The first question I get is almost always the same: "What does a corporate website cost?" The honest answer is that this question has the same shape as "what does a house cost?" Some people charge $150 for what sounds like the same job, others charge $15,000. Neither is necessarily lying — they're just not selling the same thing.
Below I break down the line items that actually set a quote's price. My goal isn't to talk you into the expensive option — it's to show you where you can genuinely save and where you can't.
1. It's not page count, it's template count
Clients are used to measuring budget by page count. But for a developer, a 40-page site built from 5 distinct templates is 5 units of work. Filling the same mold 40 times doesn't add meaningful cost. Conversely, 6 pages that each need their own bespoke design cost more than that 40-page site.
Practical takeaway: when you're getting quotes, ask "how many distinct templates" rather than "how many pages." If budget is tight, cut template count, not page count.
2. Where does the design come from?
There are three tiers, and the gap between them compounds:
- Premade theme: a purchased template adapted with your colors and content. Cheapest, fastest, most likely to resemble something else.
- Semi-custom: brand-specific components built on top of a design system. This is the right spot for most small and mid-size businesses.
- Fully custom design: a separate design process — wireframes, prototypes. This is usually the single largest cost line, often 30–50% of the total budget.
3. Who produces the content?
This is where most projects stall, in my experience. If copy, photos and product data are coming from you, that's not a cost line — it's a delay line. If it's expected from the developer — copywriting, photography, product entry — it needs to be priced separately.
Warning: projects where "we'll provide content later" is the plan often get delivered with placeholder text that sits there for months. From an SEO standpoint, that's the same as never having launched at all.
4. Is there an admin panel, and how deep does it go?
"I want to be able to update it myself" sounds simple but hides real work behind it. Building a panel to add a blog post takes a few days; a panel with product variants, stock, multilingual content and permission levels takes weeks.
Be specific here: which fields will you actually update yourself? Building a panel for an "About Us" paragraph you'll change once a year costs far more than just emailing me that paragraph when it changes.
5. Integrations
Payment gateways, invoicing, shipping tracking, CRM, ERP, booking systems — each integration is its own project. And the cost isn't just the initial connection: when the other side's API changes, your site needs maintenance too. Make sure the quote lists integrations by name.
6. Performance and technical SEO
This line item is usually invisible in a quote, because the client doesn't ask for it and the developer doesn't do it by default. Yet a site that can't be found on Google the day it launches delays your return on investment for months. Optimized images, Core Web Vitals targets, structured data and a sitemap aren't decorations added afterward — they're part of the job.
I cover this in more depth in two other posts: 5 real reasons your site is slow and the 20-point checklist to run before launch.
7. After delivery
The job isn't over when the site is done. Hosting, domain, SSL, backups, security updates and small changes are an annual cost line. Projects that don't discuss this upfront end up arguing "is this covered under warranty?" the moment something breaks.
So how do you actually compare quotes?
Getting three quotes and picking the cheapest one means nothing if these seven line items differ between them. Instead, ask every vendor to answer in the same format:
- How many design templates, and how many of them are fully custom?
- Which fields will be manageable from the panel — itemized?
- Who enters the content?
- Which integrations are included?
- Is there a performance target, and is it measurable?
- How long is support included after delivery, and what does it cost after that?
A quote that answers these six questions clearly is often the cheap one, even when the number is higher — because you can see where the price difference actually comes from. And an unexpected cost is the most expensive thing a project can have.