What a website costs, and why nobody will tell you

Ask ten web people what a site costs and you will get ten variations of "it depends." That answer is true and useless, and it is why buying a website feels like buying a used car.

Here are actual ranges for a small business in this part of Florida.

A template site somebody fills in for you: five hundred to fifteen hundred. Real work, real value at the low end of the market. You are buying assembly, not design. It will look like other sites. That is fine for plenty of businesses.

A designed site, built for you: three thousand to fifteen thousand. Enormously wide, because it covers everything from a five page brochure to a sixty page structure with local search work underneath it. The variable is pages and research, not prettiness.

Anything under about three hundred dollars is either a hobbyist learning on your business, or a monthly plan wearing a costume.

Anything over about twenty thousand for a local service business is either a genuinely complicated build with software in it, or somebody pricing off your revenue rather than the work.

Now, why the silence.

Part of it is legitimate. The same request, "I need a website," means a four hour job or a two month job depending on answers the client has not been asked yet. Quoting before scoping is how vendors go broke.

But part of it is not legitimate, and it is worth naming. A price given late, after you are invested, after three meetings, is a price you are more likely to accept. Some of the vagueness is a negotiating position.

The fix, as a buyer, is to force a shape early. Ask for a range and what moves it. Ask what the cheapest version looks like and what it leaves out. Anybody serious can answer that in ten minutes. Anybody who cannot is either disorganized or working you.