How Much Does it Cost to Build a Website?

A complete guide on Web Designing Cost

If you are building a website for the first time, the obvious thought is, “How much does it cost to build a website?” A website’s cost will vary due to a lot of factors. You can get a website with as little as $100, but it can go in five figures based on your requirements. The cheapest of all the options is the DIY approach.

We will discuss variables and options. If you are planning to generate leads online, improve brand visibility, and reach out in from of people who need you, then your website is the tool. If this is your first time, you are most likely to think about how much it costs to build a website, just like I did when I created it for one of my ventures.

In today’s world, if you are a business without a website, you are like a dinosaur waiting for extinction. Any business, local or national, needs to have a website. Almost 96% of users use search engines to find a solution online. It is where the buyer’s journey starts, also known as the awareness stage.

This article will look at different factors affecting the cost of building a website.

Types of costs- Fixed recurring website cost

There are three fixed recurring costs you need to be aware of :

1. Domain Name
2. Hosting
3. Security and maintenance

1. Domain Name

A domain name has two-component the name and the extension. For example, our website is crazymediadesign; however, the .com is the extension.

Your domain name is a unique id and a website address.

It is your online fingerprint. You will never find two similar domain names with similar extensions. For e.g., I own crazymediadesign.com, and no one has the right to it; however, if someone wants, they can have crazymediadesign.net or crazymediadesign.org, but not crazymediadesign.com.

The right to the domain is subject to renewal. If you want to hold the domain name, you must renew it annually. It isn’t a one-time purchase.

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) manages the domain name system. It is a non-profit body that governs the policy for domain names. You can never buy domain names directly from them. To purchase a domain name, you will have to contact domain registrars. Domain registrars own the right to sell these domains. GoDaddy, HostGator, and Dreamhost are some of the popular domain registrars.

It is mandatory to renew the domain names annually from the domain registrar, or you will lose the right to the website, and someone may buy it from the domain registrar.

If you want to learn more about it or get a more technical visit guide from WP Beginner on Domain.

Cost of a domain

There isn’t a fixed price for a domain name. The domain name costs from as little as $2 to $20 per year.

The cost varies depending on several factors, such as:

1. Domain extension

The domain extension, like .xyz or .info, will cost less than .com. Extensions such as .io, .ai, etc. are higher. You will also want to check the renewal fees. Domain registrars initially offer a discounted rate for the first year of the domain; however, the renewal fees may be higher than the first-year costs.

2. Domain Seller

Numerous domain registrars are authorized to sell domain names (i.e., a direct registrar, aftermarket service, private seller, reseller, etc.). The popular ones are Godaddy.com, HostGator.com, and Dreamhost.com. The same prices will cost less or more depending on who you buy the domain name from.

3. The term length

Just like any deal online, depending on the length of the year you are buying for at one go, a domain price will differ as you will get a discount.

4. Domain Privacy Fees (Optional)

Domain privacy is an optional service provided by the domain registrar. It is also known as the Whois Privacy service. It will hide the contact information shared by you with the domain registrar when purchasing the domain.

It helps in avoiding spam emails from marketers.

How to register a domain name?

If you want to register your domain name, you can purchase them from a domain registrar such as GoDaddy, Domain.com, etc. Before you buy a domain name, think carefully about the domain name you want for your business. It is an important identity.

The best practices for choosing the domain name are :

1. Ensure the domain name is short, easy to pronounce, spell, and memorable. Before you buy the domain name, take a break, and read the domain name. Ask yourself does it sounds spammy; for e.g., newyorkdentalclinic.com sounds spammy, but a domain name with your brand is fine.
2. Try to stick with a .com extension because people associate a website with .com and find it easier to remember.
3. Avoid using hyphens and numbers at all costs in your domain.

How to buy a domain name permanently?

A question frequently asked by first-time website owners is, “How to buy a domain name permanently?”. The answer to this question is a simple “No.” You cannot buy a domain name permanently. You will have to renew it annually.

Alternatively, you can renew the domain for five or ten years in one go.

2. Web Hosting

If you want your website to be accessible online, you will need web hosting. Web hosting providers provide the necessary infrastructure to keep your website online.

Website hosting is crucial for a website’s performance. Crappy web hosting will impact the page load time, loading your website slowly on the user’s device. Your page speed is vital for search engine ranking.

The cost of the hosting depends on the plan you buy. It can cost you as little as $3 to hundreds of dollars a month. The underlying factors for cost are the number of sites, storage space, and bandwidth.

