What's the cost of building a website?

Creating and maintaining a website can be very costly, or very budget friendly. Either way you cut it, it likely isn't going to be free. Let's explore some of the basic costs of a website!

Cost 1: Hosting and Domain names

When you first set out to start building your website, the very first cost you're likely to run into is the cost of hosting your website. Some people get this mixed up with buying a domain name, which is likely another cost.

Hosting a website is, generally speaking, done by a third party. Larger companies and tech-centric companies often will host their own website using their own servers. Depending on which route you go the costs will vary. If you use a third party to host your website, like bluehost, wix, squarespace, AWS, etc. vary in cost. On the other hand, hosting a website yourself poses a lot of up-front costs, risks, and know-how.

Average Cost of Hosting: $2-$400/ Month

Buying a domain is completely different. A domain is your web address. For instance, our domain is futuristhorizons.com. How much this costs will depend on a few things. Mainly, what the name itself is and who you're buying it from. For instance if you wanted to buy the domain "Apple" that would cost you billions of dollars, and you'd likely be unsuccessful. However, if you were attempting to buy a more original name, like "ILikeCheeseBurgers", the cost would be much lower.

Average Cost of a Domain Name: $10-$20/ year

Cost 2: Picking Your Plan

You'll incur this cost if you end up using a third-party platform to build your website. Examples of these third party companies are Wix, Squarespace, Wordpress, etc.

These companies plans can range depending on your needs for functionality on your website. Generally eCommerce website plans cost more.

Average Cost: $20-$500/ month

Cost 3: Design and Development

Firstly, there's a large difference between a web designer and a web developer. There are more differences, but for the sake of this post lets just differentiate by saying developers code websites and designers build on third party platforms.

There are situations where you may need one, the other, or both. Web Designers are a fantastic option for those who are trying to build most websites. Developers are desirable if you're trying to build a new type of website that hasn't been done before or if you need customization beyond the capabilities of a designer.

Generally speaking, web designers are less expensive than web developers. These costs are estimations. There are some Designers and Developers who earn much much higher than these listed costs.

Average Cost for a Web Designer: $50-$80/hour

Average Cost of a Web Developer: $60-$80/hour

Cost 4: Maintenance

The cost of maintaining a website generally speaking isn't too high. As most websites can be left alone for long periods of time, sometime the cost is negligible. However, if you're paying a designer or developer to maintain your site (the best option) you may pay slightly higher. Also, its worth noting that some businesses decide to maintain their websites in-house, in which case the cost is difficult to assess.

It's also worth noting that the cost of maintenance will depend on the tasks needing to be performed. For example, updating a blog is going to be much cheaper than rebuilding a page.

Average Cost to Pay Someone to Maintain Your Website: $20-$50/hour

Cost 5: Third Parties/Miscellaneous

Along with all of the regular costs of building, maintaining, and hosting a website - there are often miscellaneous costs. Third parties, plug-ins, and integrations can sometimes cost money (especially if you want premium versions that often have better functionality).

Some examples of third parties, plug-ins, and miscellaneous costs are: TripAdvisor (displaying customer ratings), Calendly (displaying a calendar/allowing customers to book appointments), Premium themes from WordPress, eCommerce functionalities, and credit card processing.

Generally speaking, these costs aren't incredibly high, but they can stack up quickly if you need multiple third party applications or integrations.

Average Cost of a Third Party Premium App: $2-$20/month

Bringing it all together

To bring it all back together, the average cost of building, hosting, maintaining, and publishing a website ranges (wildly) from:

Between $380-$5000 for startup costs

Between $30-$1500+ per month

These costs vary wildly. For the majority of people building a website, its safe to assume that your website would fall much closer to the low end of this spectrum.

If you're interested in building a website or estimating the costs of building one - don't hesitate to reach out to us. We would be happy to help get your new website up and running!

Futurist Horizons is a website design and marketing company that specializes in creating effective and accessible websites and marketing content for businesses.