How Much Does It Cost to Build a Website?

Digitalization is spreading at a rocket speed. Businesses that follow this transition carry the day. The same holds true for websites. Today, it isn’t easy to sustain your business without a website. Do you agree?

There is an important question when it comes to developing a website – How much does it cost to build a website.

However, there is no straightforward answer because it depends on many things, including your requirements. But there can be some estimations to tell what it is likely to cost you when creating a website. Key factors affecting the cost of website development include:

• Complexity
• Number of features and functionalities
• Complexity of database
• Number of pages and customization
• Third-party integrations
• Level and size of the web development team

A basic website with limited functionalities can cost $10,000 to $30,000, an advanced one can cost $50,000 to $100,000, and a more complex one with complicated features can cost $150,000 or more.

This blog post will shed light on various questions related to the cost of building a website. Keep reading for a thorough analysis.

Why Do You Need a Website After All?

It is good if your business is going well without a website, but will it go on the same for a long time? You can guess it Will not if you want a successful business.

Can you afford to lose your customers to your competitors? Yes, you read correct! As every business is opting for website development, it is very likely that your competitors will have websites. If so, chances are that you will lose customers to them because 46% of consumers don’t trust a business without a website.

So, if someone comes to know about your business, it is likely that they will search for you online. And this is what can push them to competitors if they don’t find you online.

Do you aspire to grow bigger and reach new market dimensions? A website provides you more business opportunities with reach to new markets and customers.

So, not having a website is detrimental not only to your business revenue but also to your existence.

How Can You Determine Your Cost to Build a Website?

As mentioned above, determining the actual cost of developing a website can be difficult because multiple factors affect it. Further, as the nature of every business is different, so do their website needs. Can you think that a small business website’s requirements differ from that of a large-scale business?

So, before calculating the cost of developing your website, you need to look at the various factors that will influence the prices. The following are the key considerations for this:

• Website type
• Type of team
• Location of developer

Let’s start examining each of these factors one at a time.

How Does the Type Influence Website Development Cost?

One of the most important factors in determining the cost is the type of website you want to build. This is also what is your starting point in creating a website. So, in order to get an idea of the website development cost, it is crucial to know about your business niche.

The cost of developing an eCommerce website is much higher than a corporate website. This is because the features added on a corporate website aren’t sufficient for an eCommerce website. Further, more features and customization on your website will attract additional charges on the overall development cost.

Similarly, if you want to build a static website, it will cost you less than developing a dynamic website.

Here are the popular website types and corresponding estimated costs.

Website Type	Estimated Cost
Corporate Website	$6,500 or more
Web Portal	$45,000 or more
eCommerce Website	$40,000 or more
Marketplace Website	$50,000 or more
Landing Page	$3,000 or more

Note: The above costs can increase based on requirements, customization, features, complexity, and other reasons.

The Impact of Development Team on Website Development Cost

Certainly, the cost of developing a website comes down to how you want to tackle your website development project. Do you want to outsource the whole project or hire a few developers to integrate into your team for the development work? There are different approaches to building a website that determines the cost.

Build an in-house team

You can hire some developers for your company and build an in-house team to work on your project. However, this is not the best way to create a website because you have to bear high costs for maintaining a team you may not always need.

Building an in-house team could be more costly for developing a website as you have to spend on staff salaries, rent, equipment, and other resources. These expenses can be as high as $500,000 or more in a year.

Hire developers or a web development company.

Do you already have an in-house team that isn’t enough for your website development project? You can extend the team by hiring dedicated web developers.

You can hire offshore web developers starting at $20/hour.

The developer can work as per your command and provide the requisite services. Unlike an in-house team, you don’t have to pay for insurance, salaries, rent, or other expenses.

Web development companies provide different hiring models and popular ones are mentioned below:

• Dedicated Team Hiring

With this engagement model, you are allowed to hire a dedicated team on an hourly/monthly/yearly basis.

• Fixed Cost Hiring

Request a free quote, and the development partner will provide details on the cost and time based on your requirements.

Location Of the Developer Affects the Cost of Website Development

It doesn’t matter what type of business you own; what really matters is a strong online presence for a competitive edge in this digital age.

Therefore, selecting the right web development partner is crucial to building the perfect website for your business.