There are three categories of site hosting: shared hosting, virtual private server, and dedicated hosting.

Types of website hosting

1. Shared Hosting

The most inexpensive and popular of all the hosting is shared hosting.

In shared hosting, multiple users share the resource of one server. It’s just like an apartment. As several users share the same resource, the cost is distributed among them, making it cheaper. Shared hosting packages start with one website and then other packages wherein you can add multiple sites.

The multiple website hosting packages will cost you more.

If you are a business with a brand new website, zero to low traffic, and low on a budget, it will suit you the most.

How shared hosting works?

In shared hosting, one website is hosting multiple sites. The resources are divided among these websites. A cPanel will be provided to you by the hosting company, which will show your current usage of the resources and other information.

To avoid improper usage, the hosting provider restricts the consumption of resources among the customers.

The users do not have access to the root file. Your information and website files remain confidential — others cannot access your data unless you share it. You won’t know other websites that are hosted on the same server. Separate partitions are assigned to each site where all your files and folders are stored. Only the account holder has access to it.

It is one of the cheapest options among all the hosting categories.

How many visitors can share hosting handles?

There isn’t a fixed number of visitors a shared hosting can handle. It is something that your hosting provider decides and can differ from one provider to the other.

The hosting provider will be upfront about the number of visitors and websites you can host in the account. I recommend you check with the hosting provider and find the exact number the plan allows.

How much does a shared hosting cost?

The shared hosting can cost you between $3 a month and $30. The cost will increase based on your website’s visitors and the bandwidth needed to handle it.

Advantages of shared hosting

There are a lot of benefits of shared hosting. Some of the benefits include:

1. Less expensive: The price is the most significant advantage of shared hosting. It is the most cost-effective of all hosting plans, especially if you are a beginner.
2. Easy to manage: With shared hosting, you will get a control panel that makes most tasks easy.
3. Multiple domains hosting: Shared hosting providers have packages that allow you to host multiple domains.
4. Professionally managed: Zero headaches regarding maintenance, as your hosting provider will take care of it. The professional team of the provider will take care of any attacks on the server, network outages, etc., which makes your life easy.

Disadvantages of shared hosting

Even though it has a lot of advantages but it sure has some severe problems too:

1. Security: Security is one of the biggest concerns with shared hosting. They are usually prone to hacking attacks. Any malicious activity on a server can affect all the websites hosted.
2. Slow: If any of the websites are overwhelmed by the resource request, it will impact the performance of the other websites. The load time of your site is slower than dedicated servers. As your site begins to receive more traffic, your site may start to perform poorly due to a lack of resources.
3. Customization: You won’t have the option to customize the server to optimize it for the best performance.

2. Virtual Private Server

A virtual private server is an upgrade from shared hosting. It is a powerful server virtually split into multiple servers. Unlike the shared hosting plan, the virtual server, you’ll enjoy more significant private disk space and higher overall resource availability.

With Virtual Private Server, you will experience the power of a dedicated server, but you are still sharing the physical server with others.

You will also have superuser-level access and control. Even though it is an upgrade from the shared hosting, you are sharing the resource with other users, and the performance may be affected due to the workload from other virtual machines.

How does Virtual Private Server Hosting work?

A private server is created virtually within a server. The hosting provider creates a virtual server within the same physical server. The virtual server acts like a separate entity, and you are granted more rights than a shared hosting user.

Even though it is a virtual server, it is a shared resource, too. Your website performance improves with a dedicated resource, a virtual server.

How many visitors can virtual private server hosting handle?

Like shared hosting, the number of visitors your virtual private server can handle is based on the available bandwidth, RAM, and CPU that comes with the package.

You should speak to your hosting company for more information.

How much does a virtual private server hosting cost?

VPS is a hybrid of shared hosting because of which it costs 10x what shared hosting costs; however, it won’t cost more than a dedicated server. The cost of the VPS will depend on the configuration of the server.

