customary advertising methods. With websites, you can target particular demographics by running online marketing campaigns and tracking your efforts’ effectiveness for elevated ROI.
6. Enhanced Customer Engagement and Communication
The website creation charges an amount but fosters two-way communication with your target audience. You can answer their questions, provide useful information, live chat support, foster customer engagement, and build stronger relationships.
7. Data Analytics and Customer Insights
Through websites, you can get valuable data about your user behavior, customer preferences, and website traffic. Further, data analysis lets businesses gain insights into their target audience, and optimize their marketing strategies, and website content for better outcomes.
What Is An Average Cost To Develop a Website From Scratch?
Well, the average cost of website development from scratch can be $12,000-$2,20,000, depending on the type of development, custom or off-the-shelf. Let’s clear up your confusion.
When it comes to custom website development, it includes the below:
1. Prototype Development
Initially during the website development process, a standard, visual representation of a website’s layout and functionality is created, as its prototype development. Simply put, it’s a rough sketch that facilitates testing user experience. accumulate feedback, and alter the ideas before investing in full-fledged development.
Average Cost for Prototype Development: $5,000-$30,000
2. Website Development
After the prototype is finalized, the website development starts. This phase includes coding website functionality and CMS integration for easy updates that ensure a seamless user experience across varied devices. Developers also aim at SEO to enhance a website’s ranking in search results.
Average Cost for Website Development: $11,000-$140,000
3. Website Maintenance
Developing a website doesn’t end your job, post-development maintenance is also essential to ensure its smooth running. It includes ongoing updates to the website’s plugins and software to locate security issues and maintain compatibility. Besides, website performance monitoring, fixing errors or broken links, and content updates are considered to keep the audience engaged.
Average Cost for Website Maintenance: $6,000-$50,000 annually
Note*: You can also choose off-the-shelf solutions, pre-built and ready-made websites that are sold to a wide market. Such a development is professionally crafted, coded, and tested, and next sold. The only factor to consider here is the customization that will be limited compared to custom website development.
Average Cost for Off-the-Shelf Website: $5,000-$20,000
Why is it Difficult to Estimate the Website Development Cost?
Website development cost estimation can be challenging as it depends on varied factors that you should consider:
From a simple informative website to a complex e-commerce store, every project scope demands a different level of functionality, design, and security, which makes it challenging to offer one-size-fits-all cost. Additionally, further changes from the client’s side during the development process will lead to added expenses.
Moreover, the experience and proficiency of the development team can also impact the cost. A skilled team may charge more for offering website development services but is likely to deliver high-quality products and services.
The transforming technology gives rise to new technologies and tools that also impact the cost of development. We will cover this later in the post. Before that, various external factors, like market demand, economic conditions, geographical location, and more also affect the cost of a website development. Let’s consider these in the section below.
Factors Affecting the Cost of Web Development
The cost of website design and development depends on varied factors. Let’s unveil some major ones below:
1. Complexity of the Website
Simple websites including basic features and functionalities will cost you less compared to complex ones with advanced features, like dynamic content, advanced search options, and custom user accounts. The more complicated the features, the more time and resources will be required to develop a site that hits the cost.
2. Platform and Technology
Using pre-built website platforms, such as Wix Studio provides lower upfront costs but allows limited customization. Whereas, custom development offers comprehensive control and scalability, but needs a higher initial investment. Additionally, the technology stack you choose affects the cost based on project requirements and developer expertise.
3. Design and Customization
A highly customized and unique website design will demand more investment compared to the use of pre-built templates. The level of animations, design complexity, and interactive elements will influence the development budget and time.
4. Location and Developer Expertise
The experience level and geographical location of the developers decide the developer rates. In general, hiring website developers in the high cost of living region may increase the cost more than outsourcing from certain regions. You may need to pay premium charges to highly professional developers but may deliver a high-quality and more efficient website.
5. Size of the Website
The number of web pages, the features’ complexity, and the amount of content, all contribute to the size of the website. Larger websites with numerous functionalities and extensive content will innately demand more resources and time to develop, leading to increased costs.