However, what’s more important is the service provider’s location when it comes to hiring a website development partner. The location also determines the cost of developing a website, as the development rates differ in local and offshore hiring.

Local vs. Offshore: Which One Costs You More?

Let’s see how the different locations impact your website development cost.

Local Hiring

Do you want to choose a developer in a nearby location? Local hiring is about selecting a web development company in your home country or nearby. For instance, if you reside in the United States, you can find local developers to help you accomplish your project.

However, local hirings have many disadvantages, like high development costs and time spent on finding the right service provider.

Hiring developers in your home country can be very costly, especially if you come from the USA or Europe. The cost of developing a website is relatively high there. Further, with tight competition among developers and high demand, hiring the right web developers for your project is challenging.

Offshore Hiring

Do you want a sharp reduction in your web development cost? Offshore hiring is the preferable way of developing a website at lower rates than your home country.

Outsourcing is considered the best option for choosing a web development service that provides hefty savings. This is because you can outsource your project to a service provider located in a region where web development is much cheaper.

They charge much less than developers in the USA.

For instance, you can hire web developers in India to get the best deal for developing your website. Hiring developers in India can help you save up to 70% of the development costs. And that’s really a huge saving!

The following table shows web development rates for developers in different regions:

Region	Hourly Rates
Europe	$70-$100
USA	$100-$150
India	$20-$50
Australia	$80-$120

Note: These numbers are just estimates and differ from one project to another.

As you can see, the USA has the highest developer rates, so the cost of web development will be huge there. Contrarily, India has the lowest rates of hiring developers, so you can reduce the cost of developing your website significantly.

You Should Consider Outsourcing Your Project For Cost Benefits

Outsourcing is one of the most popular ways of web development. Do you have a big project that your team can’t handle? Find a reliable website development company and hand over all the responsibilities to them.

Under this approach, the company takes care of everything from selecting the right technology to developing and deploying the website. There is a complete guide on how to outsource web development in 2022 to find the best way to outsource your project.

This approach provides many advantages, as mentioned below.

• Cost-effective
• Technical expertise
• Access to global talent
• Seamless communication
• Single channel for all delivery.

How Does the Type of Development Influence the Cost of Building a Website?

There are multiple ways to build a website; you can use a CMS like WordPress, choose a custom tech stack, or leave it completely on the service provider. The type of development for creating your website can impact the cost, and it might be different in various scenarios.

Here is a rundown of the website development cost based on your selected development type.

Template-based website

It is convenient to build a website using content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, etc., as they offer prebuilt functionalities for this purpose. These are cost-effective website builders that provide extensive options for creating websites.

For a template-based website, you can choose to work on any of these platforms and use a prebuilt or off-the-shelf theme.

Some of these platforms are open source and eliminate the cost of licensing.

Conversely, many of these platforms also require licenses that add to the overall development costs. For instance, Shopify requires a subscription to build an eCommerce website, while WordPress is available free of cost.

Cost to Build a Website With WordPress

WordPress is the most popular CMS with tons of features and benefits. It provides an easy way to create websites with a user-friendly admin panel to manage them. There are a few variations of WordPress that determine the cost of website creation.

If you want to estimate the cost of developing a website on WordPress, you need to begin by determining which edition you are going to use. To begin with, there is an open-source edition of this CMS that costs nothing, but hidden charges are involved.

Besides the platform itself, you need to spend on hosting, domain, theme, plugins, and third-party services that make up the probable cost of WordPress development. The following is a quick breakdown of the cost of building a website with WordPress.

Cost Factor	Estimation	Reason
WordPress (Open Source)	$0	No license fees. It’s free
WordPress (Premium)	Starting $15/month	Small to large businesses
WordPress VIP	Starting $2,000/month	Enterprise solution

Website Creation Cost Using Drupal

It is a popular web development platform with excellent features for developing websites. Drupal is packed with great functionalities to build amazing digital experiences. It is suitable for developing a wide range of websites, be it corporate, retail, or any other site. 

Drupal is flexible for creating advanced and feature-packed websites as per your requirements. If you want to determine the cost of building a website with Drupal, the platform is free, FYI. 

Moreover, the real cost comes from hosting, domain, themes, modules, and your chosen development partner. The major chunk of the cost comes from the themes and modules, which can increase in the case of custom themes and modules.  

