How Much Does a Website Cost?
If you are interested in having a website, your first question will be: How much does a website cost?
Like any respectable website designer, the answer is always ‘it depends’.
Websites can cost you as little as £3 a month from a ‘build it yourself’ site. Or a whopping £10,000 from a bespoke website designer that will provide you with a top of the range website.
I sit at the lower end of that spectrum, providing excellent websites, excellent hosting, and a wonderful conversation at the same time.
It’s rare for me to quote above £1000 for the website as a stand-alone product.
Look here for more guidance on what you want your website to be able to do. It will impact the price.
Ooo… look, an offer:
1 year FREE hosting if you refer a friend!
(that’s £180)
This bit is about you deciding if you want to do it DIY or hire someone like me to help you through the process.
Let’s find out, how much does a website cost?
Consider the following monthly costs (to DIY your site) :
1. Domain Names
£10 – £30 Each
You can buy a domain name (e.g. www.myshop.co.uk) for not a lot of money.
www.beginthebrief.co.uk cost me £15 A YEAR. That’s pennies.
The cost may come when you buy multiple domains in order to re-direct people to your site and to simply own them so no one else can.
You can buy domains from multiple places – WordPress – Godaddy – Siteground to name a few.
2. Domain Transfers
£15 – £30
The cost for domain transfers is a fairly hidden one. If you own a website that is hosted, but you are unhappy and would like to change the host, it’s advisable to also transfer the domain over to whatever host you have.
With Siteground (my host) they charge just under £20.
3. Hosting
£12 – £30 (shared)
£30 – £600 (for dedicated)
I use Siteground (affiliate link) for my hosting.
I spent a lot of time doing research on hosting providers, and what turned me to Siteground is it’s undeniably excellent customer service and website page speeds.
4. Maintanence
£0 – £150
If you decide to maintain your own website, this is pretty cheap, unless you take into account all the other things you could be doing while running your business…
Site maintenance covers:
- CMS Updates
- Plugin & Theme Updates
- Site backups
- Security
- Troubleshooting
Website’s change constantly, keeping up with the latest updates is important to the success of your site.
5. Theme (optional)
£0-500
Themes on WordPress can be free, I own a licence for Divi theme builder as they provide excellent software when it comes to making your site look special.
If you are interested in building websites or continuing once yours has been built. Divi theme is a great way of supporting you as a learner due to its approachable and simplistic layout. When it comes to becoming more advanced, inserting CSS and PHP coding, it has plenty of support for that too.
6. Plugins (optional) SEO
£0 – £250
For a WordPress website, plugins are an optional boost that can help you go the extra mile with a variety of backend and frontend tasks such as:
- SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
- Security
- Forms
- Site optimization (although Siteground provides this in magnitudes)
Note: A high percentage of plugins have a free version.
7. Time & Education
£Unknown
How much of your time can you give to learning how to put a website together and then bring it to life?
If it is “loads” then fantastic! There are plenty of ways to learn how to use WordPress:
If your answer is “no” then it may be best to either go for a ‘build it yourself’ website or hire a website developer.. like me!
8. SSL Certificate
£20 – 200
SSL certificate (secure sockets layer) is your security for your website.
They often come free with a host (Siteground) or you have to buy them.
People will avoid your website if you do not have the locked padlock to the left of your site indicating its ‘safeness’. So it is definitely a no brainer.
Conclusion.
So, how much does a website cost?
I think it can be safe to say that the answer is most definitely in your hands. Spend how much you need to spend in order to boost your business in the right direction.
But consider this, a website is a product that will sit alone in the back of the store until you pick it up and show it off. It takes work to rank to the top of Google with good SEO.
Regardless of your choices, come and have chat, no obligations, the advice is free!