Website Development Cost Breakdown Based on Industries
Now, let’s break down the web development cost based on varied industry verticals.
| Industries | Cost |
|---|---|
| eCommerce Website | $20,000 – $220,000 |
| Educational Website | $15,000 – $50,000 |
| Real Estate Website | $25,000 – $60,000 |
| Medical/Healthcare Website | $30,000 – $150,000 |
| Restaurant/Food Service Website | $20,000 and $50,000 |
| Legal/Law Firm Website | $25,000 to $50,000 |
| Hospitality/Hotel Website | $50,000 to $180,000 |
| Automotive Website | $30,000 to $60,000 |
| Financial and Banking Website | $35,000 to $150,000 |
| Entertainment Website | $40,000 and $100,000 |
| Travel and Tourism Website | $30,000 and $70,000 |
| Fashion and Beauty Website | $20,000 and $50,000 |
1. eCommerce Website
An ecommerce website development cost ranges from $20,000 to $220,000 and needs robust features, like inventory management, secure payment gateways, and user-friendly navigation for online transaction support.
2. Educational Website
The average cost for an educational website ranges from $15,000 to $50,000, covering varied features, such as student portals, interactive learning tools, and course management systems to promote online education.
3. Real Estate Website
Ranging from $25,000 to $60,000, a real estate website development cost demands features, like virtual tours, property listings, and advanced search functionalities to display properties effectively.
4. Medical/Healthcare Website
Typically costing between $30,000 to $150,000, a medical/healthcare website development includes features, like appointment scheduling, secure data storage, and patient portals that provide seamless patient experiences.
5. Restaurant/Food Service Website
With costs ranging from $20,000 and $50,000, a restaurant/food service website development should hold online ordering caliber, visually engaging designs, and menu management to attract more customers and drive orders.
6. Legal/Law Firm Website
A legal/law firm website development cost lies between $25,000 to $50,000 and includes top-class features like client intake forms, secure document management, and case portfolio showcases to create credibility and ease client interactions.
7. Hospitality/Hotel Website
Costing between $50,000 to $180,000, a hospitality/hotel website development incorporates features, such as room rate management, responsive designs, and online booking systems that offer a seamless booking experience for the website visitors.
8. Automotive Website
An automotive website development cost ranges from $30,000 and goes until $60,000 and holds features, like service appointment scheduling, interactive vehicle displays, and vehicle inventory management to engage potential customers.
9. Financial and Banking Website
With the cost ranging between $35,000 to $150,000, a financial and banking website development demands the inclusion of extensive features, like account management tools, and secure transaction processing, and ensures regulatory compliance and data security by adhering to industry regulations.
10. Entertainment Website
Costs between $40,000 and $100,000, an entertainment website development provides users with seamless streamlining power and engages audiences effectively through user engagement tools and multimedia content management.
11. Travel and Tourism Website
A travel and tourism website development cost starts from $30,000 and goes up to $70,000 incorporating features, such as itinerary planning tools, easy booking, and destination displays that inspire travel and allow smooth trip planning.
12. Fashion and Beauty Website
Costs range between $20,000 and $50,000, a fashion and beauty website development includes features, like visual beauty product showcases, social media integration, and other e-commerce capabilities to display products and drive more sales.
Website Development Cost Breakdown Based on Website Type
Here, we will consider website development cost breakdown per the website type with the expected time taken.
| Website Type | Cost | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Social Networking Website | $50,000 – $220,000 | 2000 hours |
| Marketplace Website | $20,000 – $220,000 | 1500 hours |
| SaaS Website | $50,000 – and $200,000 | 1500 hours |
| Personal Blog Website | $12,000 – $20,000 | 500 hours |
| Small Business Website | $15,000 – $25,000 | 1000 hours |
| Portfolio Website | $15,000 – and $30,000 | 600 hours |
| Corporate Website | $30,000 – and $80,000 | 800 hours |
| Non-Profit Organization Website | $15,000 – $30,000 | 500 hours |
| News Website | $30,000 – $60,000 | 800 hours |
| Directory Website | $15,000 – $30,000 | 300 hours |
| Blog Website | $30,000 – $50,000 | 120 hours |
| Landing Pages | $3,000 – $5,000 | 80 hours |
1. Social Networking Website
Taking around 2000 hours to complete, a social networking website development cost ranges between $50,000 – $220,000 and involves complicated features, like connections, potential messaging, feeds, user profiles, etc.