Advantages of Virtual Private Server

1. Reliability: In shared hosting, you will have a domino effect. One lousy user can have the entire server crashing down. VPS are hybrid, which offers stability and reliability; they are entirely isolated from each other, making sure your website isn’t impacted.
2. Control over the server: The best part of choosing a VPS is that you will have root-level access to the server. Root-level access is essential if you want to tweak your server environment to get the best performance.
3. Performance: You have a dedicated resource allocated to you; your visitors will enjoy faster load times.
4. Flexibility: You will have the freedom to install the operating system and the software of your choice on the server

Disadvantages of Virtual Private Server

1. Maintenance: Maintenance is perhaps the most significant disadvantage of VPS. As you install your OS and software, the support team may not be acquainted with it and will be of little help.
2. Knowledge: You will need to have a good understanding of what you are doing with the setup, security, updates, etc. Technical skills are required to manage the VPS server.
3. Cost: It will cost you more than shared hosting, with the complications of maintaining a dedicated server included.

3) Dedicated Web Hosting

A dedicated server is a stand-alone server assigned to you, unlike VPS or shared hosting. In a dedicated server, you are not sharing any resources, such as bandwidth, CPU, RAM, etc., with any of the hosting provider’s clients.

Site owners who go for dedicated servers are likely to be the ones who have an overwhelming number of visitors to their websites to justify the cost. The hosting providers give you full control of the server so that you can meet your needs. The dedicated servers come in managed and unmanaged forms. In managed dedicated servers, the provider’s team will handle the hosting and troubleshoot in case of any problems.

Dedicated Managed Servers are more expensive than the others.

How much does a dedicated server cost?

Dedicated server hosting is the most expensive of all the servers. Unlike shared hosting and the virtual private server where you were getting support and software included in the hosting package in a dedicated server, these will cost you extra.

The hosting provider will charge you extra for support, cPanel, software, etc. The cost of the server can vary from $50 to $1500 per month. The average price is around $150-$350 per month. Again just like all the plans above, it depends on the number of resources you need from the hosting provider.

Advantages of a dedicated web hosting

1. Exclusive resource: You are not sharing your server or bandwidth with anyone else. You need not worry about other websites trying to eat up the resources. 
2. Performance: The performance of the dedicated web hosting will be far superior to that of any other hosting plan. Server crashes are less likely to happen due to someone else’s error.
3. Security: A dedicated server means you can be assured that your website isn’t being shared with a malicious website or potential spammer. 
4. Unique IP: Hosting providers will provide you with an individual IP address, which is essential if you are running an e-commerce site needing SSL for credit card processing.

Disadvantages of a dedicated web hosting

The problems of dedicated web hosting are similar to Virtual Private Server hosting. They are:

1. Increased cost: While there is improvement, performance, and reliability, there is an increase in the price, too. You can expect hefty amounts going out of your pocket. So unless you do not have high traffic to justify the cost, do not invest in it.
2. Too technical: You need to be technically sound to manage the server for installing software, daily maintenance, backups, etc. You will quickly run into trouble if you do not have the skill set required to maintain the server.
3. Rent only: You do not own the server. The server will remain the property of the service provider. The only thing you have ownership of is the data on the server. You cannot even physically access the server.

How to choose web hosting?

When it comes to web hosting, the first thing is understanding your requirements. If your website is entirely new and you are doing zero to little to market it and gain visitors, you are generally okay with the shared hosting.

With time when you start getting more and more traffic, you should upgrade.

SSL Certificate: What is an SSL Certificate?

An SSL Certificate (Secure Socket Layer) is a digital certificate binding a cryptographic key. SSL Certificate creates a secure link between the website and the browser. SSL certificate is vital in today’s digital world. If you accept payments online or capture visitor information, SSL is essential.

Search engines give priority to websites with SSL certificates and trust them.

Advantages of SSL certification:

If you have a website, SSL is needed. A site without an SSL certificate is likelier to be hacked and leak user-sensitive information. The benefit of SSL is:

1. It keeps data secure between the two servers that are exchanging data.
2. Increases your online visibility as the search engines love the site with an SSL certificate.
3. If someone opens a website that doesn’t have SSL, the browsers will warn the user, making the visitors run away from the site. SSL helps you enhance the trust of your site visitors.

How much does the SSL certificate cost?

The SSL certificate will cost you between $0 to $1500. Depending on who you are hosting with, you will find free or paid SSL. Industry experts recommend going with paid hosting as the paid ones offer advanced encryption and additional protection.

Security

All websites are vulnerable to attacks. The more visible your site is, the more it is prone to attacks.

There are several reasons for attacking a website, including:

1. Inject SEO spam on the page
2. Exploiting site visitors
3. Stealing information stored on the server
4. Abuse server resources
5. Host malicious downloads
6. Launch attacks against other sites

Hackers will hack your website and compromise it. So, just like your computer, you must have additional protection against hacking, viruses, and spam.