The following is a breakdown of Drupal website creation costs. 

Cost Factor	Estimation	Reason
Drupal	$0	Open source platform

Cost to Build a Website With PrestaShop

PrestaShop is a powerful eCommerce development platform that allows you to build custom eCommerce websites. It is useful to build eCommerce websites as per your requirements because it’s open-source and provides requisite flexibility. 

The average cost to build a PrestaShop website depends on a few factors, including hosting, modules, SSL, and more. While PrestaShop is an open-source and free platform, hidden factors make up the whole website development price. 

A breakdown of the cost of building a PrestaShop website.

Cost Factor	Estimation	Reason
PrestaShop CMS	$0	Open source platform

Cost to Build a Website With Magento

Magento is one of the best eCommerce platforms with features to build cutting-edge eCommerce websites. It is a perfect platform for developing advanced and complex eCommerce stores.

It has now become Adobe Commerce after its takeover by Adobe Systems. Moreover, Magento has many versions, including open source and an Enterprise edition. Magento open source is free and comes with no extra fees. But the Enterprise edition carries prices.

The cost of developing a Magento website varies with the choice you make about the platform and other factors. Also, it varies based on whether you choose custom Magento development or use a prebuilt theme.

The following is a breakdown of the website creation cost with Magento.

Cost Factor	Estimation
Magento Community Edition	$0 (No license fees, it’s free)
Magento Enterprise	$22,000 or more
Adobe Commerce Cloud	Starting $40,000

Cost of Website Development with Shopify

Shopify is the most popular user-friendly eCommerce website builder. It provides a simple and quick way to build a website. With this platform, developing an eCommerce website is a matter of a few clicks. It offers hosting and other services right within the platform itself.

There are multiple options with this platform starting with Shopify Lite, then Basic Shopify, Shopify, Shopify Advanced, and Shopify Plus. The cost of developing a website on Shopify depends heavily on which platform you choose.

Besides the pricing of the platform, the average cost of a website also depends on themes and Shopify apps.

Here is a quick breakdown of the probable cost of website development with Shopify.

Cost Factor	Estimation
Basic Shopify	$29/month
Shopify	$79/month
Shopify Advanced	$299/month
Shopify Plus	Starting at $2,000/month

Above, we have discussed various platforms and their costs for building a website. However, this cost of website development may vary based on the themes and plugins used.

Custom Web Development

Custom web development is an apt choice for large-scale businesses, marketplaces, eCommerce stores, and others, as it offers excellent customization. Usually, websites for large businesses require more features and integrations that increase the cost of developing a website.

The cost of the website in case of custom web development can start from $25,000, which can go to $200,000 or more depending on your requirements, complexity, development technology, cooperation with the development team, etc.

Some popular technologies used for custom web development include:

• PHP
• Laravel
• CodeIgniter
• CakePHP
• Python
• MEAN Stack
• MERN Stack

Website Development Cost By Website Components

A website is built of two main pieces, i.e., the front-end and back-end. These are the building blocks of a website. Website development has various phases that include creating these building blocks.

Thus, there is a phase for front-end development and another for back-end development besides ideation and prototyping.

Understanding these phases and associated costs is the best way to gauge the average cost of building a website.

Let’s take a look at the different factors in detail.

Front-end Development

The front-end is the part of a website that is visible to users and allows user interactions. It forms the UI of a website that is developed using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The factors that influence the cost in this phase include responsiveness and the complexity of animations.

To summarize, the average cost of front-end development could be between $1,000 to $12,500 or more, depending on the project’s needs and complexity.

Backend Development

It is the server side of a website that is not accessible to users. It stores and arranges data and does necessary processing for updating the front end. This part of a website is also responsible for the smooth functioning of the website.

This phase’s important cost-influencing factors include third-party integration, data processing tasks, complex queries, etc.

To summarize, the backend development cost could be between $4,000 to $12,500 or more, depending on project needs.

Key Takeaway: Website development includes many phases, and the time aspect for every stage depends on your project requirements and complexity, as said earlier, which further influences the average website development cost.

Hidden Factors That Affect the Cost of Building a Website?

You have gone through the important factors affecting the cost of creating a website, but there are some other factors that are hidden. When you choose a self-hosted platform like WordPress or build a website from scratch with a custom tech stack, there are a few hidden elements.

