What Is The Price To Build A WordPress Website From Scratch?
One of the main questions we get when people are thinking about building their own website is, “How much does it cost to build a website from scratch?”
Answer: Every project is different, with the cost depending on—
(1) Your business goals, (2) budget, (3) the type of website you need, and (4) the approach you take to build it.
Some Specific Price Estimates For Building A New Website
Now, with that said, generally speaking, web designers charge anywhere from $75 to $200 per hour to build a new website.
What does this mean? 🤔
It means that small customized websites will typically cost you $1,500 to $5,000 when all is said and done.
Keep in mind that this price includes:
The setup fee, creating the content and the design in a prototyping tool (Figma, XD, Photoshop even), developing the approved designs in your content management system, and initial maintenance fees.
There is a lot of value that rolls into the price range presented above, and you’ll find that working with a skilled web designer who can make a custom site to your specifications is well worth the price.
This is especially true if you need a platform that can compete well in a competitive market where making a good first impression is paramount to success.
Is The Price Justified?
Absolutely!
The fee you pay your web designer does not go to the web designer alone but to their entire design team, justifying the cost.
To build a high-quality custom website today, the following team members are needed—a web designer, web developer, content writer, and graphic artist.
Every top-level web designer has a web design team behind him or her, so don’t think of web design as a one-person show. It takes a lot of combined effort from a team of skilled individuals to make a truly industry-competitive website.
Given the level of effort needed, should I pay a flat rate instead of an hourly rate for web design?
You might be asking this question ⬆️
To answer it, remember that the choice between a flat rate and an hourly rate hinges on multiple variables, including the scale of your project and your overall budget.
Concerns About Labor Costs
The primary reason for choosing a flat rate is to avoid excessive labor costs. Websites take a lot of work, and they can drive up your labor costs quickly.
And this can turn into a big issue if your web designer doesn’t have experience, as it is hard to know the exact amount of hours your project will take.
This is why some clients prefer to pay a flat-rate fee upfront, which is certainly respectable.
Small Business Flat Fee Cost
If you run a small business, a reasonable price range to expect for a flat rate is $1,500 to $5,000.
Factors that will impact your final price include how many pages your website needs, the number of revisions needed, and what features you want to be added.
Medium-sized Business Flat Fee Cost
For medium-sized companies that need a website with advanced custom features, an appropriate flat fee range is $3,500 to $10,000.
Note: These prices do not include monthly or yearly maintenance costs, so consider talking to your web design agency to set budget expectations early on.
Ecommerce Website Flat Fee Cost
For an ecommerce website, you’ll likely be looking at $10,000+.
Cost vs. Convenience
Are you concerned about the cost of hiring a professional web designer? If so, keep in mind that hiring one costs more upfront, but they also take care of everything for you.
Some of the services a skilled web design agency provides are:
- Custom web design
- Web hosting
- Website security and SSL
- Monthly maintenance
- Ongoing technical support
- Plugin/app management for your website
- Ongoing content management
When you partner with Sage, we provide the value listed above and much more.
We always say, “Manage your business. Let us manage your website.”
Cost of DIY When Building A Website From Scratch
If you do not have the budget to hire a web design agency, you can create your own website using website builders such as WordPress, Wix, or Squarespace.
Website builders aren’t free, though. You have to pay for the following basic features:
- Web hosting – $100 to $1,000 yearly
- Domain name – $35 to $600 yearly
- Website builder – $100 to $500 yearly
The bottom line:
Popular web builders cost money, and they can be expensive in terms of your time and effort.
Don’t Want to DIY? Find The Right Designer For Your Project
Choosing the right web design agency is crucial to your website’s success if you don’t have the time for a DIY project, or you can’t mess around doing things yourself. Want to find out if we’re the right fit for you? See our Are We A Fit? page.
We believe a website should express your brand message and make a good impression from the get-go. And that is only possible if you have a stellar website that honors your brand and highlights your products and services.
Ready to learn more? Book a free consultation with us to delve deeper.
The Steps Sage Takes To Build A Website 🪜
Ready to journey with us as we build you a phenomenal custom website? Read about our design steps below. We follow a proven design process that puts you first and gets the job done to your satisfaction.
Step 1. Onboarding
During this phase, we have two central objectives—architecture and design.
To ensure your website’s architecture is excellent, we create a sitemap and go through all your web pages, looking closely at the design of each page, their specific functions, and how they relate to other pages.
This is how we develop an overall understanding of your website and guarantee its functionality, as well as a top-notch user experience. 🪄
Looking at your website’s architecture and design is the highest level of strategy for your website.
One Note About Our Onboarding Process
Consulting with you is an important part of our onboarding process, so we encourage you to continue to communicate with us throughout the design process.
This helps us refine our approach to your website and stay in alignment with your vision and needs.
Researching The Competition
Another important aspect of our onboarding process is market research.
Whatever field you are in, we look at who you’re competing against so that we can create a website that matches or exceeds the competition.
2. Visual Design
The next stage of our process is visual design.
We use Figma, a highly collaborative cloud-based design tool, to custom-design your entire website…which is better than relying on mass-produced, pre-packaged design templates.
We also make wireframes and mockups of every page and send them to you for approval before finalizing your design.
3. Development
During this step, we take your approved designs and build them.
Once the initial development is complete, we examine the website for flaws and go through a checklist to ensure it meets the standard required for an excellent design. This includes making your website mobile responsive, which is very important.