2. Marketplace Website
A marketplace website development costs between $20,000 – $220,000 and demands necessary functionalities, like seller accounts, product listings, potential shopping carts, and secure payment processing. Its complexity may vary depending on the features and scale and takes about 1500 hours to build.
3. SaaS Website
Typically costs between $50,000 – and $200,000, SaaS website development takes approximately 1500 hours to create including robust features, such as subscription management, core software service integration, and user accounts.
4. Personal Blog Website
Personal blog website development takes about 500 hours and costs between $12,000 – $20,000. Such a website aims at a user-friendly interface for the published articles with seamless content management.
5. Small Business Website
Small business website development cost ranges from $15,000 – $25,000 and takes around 1000 hours to complete. These incorporate useful features and display services, contact details, and potentially an online store or portfolio. But, the complexity is based on business-specific needs.
6. Portfolio Website
A portfolio website targets unveiling creative work and may need an attractive design with project descriptions and image galleries. The cost of portfolio website development takes approx. 600 hours to develop and ranges between $15,000 – and $30,000.
7. Corporate Website
The cost of corporate website development starts from $30,000 and goes up to $80,000 taking about 800 hours to complete. It includes varied distinctive features, like careers sections, investor information, and press releases, and can be integrated with complicated CMS.
8. Non-Profit Organization Website
Typically aiming at attracting donations, raising awareness, and offering details about their cause, non-profit website development costs between $15,000 – $30,000 and takes approx. 500 hours to build.
9. News Website
Taking around 800 hours to create, news website development ranges from $30,000 – $60,000 and includes useful features, like journalists, articles management, and potential user comments. The cost may increase depending on live updates or video integration.
10. Directory Website
Ranging between $15,000-$30,000, directory website development takes 300 hours to build focusing on listing resources or businesses with search functionalities. The development time may alter depending on the complexity and size of the directory.
11. Blog Website
Taking 120 hours to create, blog website development costs between $30,000-$50,000 holding advanced features, such as e-commerce options, membership subscriptions, and integration with marketing tools.
12. Landing Pages
A standalone web page, landing page development takes about 80 hours to build with costs ranging from $3000, specifically designed for the target audience with a single goal.
Cost of Website Development Based on The Type of Team
Let us understand the types of different website development teams that significantly impact the overall web development cost.
1. Build an In-House Team
It is important to go for an in-house website development team that knows your business, works on your goals, and is readily available. The average cost of developing and maintaining an in-house team is up to $1,50,000, including team maintenance, office costs, accounting costs, taxes, salary, etc. Some of the issues with an in-house team are the increased dependency on one person limits the expertise, lack of resources, and more that make it an expensive option.
2. Hire a Local Website Development Agency
The second option is to go for the local website development agencies that have heightened expertise, are easy to hire, offer quick development, and have a seamless development process. The overall website development cost using a local website development agency is up to $2,20,000, including marketing, maintenance, and design and development. Some issues with local website development agencies are timely processes, working on the agency’s terms, low availability, higher charges, etc.
3. Hire a Freelancer or a Freelance Team
Going with freelancers or a freelance team can work wonders for your website development. It is easy to hire freelancers having expertise in the same segment of websites. These charge up to $1,00,000 per website and are one of the highly cost-effective ways of website development. Some of the issues while working with freelancers are reliability issues, no surety of project completion, etc.
4. Hire an Outsourcing Agency
Last but not least is going with outsourcing agencies, which effectively nullifies freelancer issues. Such agencies have dedicated team members, a single point-of-contact, a client-specific development process, proficient and expert work, etc. An outsourcing agency takes around up to $1,80,000 for website development.
You can go with any type of team for your website development depending on your budget, project requirements, timeframe, etc.
Website Development Cost Breakdown Based on Stages
A full-fledged website development requires different stages, each contributing to the overall cost. Here, we will scatter the costs associated with every phase:
| Website Stages | Cost |
|---|---|
| Ideation and Planning | $2,000-$1,0000 |
| UI/UX Design | $3,000-$2,0000 |
| Front-end Development | $3,000-$4,0000 |
| Back-end Development | $4,000-$6,0000 |
| Integration and Testing | $3,000-$3,0000 |
| Deployment and Launch | $1,000-$1,0000 |
| Post-Launch Support | $2,000-$1,0000 |
1. Ideation and Planning
The planning and discovery stage costs $2000-$10000, including defining project objectives, website features, target audience, competitor analysis, sitemap creation, and functionalities.