The other factors that impact the cost to build a website include hosting, domain, SSL, etc. You will have to spend on hosting, domain, SSL, etc, besides basic website development services.

Let’s take a look at each of these elements.

Website Hosting

To allow users to access your website over the internet, it needs to be saved somewhere, and that place is the server. Hosting is the server that will host your website. The cost of your website also includes hosting expenses.

There are many hosting providers, such as GoDaddy, Bluehost, etc. Often, you will find hosting available with the website builder itself, like in Shopify and WordPress.com. Hosting cost depends on the plan and hosting type.

You can choose shared hosting, dedicated hosting, cloud hosting, or any hosting options.

Domain Name

People can remember or access a website by its name. A domain name is a website name with .com, .org, .co, or any other such extension. So, a website called example can have a domain name example.com.

To make your business easily available on the web, you need to choose a relevant and easy-to-remember domain name. The domain name also adds to your website development cost, and it is paid separately from the website development services.

SSL

A secure website gets attention more easily, and SSL builds that confidence. SSL or Secure Socket Layer is necessary for your website to look secure and authentic because it ensures data exchange in encrypted form.

The SSL ensures that sensitive information like credit card details is securely transmitted over the internet. Also, when SSL is enabled on your site, a screen lock will appear in the URL bar for your site’s domain. As a result, people will be confident about your site’s security.

The following table provides quick insights into the average cost of website development factors we have discussed here.

Expense Factor	Explanation	Price
Web pages (1-250)	A website has multiple web pages. The more pages it has the more will be the website development costs.	$1,000-$10,000
Theme	If you need to develop a custom theme it will add to your cost of website development	$2,000-$15,000
Domain name	A unique name of your website that appears in the address bar in a web browser.	$5-$15/year Customized domains: $200-$300
Website Hosting	It is the server from where your website is accessible on the web	$75-$200/year
SSL certificate	SSL is essential to make your website appear safe	$10-$1000 monthly

Verdict on the Cost of Website Development

As mentioned previously, providing an exact figure of the cost of a website isn’t easy without adequately understanding your needs and prerequisites. You can get a rough idea of the cost of developing your website.

You must consider website type, size, features, technology stack, web pages, and many other things to decide the cost. A review of various cost-affecting factors in your context can help get a rough estimation. However, to simplify your task, we are providing a few estimates.

Type of website	Estimated cost
Small business website (8-16 pages)	$2000-$9000
Large business website (25-75 pages)	$10000-$75000

How Can CSSChopper Help You in Website Development?

You require professional guidance while creating your website to get the best one for your business. Our team can assess your requirements and provide cost estimates. We can develop a robust website to help you establish a solid online presence.

The following points showcase our excellence.

Strong Foothold

We are a well-established web development company with 12+ years of existence and have catered to lots of businesses, including many Fortune 500 companies. Our persistent efforts and quality services enabled us to make a mark. We have been mentioned on top platforms like TopDevelopers, TheManifest, YourStory, and more.

Seasoned Team

Our developers are knowledgeable and experienced, as they have worked on multiple projects for clients around the world. With exposure to diverse projects for different industries, our developers can develop a website, whether simple or complex.

Rich Tech Stack

With expertise in numerous technologies, our developers can meet your requirements easily. They are good at using the top CMS for developing basic corporate websites or complex eCommerce websites.

The following are the technologies in which we have expertise:

• WordPress
• Drupal
• Joomla
• Shopify
• Magento
• PrestaShop
• PHP
• NodeJS
• AngularJS
• ReactJS
• VueJS
• Python

Impressive Portfolio

We have worked for various companies globally with a base of 7500+ happy and satisfied clients. With a strong portfolio of multiple projects in custom web development, eCommerce development, front-end development, and more, we are a credible technology partner.

Our quality service and client-centric approach have enabled us to get 5/5 ratings on the most reputed B2B reviews and rating platforms: Clutch and GoodFirms.

Developing a website demands sufficient time and budget that vary with the complexity and requirements of your project. Determining the website cost is crucial to deciding the budget for your project. All the above factors discussed in this blog can help you answer the question: how much does it cost to build a website? You can get an estimate with these factors in your mind.