Website Design Price Calculator
Designing a website might be complicated, but the price of one shouldn’t be. We’ve prepared this website design price calculator in order to give you up-front, transparent pricing. No hidden fees, no surprise charges—just honest, competitive rates for great service. We’re committed to providing value that you can see and understand, so you can make informed decisions with confidence.
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Make Your Estimating Costs Easy with our Free Website Design Price Calculator
Web design costs fluctuate annually or even more so, impacting business owners, marketing directors, and even new designers. While the financial aspect can be quantified in dollars and cents, the true value of website design extends beyond these expenses.
Navigating website design costs can be challenging for managers, accountants, and newcomers to the industry. The absence of a standard “average” price complicates matters, often requiring many emails, meetings, and discussions to reach a final agreement.
Regardless of a business owner’s requirements or a designer’s experience level, finding a reasonable web design price is not that hard. You jsut need to plan far enough in advance. You need to understand your web design options, what exactly you want in a final product, and how much you want to spend. The initial obstacle comes from determining which design features your website needs, setting the stage for the entire project.
For designers, establishing an appropriate web design cost follows similar principles to any business venture: balancing profitability with competitiveness. Determining fees for various design features is a crucial step in landing on a final price for the design.
Whether you’re a business owner or a budding designer, our user-friendly web design cost calculator (located at the top of this page) provides an estimate. We hope it offers you the transparent and up-front pricing you’re looking for.
As you explore the calculator, consider the many possibilities. Both parties should decide how these options align with their financial plans. By doing so, you’ll arrive at the best services and pricing for your web design journey.
The Three Major Factors Influencing Web Design Cost
Since the product being delivered to clients is software, there are few up-front costs. Rather, the main driving factor of price is usually the hours invested into building the site. These hours can be affected greatly by these three factors:
1. Complexity
The amount of features and unique business requirements that need to be integrated into the website build. Naturally, more complex web projects will require more design and development hours.
Variables to consider:
- Complexity of website navigation (what do people need to access?)
- Marketing requirements like persona targeting, company branding.
- Custom visual design like animations, video, illustrations, or collages (if any)
- Complex user interfaces or page layouts with large amounts of content/data (ex: eCommerce)
- Integration with offsite or offline databases
- Integrations with third-party services such as Mailchimp, Calendly, or others
2. Functionality
The number of unique tasks your website will need to perform. Ecommerce and customer accounts are typically the most time intensive tasks.
Variables to consider:
- Number of products (eCommerce)
- Variety of products (eCommerce)
- Amount of product details (eCommerce)
- Customer/member accounts
- Booking or scheduling
- Content types – ex: portfolio, blog, case studies, team, resource center
3. Size
The amount of effort needed to create pages and content for the website. This will be determined largely by how much time needs to be spent on original content and design, and how much can be replicated across the website.
Variables to consider:
- Number of pages
- Number of page templates needed (ex: product page, resource page, gallery page)
- Amount of original content and copywriting needed (you may provide your own as well)
- Amount of original media needed (for example stock footage)
How to Choose a Website Designer
When companies are in the market for a web designer, they want to find a professional who delivers top-notch work. Web designers, in turn, are looking for clients who offer fair compensation to for their time. Both need to balance quality with budget, making it important for clients to vet designers (or see samples of thier work) before making a selection. There are basically three types of website designers:
Solo Freelancers: Solo freelancers are typically independent designers not tied to any agency. They offer their services at negotiable rates and commit to your project for the duration of the contract. The advantage of hiring freelancers is their freedom from corporate policies, their innate creativity, and affordability. The trade-off is that they often juggle design and coding simultaneously and don’t often provide ongoing maintenance post-launch, moving quickly to the next assignment.
Estimated Rates: $8/hour – $85/hour
International Corporations: Global web design firms may fit into your financial plan, offering the advantage of a larger design team that can speed up the process compared to a lone freelancer. However, the size of these corporations means individual clients might feel lost in a sea of many, and time zone differences can complicate communication and collaboration, potentially making communication more challenging.
Estimated Rates: $1,000/month – $1,600/month
Specialized Design Agencies: While typically pricier than freelancers or corporations, specialized design agencies bring a wealth of offerings to the table. Costs and work quality can vary widely across agencies. These agencies are often smaller, meaning each client is significant, and they can adapt more readily to individual needs. The downside is their scarcity, particularly in less urban areas, which can make in-person collaboration challenging. They are also typically more expensive than either of the previous two options mentioned above.
Estimated Rates: $2,000/project – $150,000+/project
The decision is ultimately yours to make. For small businesses and startups, or for those with tight web design budgets or without affordable online options, starting with a local freelancer might be the wisest choice.
For budding designers, freelancing is an excellent entry point. Starting with smaller projects and progressing upwards allows new designers to build portfolios that can attract more clients or impress potential employers.