How much does it cost to build a website- Project-based cost

Now that you are clear on some of the fixed monthly costs associated with owning a website, we will look at the other factors that are more project-based and one-time fees. These are costs related to the website design wherein, based on your requirements, the price will differ.

To understand it a bit more, let’s look at different types of website

What are the different website types and their purposes?

There are different types of websites sites built for entirely different purposes. Depending on the type of site you are trying to create, it can be simple or complex.

Let’s look at the different types of websites and their costs.

1. Small Business Website:

A small business website is straightforward. Most of the small business websites are built for informational purposes. The common goal is to have an online presence to build trust and inform customers about the different products and services they have.

A small business owner is probably low on budget, and to keep the cost minimal, they want to avoid all the bells and whistles. They want a website that works well and is decent looking.

The most common web pages for a small business website are:

1. Home
2. About Us
3. Services
4. Contacts
5. Testimonials

How much does it cost to build a small business website?

As these are low-budget websites and fairly simple, business owners should expect to pay $500-$2000 dollars depending on the number of pages that need to be added.

Web designing companies will use some form of the readymade template and customize the colors and a bit of layout to match it with your brand. These websites are built in WordPress, and their looks are customized to make them look professional.

We build small business websites on WordPress.

2. Mid-sized or enterprise-level business website:

The price for mid-sized or enterprise-level businesses can result in five to six figures, depending on the number of pages needed. The website that is built for them is highly customized. It’s also what’s under the hood that matters, too. These websites will have several pages and advanced functions implemented in them.

Unlike small business websites, these websites are built from scratch. They are custom-coded. Our cost for creating a website for such websites starts from $15,000. The website is custom-built from scratch, with every code handwritten.

3. E-commerce Website:

How much does it cost to build a website for a business? An e-commerce website is a bit more complex than a business website. The number of pages is higher, and many functions and features are needed to maximize conversion.

A business website may not have a customer portal, but the e-commerce website will more or less need to have a customer portal where customers can see their information, past transactions, etc.

Some of the popular web pages an e-commerce website may have are:

1. Home page
2. Product pages
3. Contact us
4. Check out page
5. Payment Page
6. Shopping Cart
7. Blog

As mentioned earlier, e-commerce websites need to have a lot of functions. Some of the most requested features are:

1. Integration with payment systems,
2. Search function
3. Add to cart
4. Integration with chat system
5. Recently viewed products

It is common for an online store to have more than 20 product pages. It will also need integration with a lot of online tools. The right site is capable of converting visitors into qualified leads. Learning and implementing will take a lot of time if you have never done digital marketing.

In any case, if you are a bootstrapping startup, there are things you can do to bring down the cost. A firm has to dedicate a portion of its budget to marketing. The website is one of the backbones of digital marketing.

A lot of research goes into creating a website. It includes creating a buyer persona.

The web design companies will create your website based on the target audience to whom you will cater. For e.g., Are the ones using your product male or female? What is the age group? What niche is it? Based on the information, many components need to be customized, including color, fonts, layout, words (speaking the language of your target audience), and more.

Other costs of web design

Logo

The cost of the logo can differ from provider to provider. You can expect to pay $100-$250 based on the location.

Content

The biggest cost to the content is words and videos. The content writer will charge you per word that goes into your article. Text is important for ranking in search engines, too. You will have to pay for the images used on the website.

If the agency writes the content for you, they will charge you. The prices will quickly go up. You can write the content by yourself, use a freelancing website to hire content writers, or hire an offshore agency.

How to bring down the cost of website building

The price of building a website can vary depending on your requirements; however, other things influence the pricing, too.

1. Team: Just like experienced employees cost more, so does hiring a company with experience. An experienced agency will have web design veterans who know the best practices and tools to deliver a quality result. If you hire a freelancer, you are more likely to get an affordable rate.
2. Location: By location, I mean where is the web designing team based. A team in North America and Europe will cost you more; however, for offshore locations, you are likely to get up to 50% fewer quotes. If you hire the right agency, you can get a quality similar to the ones onshore.

Conclusion

While there are a lot of factors to give you an exact answer to “How much does it cost to build a website,” including your requirements, we have tried our best to give you a rough estimate. If you want the exact cost of building a website, we strongly recommend contacting us so our team can give you an exact quote based on your needs.