"How much does a website cost?" is a bit like asking how much a building costs. A garden shed and an office tower are both buildings. The honest answer starts with a question back: what are you actually trying to build, and what does it need to do?
Still, "it depends" is a frustrating thing to hear when you are trying to plan a budget. So in this guide we give you real ranges, we explain what pushes a project up or down the scale, and we tell you how to get a number you can actually plan around. These are USD ranges for quality custom work by a small, senior team, the kind of studio that ships things that last, not the cheapest quote on a freelance marketplace.
What you are really paying for
Before the numbers, understand where the money goes. A price tag is mostly time, and time goes into a handful of buckets.
- Discovery and strategy. Working out what to build, for whom, and why. Skip this and you pay for it later in rework.
- Design. Wireframes, a visual system, and the interface itself. Good design is not decoration, it is what makes the thing usable and worth trusting.
- Development. The actual build, front end and back end, plus integrations with payments, shipping, email, analytics and anything else.
- Testing and launch. Making sure it works on real devices, is secure, is fast, and does not fall over on day one.
- The invisible parts. Performance, SEO foundations, accessibility, security and a codebase the next developer can actually read. This is where cheap builds quietly cut corners.
When one quote is a third of another, it is almost never because someone is being greedy. It is because they are building a different thing, or skipping the buckets you cannot see until they hurt.
Ballpark ranges by project type
Here is our honest map of what these projects tend to cost in 2026 when built properly. Treat them as starting ranges, not fixed prices. Your specifics move you within, and sometimes beyond, each band.
| Project type | Typical range (USD) | What sits at each end |
|---|---|---|
| Landing page | 500 to 2,500 | One page marketing site up to a polished, animated, conversion focused page |
| Business website | 2,500 to 12,000 | A handful of pages up to a large multi section site with a blog and custom design |
| Ecommerce store | 5,000 to 40,000+ | A clean WooCommerce store up to a large custom catalog with complex logic |
| Web app (SaaS, portal, tool) | 15,000 to 80,000+ | A focused MVP up to a mature product with roles, billing and integrations |
| Mobile app (iOS and Android) | 20,000 to 100,000+ | A simple app up to a full featured product with a real time back end |
| ERP or management system | 15,000 to 120,000+ | A single module tool up to a company wide platform across departments |
Notice the ranges overlap and the ceilings are open. That is deliberate and honest. A "web app" can be a weekend of scope or two years of it.
Landing pages and business sites
A landing page is the smallest real project. One focused page built to convert visitors into leads or sales. At the low end it is a clean, fast, well written page. At the higher end you are paying for custom design, animation, A/B ready structure and tight performance. Most small businesses do not need to spend big here, they need it done well.
A business website is where most companies live. Home, services, about, contact, maybe a blog and a few landing pages. The range is wide because "business website" covers a template lightly customized all the way up to a bespoke design with custom sections, a content system your team can actually use, and SEO built in from the first line. If organic search matters to you, that foundation is worth paying for, since it is the difference between a brochure and a machine that brings you customers.
Ecommerce stores
Stores start higher because there is simply more to build: a catalog, a cart, a checkout, payments, shipping rules, tax, order management and often stock control. A tidy WooCommerce store with a modest catalog sits near the lower end. As you add custom design, subscriptions, multi currency, wholesale pricing, or a bespoke checkout, you climb. Large custom stores with unusual logic can pass the top of the band entirely. We wrote a full, honest comparison of the platforms in our guide to the best ecommerce framework, and the platform you choose has a real effect on both the build cost and the years of running cost that follow.
Web apps and mobile apps
This is where "it depends" earns its keep. A web app is priced by its features, not its pages. Every user role, every permission, every integration, every screen with real logic behind it adds time. A focused MVP that does one thing well is far cheaper than a mature platform, which is exactly why we push clients to launch small and grow with evidence rather than guessing at everything up front.
A mobile app carries extra weight: two platforms to support, app store rules, device testing, and usually a back end and API feeding the app. A simple app is one thing, an app with accounts, payments, notifications and real time data is another. We build web and mobile apps and we always scope them in phases so you spend on what earns its place.
ERP and management systems
Custom management systems and ERP are the widest band of all, because they can be a single tool that replaces a messy spreadsheet or a company wide platform spanning inventory, billing, HR and reporting. The value is usually easy to see, since these systems remove manual work that costs real salary hours every week. The trick is to build the module with the biggest payoff first, prove it, then expand. We have shipped more than 20 of these, and the ones that succeed almost always start narrow.
What actually drives your price
Two projects with the same label can differ threefold. Here is what moves the needle.
- Scope and features. The single biggest factor. Every "can it also" adds time. Ruthless focus is the cheapest tool you have.
- Design depth. A template lightly styled versus a bespoke design system are different amounts of work.
- Custom versus off the shelf. Reusing a platform and its plugins is cheaper than building from scratch. Custom is worth it when the model demands it, and wasteful when it does not.
- Integrations. Every third party system you connect to, payments, CRMs, shipping, accounting, is its own small project.
- Content. Who writes the copy, sources the images, and enters the products? If it is us, that is time. If it is you, plan for it.
- Timeline. A compressed deadline that needs more hands in parallel costs more than a sane schedule.
- The maintenance you will not see on the invoice. Hosting, updates, backups and support are ongoing. A cheap build with no plan for these is a bill deferred, not avoided. Sorting out hosting and a support plan early keeps the running cost predictable.
Fixed price or by the phase?
For well defined projects like a website or a store, a fixed price against a clear scope gives you certainty, and we like giving clients certainty. For products where the shape will change as you learn, apps and systems especially, building in phases is usually smarter and cheaper in the long run. You fund a milestone, see it working, and decide the next step with real information instead of a guess. We are happy to work either way, and we will tell you which one fits your project rather than defaulting to whatever is easiest to bill.
How to get a real number
You can narrow a wide range to something useful in about a day, if you bring three things.
- A clear goal. What should this thing do for the business, and how will you know it worked?
- A rough feature list. Even a bullet list of must haves and nice to haves changes the conversation entirely.
- A budget range you are comfortable with. This is not us fishing. It lets us design to your budget instead of over or under building, and it is the fastest route to a plan you can afford.
Start with our project cost calculator for a ballpark in a couple of minutes. Then, when you want a real figure against your real requirements, tell us about your project. We will ask sharp questions, give you an honest range, and if a cheaper path gets you the same result, we will point you to it. A studio that only ever quotes up is not one you want building your business.
The honest bottom line
A good website or app is not a cost, it is an asset that should return more than it takes. The right question is not "what is the cheapest number" but "what is the smallest, sharpest thing I can build that starts earning, and how do I grow it from there?" Answer that, and the budget stops being a mystery and starts being a plan.