It is the first question we are asked, and rightly so: nobody commits to spending without an order of magnitude. It is also the one it is most dishonest to answer with a single figure, because "a website" covers everything from five presentation pages to an application connected to an ERP and three marketplaces.
Rather than posting a price that would mean nothing, here is what actually makes up a quote. You will know what to look at, what to ask, and why two proposals can differ threefold without either being a rip-off.
Why an advertised price is almost always misleading
A list price assumes a standard product. But what costs money in a website is not the layout: it is the number of special cases your business imposes. Two sites that look alike on screen can require radically different work depending on whether stock has to be synchronised, several currencies handled, or ten years of history carried over.
When a price is advertised, it usually corresponds to a template your content will be poured into. That is a legitimate offer, but it is not the same as a site designed for your business, and the difference is paid later: in workarounds, in features that cannot be added, or in a premature rebuild.
The four items that really weigh
The first is functional scope: every business rule, every conditional form, every area reserved for logged-in users adds development and testing. The second is content: copy, photographs, translations. A site that is technically ready but empty cannot be delivered, and producing that content takes time, yours or ours.
The third item, often underestimated, is integrations. Connecting a site to a business management system, an invoicing tool or a marketplace requires understanding what the other system actually exposes, its limits and how it reports errors. The fourth is design: a visual identity created for you does not compare to a purchased theme.
The cost nobody discusses enough: afterwards
A website is not a purchase, it is an asset that lives. It has to be hosted, security-patched, backed up, monitored for availability, and fixed when a browser changes behaviour. That recurring budget exists whether you plan for it or not; ignoring it at quotation time simply means discovering it later.
At Netways, that afterwards takes the form of a hosting and maintenance contract: infrastructure, updates and support. It is also what keeps a contact who knows the code available, rather than hunting for a supplier in a hurry the day the site goes down.
How to compare two quotes without getting it wrong
Do not compare totals, compare scopes. A readable quote breaks the work into lots: design, development, content integration, connections to your tools, testing, launch. If an item appears nowhere, it has not vanished from the project, it has simply been left out of the quote and will come back mid-way.
Then ask three questions: who produces the content, what happens after launch, and what should be budgeted for the first change. The answers will tell you more about how serious a proposal is than any figure.
Frequently asked questions
Why not at least advertise a starting price?
Because a starting price is almost always read as the price, and it only ever matches the simplest project imaginable. We prefer a short conversation about your needs, after which we issue a quote itemised lot by lot. That conversation commits you to nothing.
Is a bespoke site necessarily more expensive than a theme?
At launch, often yes. Over the site's lifetime the gap narrows and then reverses, when a feature the theme never anticipated has to be added, or when an extension abandoned by its author forces a rebuild.
Can I provide the content myself to reduce the budget?
Yes, and many of our clients do. You simply have to plan ahead: content delivered late delays a launch far more reliably than complex development does.