It’s a well-known fact that Google gives priority to sites that are friendly to mobile devices. Additionally, over 90 percent of the global internet population now uses mobile devices to access the internet (Statista). You can see why having a mobile-responsive website is a must.
4. Pre-Launch
During our pre-launch phase, we run your website through an additional quality checklist to ensure that it is ready to go live. This checklist includes tasks like setting up your security software, doing on-page optimizations, and setting up Google Analytics.
5. Post-Launch
Once we complete all quality checks for your website, we make it live, after which we finalize your launch by undergoing post-launch procedures.
We then map out recommendations that you should consider taking to get the most out of your new website.
We offer different options to support your business on a monthly basis, including secure web hosting.
Sage Secure Web Hosting
Sage Digital Agency offers top-of-the-line web hosting.
Premium web hosting is recommended if you have a business website, as it offers enhanced site speed, improved security measures, and high uptime guarantees.
These features ensure that your business website operates smoothly, stays secure, and provides an optimal user experience.
What About Cheap Web Hosting?
Cheap web hosting is only cheap because it relies on using a shared server. And it is limited by a lack of comprehension of your website’s needs, as well as a lack of the fundamentals necessary for maintaining your website effectively.
We strongly suggest that you avoid using a shared server if you have a business website.
In addition to the issues mentioned above, shared servers can experience issues with resource sharing, malware, etc. And if something goes wrong with your shared server, it will hurt your website.
We protect you from these problems with secure managed web hosting.
Now that we’ve discussed web hosting, let’s shift our attention to another potentially critical aspect of building a successful website—one that is relevant to those in the ecommerce arena.
Let’s talk about WooCommerce
What Exactly Is WooCommerce and Why Is It Important?
WooCommerce is an open-source eCommerce plugin built for WordPress that allows you to sell physical and digital goods.
It offers a range of shipping options and supports extensions that provide additional functionality, such as bookings, memberships, subscriptions, and more.
As a result, WooCommerce can be customized to meet a wide variety of business needs.
WordPress vs. WooCommerce
WordPress is a powerful content management system that allows you to build different kinds of websites, including blogs, portfolios, business sites, and more.
WooCommerce, on the other hand, is a free, open-source plugin. You can add paid plugins to it to extend its functionality on your WordPress website.
The Cost To Build A WooCommerce Website
The cost to build a WooCommerce site, like WordPress, varies based on what’s needed. If you choose to hire a professional to set up your WooCommerce store, you could pay anywhere from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars.
With this in mind, the WooCommerce plugin itself is free. If you want to take a DIY approach, you’ll likely need to pay for a WooCommerce-optimized theme (around $20-$100) and additional e-commerce plugins for specific functionalities (roughly $25-$200 each).
What About Shopify? How Much Is It To Build A Shopify Website?
Whether you’re just starting a new business or have an established business that needs an online store, building a website using Shopify is certainly a good option. Shopify is considered one of the best ecommerce platforms available.
The question is, how much does it cost to build a Shopify website?
Shopify Website Cost
The cost of a Shopify website differs depending on how you want to make it.
Like with a WordPress website, there are two main approaches:
- Make it yourself
- Hire a pro.
If you set up a Shopify website by yourself, you can get started nearly for free.
On the other hand, some web designers will charge you as much as $10,000 for a fully customized Shopify design suite.
Free Shopify Trial
Not sure if you want a Shopify website? You can start a store for free. All you have to do is to sign-up for Shopify’s 14-day trial.
Basic Shopify Plan
A Basic Shopify store will only cost you $29 per month ($348 per year) and include:
A website, a blog, an unlimited number of products listed, two staff accounts, access to a 24/7 support team, and access to sales and marketing channels.
In addition, you can list up to four inventory locations.
However, the reports you can generate differ among Shopify plans. A Basic plan only gives you limited inventory reports, product analytics, and general financial reports.
The Basic plan also charges you 2.9% + 30c cents per online transaction, which is higher than other plans.
Still, if you are in the beginning stages of your business, this option is not bad.
Standard Shopify Plan Cost
The $79 monthly Shopify plan includes everything a basic plan has, as well as some additional features.
For example:
You can have up to five staff accounts and five inventory locations with the standard plan.
This plan also gives you more access to reports (such as sales reports, order analytics, and profit reports) than the Basic plan. With a slightly better reporting system, you gain insight into scaling up your business.
Furthermore, with a higher plan fee, your online transaction fee is reduced to 2.6% + 30 cents per online transaction.
Plus:
You can get up to an 88% shipping discount.
Advanced Shopify Cost
A considerable price jump from the Basic plan, the Advanced plan gives you all kinds of accessibility for the price of $299 per month ($3,588 per year).
Additionally, you get 15 staff accounts and up to 8 inventory locations.
But the best part is:
Transaction fees are lowered to 2.4 % + 30 cents per online transaction.
Customized Shopify Website Cost
One thing to remember is that plan prices are just the monthly recurring cost to get you started. These prices do not include customized website design and website optimization.
This is one of the major considerations to take into account when building a Shopify website. It is healthy to ask if you can add the customizations that you need by yourself. If the answer is no or you are not sure, then hiring a Shopify website design team is important.
If you want to know more about building a customized website, get in touch with us. We would love to chat with you about your needs!