2. UI/UX Design
The cost of this phase ranges between $3000-$20000, which targets visual representation creation of the site’s UI and layout design. Besides, it includes mockups, interactive prototypes, and wireframes.
3. Front-end Development
The development phase costs between $3000-$40000, during which the website is created, depending on the approved design and functionalities. It ensures creating an engaging user interface and responsiveness across different devices.
4. Back-end Development
The backend development of a website costs between $4000-$60000, and the charges are applicable for coding backend components, database design, API building, web server maintenance, etc.
5. Integration and Testing
This phase, including the simple and complex integration with extensive website testing across varied devices, OS, and browsers, addressing and fixing issues, costs between $3000-$30000.
6. Deployment and Launch
In this phase of website deployment and launch for the end users, the user costs between $1000-$10000, including loading the code onto the server for the successful run.
7. Post-Launch Support
The ongoing website maintenance and support costs $2000-$10000 for addressing security vulnerabilities, fixing bugs, updating software, and maintaining optimal performance.
Additional Cost To Consider For Website Development
In website development, some more factors affect the cost to make a website. Let’s check them out:
1. Domain Name
Any website needs a unique address. The specific address of the website is shown in the browser’s address bar and is called a domain name. Hence, it forms an important part of the website creation cost and comes from different domain name registrars. These prices vary from $5 to $25 yearly.
2. Web Hosting
Using hosting services, it is important to keep your website live and accessible on the internet. The dedicated hosting offers improved loading time for the website. Different hosting providers offer much-needed services to improve the website’s live duration. These prices vary from $75 to $250 yearly.
3. SSL Certificate (annually)
An SSL certificate encrypts data transferred between your website and the browsers of visitors, ensuring you have a secure connection. The websites that accumulate user data or process transactions online need SSL certificates. The costs vary depending on the type of certificate and validation level. Sometimes it comes free with web hosting service, while some charge for it.
4. Regulatory Compliance Fees (if applicable)
Based on your location and industry, you may need to adhere to specific regulations relevant to data privacy and accessibility. A lawyer consultation or implementing solutions can help you with a cost estimation.
Hidden Cost Of Website Development
Besides other website development costs, you will be surprised to learn there are hidden charges, too. You should be well aware of these to avoid any budget issues later in the development phase.
Let’s unveil some below:
1. Maintenance
It is important to consider the ongoing maintenance costs of the website development. These costs revolve around the resources required to ensure the website’s protection, time, and speed. Further, the complexity of the website defines the maintenance costs, which cover:
- 3rd-party integrations: These integrations enhance the overall functionality of the websites and can significantly impact the cost of website development. The cost of 3rd party integrations depends on the specific integration only.
- Other maintenance costs: The other maintenance costs involved in the website are servers, storage costs, cloud maintenance, infrastructure costs, etc. These costs depend on the types of servers, storage, cloud, and infrastructure used in the website.
2. Marketing
It is easy to create a website, but your prospective customers must know about it. Hence, it all comes down to the dedicated marketing of your websites. Some of the different marketing strategies that amount to the cost of marketing for any website are:
- PPC: Pay-Per-Click Advertising is one of the top marketing methods for any website. It helps customers convert visitors and know about your products. PPC comes from the Google Network, the most powerful and popular advertising network. PPC professionals go for Google AdWords, which helps them manage marketing campaigns. The only issue with PPC is that its price depends on the industry and can go up to $50 per click. The cost of PPC depends on the demanding keywords.
- SEO: Search Engine Optimization works to optimize Google’s search results. It is one of the recommended marketing strategies for websites as the higher website ranking in search engine result pages (SERP) hints at higher optimization. The SEO cost depends on the amount of work and ranges from $300 to $1,500 on average monthly.
- SMO: Social Media Optimization uses different social media platforms to improve the company’s online business presence. The cost of SMO depends on the type of work required and hence ranges from $100 to $200 monthly.
- Copywriting: It promotes the content on different websites. Hence, customers know more about the products, services, and business details. The cost of copywriting depends per word and ranges from $50 to $500 monthly.
How to Choose a Reliable Web Development Partner?
