£200, £2,500 or £25,000: what you're actually paying for

The same website can cost £200, £2,500 or £25,000. I know, because I’ve been quoted against at all three.

People treat that spread as a scandal. It isn’t. The three prices are buying three different things, and the mistake is comparing them on the number, because the number is the one bit of the quote that tells you nothing about what you’ll get.

£150 to £250 on Fiverr

You’re buying a template with your logo dropped in.

Often a perfectly decent template. The person on the other end may well be good at what they do. But nobody has asked what your business actually needs the website to do, because the gig doesn’t have room for that question. The person you messaged may not be the person who built it. And when something breaks in six months, the gig is closed and so is the conversation.

That’s not a criticism. It’s what £200 buys, and for some businesses it’s the right buy. A template that exists beats a bespoke site that doesn’t. Just don’t mistake it for a relationship. It’s a purchase.

£2,500 with a local developer

That’s me, so weigh everything in this section accordingly.

You’re paying for someone to sit with you and work out what the site is for before anything gets built. Then to build it properly, on something they’ll still understand in three years. Then to still be answering the phone in three years.

The site costs more than the template not because the pixels are dearer, but because the thinking is included, and because one person carries the whole thing from the first conversation to the fifth year. The trade-off is honest: you get one person’s judgement and one person’s capacity. If your project needs a team, you’ll know.

£25,000 with an agency

You’re paying for a team. A strategist, a designer, a developer, a project manager, an account manager, and a process that has been refined on clients ten times your size.

Sometimes you need all of that. If you’re a forty-person firm with a marketing department and a brand guideline document, an agency is the right shape of supplier, and the price reflects the coordination as much as the craft.

Often, though, a small business is funding that process without needing it. The people who quoted are not the people who build, the account manager is a layer between you and the person who knows your site, and when the project ends you’re handed to a support desk. It’s not a con. It’s just a lot of structure for a five-page site.

The question that sorts them

Ask what happens after launch. Specifically: who do you ring, and do they know your site?

• At £200, nobody. The gig is over.
• At £2,500, the person who built it, and yes.
• At £25,000, a support desk, and they’ll look it up.

That answer separates the three faster than the price does, and it tells you which one you’re actually buying. The number only tells you what it costs.

If you don’t know which you need yet

That’s the honest position for most business owners, and it’s the one nobody in this list is set up to answer, because each of us is quoting for our own tier.

It’s why I offer a website consultation: ninety minutes, a fixed price, and a written plan you own. Which of the three you actually need, what to build, on what, and what it should cost. It’s credited against the build if you go with me, and it’s yours to take to a Fiverr gig or an agency if you don’t.

Or, if you’d rather just talk it through first, the free call is still there. I’ll tell you which tier you’re in, even when the answer isn’t me.

For the longer version of the maths, there’s how much a website actually costs, which goes through what moves the price inside each tier.