If a business prioritizes rapid delivery and volume over high quality — which isn’t our recommended approach — then a corporate design firm might be the better fit. Ultimately, it boils down to the client’s financial scope.
Add-on Optional Extras for your Website
Content Development
Content can be provided by either the client, agency, or a contracted third party. Ideally, both client and agency will play some part in content creation and review. In fact, clients may wish to review the final copy before publishing to ensure accuracy and consistency in what they are offering.
SEO Copywriting
A good copywriter can budget this in around 3-4 hours with up to two rounds of revisions for a non article page. Qualified copywriters can be found on freelance sites such as Upwork or Fiverr.
Business Tip: Bringing a seasoned copywriter into your project early on can help dodge delays in launching your website. They’re pros at meeting deadlines and know the ins and outs of web design needs, like sticking to character limits, crafting calls to action, and optimizing for SEO. In contrast, an in-house writer or team member might lack this know-how, which could slow down your website’s completion.
Professional Photography ($250-$450 per headshot or business image)
This task can be significantly more involved and costly for an eCommerce website that needs product photography, if the client does not provide their own photos for each product. Service based companies, especially those that meet customers in-person, benefit from photography of their team members, usually in headshots. Other types of photos or images can usually be found online through stock image sites.
Business Tip: Ask your agency if they have a good photographer referral. Often they will have a preferred vendor from previous projects. The benefit here is the photographer has been used before by your agency, and they will have passed their quality control checks.
Uploading Pages of Content
Expect to pay the standard agency rate at 1-2 hours per page.
Business Tip: Ask the agency for an itemized line item estimate on content uploading. For pages they’re not custom designing, this is something you can do on your own, especially if they are including CMS training in the project.
E-Commerce
Adding eCommerce functionality to a website completely changes the scope of a build project. The commitment required can vary dramatically and depends heavily on which CMS platform is used, and how many products are being sold. The more products offered, the more expensive the website will be. Unless of course, the client offers to create the products on his own. Most agencies offer training on how to do this.
A rough ballpark commitment is 75-100 total hours. This is in addition to the budget for core site pages (Home, About, Contact, etc.).
A typical eCommerce project includes:
- General store setup
- Payment methods setup
- Shipping configuration
- Taxes configuration
- Order testing
- Shop page
- Product category page
- Product post
- Products compare
- Up-sell on checkout
- Connecting store to 3rd party software
Business Tip: Engage your high-value customers or B2C clients during the strategy phase of designing store user experiences, account dashboards, and checkout functionality. Their insights are invaluable and can be readily obtained at no cost or through non-budget-impacting incentives.
Quality Assurance Testing and Revisions
This process is important to spot needed revisions and to ensure full functionality for your website across browsers and devices. Enough budgeting for time here is important as the process can involve a lot of back and forth between the agency and your company. This is especially true if you are involving more stakeholders in the project (sales teams, business partners, etc.)
A good rule is that quality assurance testing and revision should be budgeted at 10-15% of total development hours. If a project is estimated at 100 hours of development work expect another 10-15 hours dedicated to quality assurance.
Business Tip: Make sure you are 100% satisfied with page mockups before moving from production into development. Many firms will charge extra for design tweaks after the site is developed. These efforts can include further customization of the backend and tweaks to the appearance of the site on the front end.
How Functionality Affects Website Pricing and Cost
Functionality in web design refers to the array of capabilities your site has. This includes customer interaction, providing valuable tools for users, and allowing product sales, each representing varying degrees of functionality. Functionality spans from basic essentials to captivating experiences, much like the rangeof web design itself.
Use our web design cost calculator to pinpoint the functionality your ecommerce platform requires.
Basic Website Functionality Opting for basic functionality is the most cost-effective strategy, setting the stage for your business to gain traction before taking on larger competitors. A popular foundational feature is the invitation for users to subscribe to newsletters via email—a tactic so effective that numerous established brands employ it to boost conversion rates. While it won’t skyrocket a company to multimillion-dollar status instantly, it’s an excellent initial step.
Cost Estimate: $2,000 – $4,000
Enhanced Website Functionality Enhanced functionality is designed to immerse your site’s visitors in what you have to offer. This could involve account creation for accessing exclusive content, navigating an ecommerce platform to make purchases, or browsing through various downloads to choose the product they want. Enhanced functionality transforms a website into a more dynamic, captivating, and user-centric space.
Cost Estimate: $4,000 – $10,000
Premium Enterprise Functionality Premium enterprise functionality raises the standard for websites, positioning your business as a established player in its sector. An enterprise-level web design is underpinned by robust coding, enabling customers to perform a wide range of actions, such as: They can register, make purchases, download content, engage with interactive elements, and most importantly, place their trust in a company that has cultivated a robust, established online identity. Premium enterprise designs deliver an unforgettable user experience (UX) that ensures visitors return repeatedly.
Cost Estimate: $10,000 – $25,000