Do you know that the US web design services market size will be $ 42.2bn in 2023? There are numerous website development companies operating globally. Hence, any company may feel confused about selecting the perfect web development partner for their business needs. Different factors contribute to the hit or miss for any web development company. Some of these factors are:
1. Determining the Services
To start with, it is important to determine the type of services needed for your website. You may need to create a website, but not all website development is the same. Multiple websites like content management systems (CMS), e-commerce, dynamic, responsive, etc., require specific expertise. Hence, it is important to decide on the website development company based on the type of services required.
Tip*: Go for the company with expertise in creating websites that meet your immediate needs, which will help you get a highly responsive website from the domain specialists.
2. Analyzing the Team
The second important point to consider after selecting the services is the team of the website development company. It is important to look at the team, which includes designers, developers, testers, and the customer support team. The company has a dedicated team of website development professionals, which is the best way to eliminate different sources for different work. Analyzing the company’s team can help you determine the core strengths of technology experts, such as experience, previous assignments, etc.
Tip*: Go for the website development company that shares details of its team, expertise, and core strengths while maintaining full transparency.
3. Finding Team’s Review
Who else can tell you about the good and bad of the website development company than its existing customers? Knowing about the team’s review from the existing customers or companies is easy. The details about the team’s behavior, expertise, and after-development services help make or break the deal with these service providers. These reviews can help connect you to the ideal team that fits your business needs.
Tip*: Go for the team’s review of the website development company on leading platforms like Clutch, Glassdoor, etc.
4. Considering the Speed of Replies
Last but not least, it comes down to the responsiveness of the website development company. While many companies may have a dedicated customer support team, others may let you talk to the development team directly regarding your queries. The quick responses from the company helped establish their willingness to serve your needs, while the delayed response hints at the problems in the company’s operations. Further, it is important to determine if the company has understood your needs and expectations from the website development to reduce post-development queries.
Tip*: Go for the website development company which takes every initiative to offer clients a speedy reply. This time should be between 24-48 hours.
How Can EmizenTech Help You?
A website development company can help you with reducing and managing website development costs starting from ideation, and planning, to designing, development, launch, and post-development support.
You can opt for valuable website development services holding the required proficiency and experience to help you with budget estimates, timeframe decisions, objectives, and more.
EmizenTech, being a leading website development company, has a team of dedicated developers who are best at offering custom web development solutions. Working with various global clients, the experts have gained skills and experience in attaining the required website development objectives.
Key Highlight of EmizenTech Assistance
- Cost Optimization
- Resource Management
- Accurate Project Vision
- Technology Recommendations
- Streamlined Development Process
- Required Team Structure
- Open Communication
- Ongoing Support and Maintenance
Conclusion
The ecommerce website development cost, or price of any sort of website development, ranges between $12000-$220000 if started from scratch. But, off-the-shelf may charge $5000-$20000.
Knowing the exact cost of website design and development can be challenging depending on varied factors (discussed above). But, being a business owner you may or may not belong to a tech background. And here, only a professional website development company can help you. Holding extensive knowledge and experience, web developers can help you with the exact cost based on industries, website type, development stages, the team you hire, etc.
Get a consultation from our experts for website development costs and set your budget and timeframe aside for casting with sureshot planning and objectives.
Frequently Asked Questions about the Cost of Making a Website
The time taken to build a basic website depends on its features and functions. However, the detailed website building process, including designing, development, testing, and deployment, may take around 4 to 6 weeks. There are options to go for the do-it-yourself website designs or hire a professional website development organization to complete the work in the stipulated time frame.
Yes, it is possible to make a website for free. Many businesses or professionals seek free sources to create functional websites due to cost factors. While it may have a low conversion rate or limited functions, the free website can be created easily from different sources. All you need is a customized domain name to add business credibility.
Multiple software is available in the market to create user-interactive websites. The best software to design a website includes Wix, Adobe XD, Weebly, Webflow, Pattern Lab, Bootstrap, Sublime Text 3, WordPress, PageSpeed Insights, etc. All these software help professionals and guide beginners to create highly responsive websites.
A website development cost ranges from $12000-$220000 and may vary depending on varied factors. Connect with our company to know the exact cost.
The ecommerce website development cost ranges from $20,000 – $220,000 and can fluctuate depending on your project needs and factors affecting the cost
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