What a website really costs.

Why there is no single price

A website is not a product with a shelf price; it is a bundle of decisions. Two businesses in the same industry can ask for "a website" and mean completely different amounts of work — one needs five pages of clear information, the other needs a product catalogue, a booking system, and content in two languages.

So rather than a number, what you want from a quote is a map of the variables: which ones your project triggers, and what each one adds. Any agency that can explain that will also be able to tell you where to cut if the total is too high. One that just hands you a figure cannot.

The seven things that actually move the price

1. Page count — and, more importantly, unique templates

Clients count pages. Builders count templates. Fifty blog posts sharing one layout is one template; five pages that each need their own structure is five. When you brief a project, describe the distinct kinds of page you need — home, service, about, article, contact, product — because that is what the estimate is really built from.

2. Custom design versus a template

This is usually the single biggest lever. A well-chosen template gets you a competent, familiar layout quickly. Custom design means research, art direction, a type and colour system, and layouts drawn specifically around your content — plus revision rounds and the time to make it hold together across every screen size. It is not decoration; it is what makes the site look like you rather than like everyone else using the same theme. It is also entirely reasonable to skip on a first site and invest in later.

3. Whether you need a CMS

A content management system is what lets you edit the site yourself. It also adds cost: modelling the content, building editable components, permissions, and training. Be honest about how often the content will really change. Some sites genuinely change monthly and need a CMS on day one. Others change twice a year, and paying for a CMS is money you could have spent on the design or the copy.

4. E-commerce

Selling online is a step change, not an add-on. It brings product data, variants and stock, tax and shipping rules, a payment gateway, order and refund flows, transactional email, and a checkout that has to be tested properly on real devices because every failure there is a lost sale. Expect e-commerce to be the most expensive single decision on this list, and expect it to carry ongoing cost too.

5. Integrations

Every system the site has to talk to is its own small project: a CRM, an email platform, a booking or scheduling tool, an accounting system, WhatsApp, a login, an internal database. The cost is rarely the connection itself — it is deciding what happens when the other system is down, returns something unexpected, or changes its API. Two integrations is a detail. Eight is an architecture.

6. Content

The most commonly underestimated line item, and the most common reason launches slip. Someone has to write the copy, source or shoot the photography, and prepare the assets. If that someone is the agency, it is a real cost. If it is you, it is a real time commitment — and if it does not happen, the design gets filled with placeholder text and the launch date moves. Decide who owns content before you sign anything.

7. Ongoing maintenance

A website is not furniture. Hosting and the domain renew. Dependencies and plugins need updating. Security patches need applying. Forms silently break. Someone needs to be reachable when something goes wrong. Treat upkeep as a line in the annual budget from the start rather than an unpleasant discovery in month four.

What the cheap options trade away

Very low-cost websites are not a scam — they are a set of trade-offs, and they can be exactly right for a business that needs a presence this month. Just know what you are trading:

• Performance. Page builders and heavy themes ship a lot of code you never use. That shows up as slow loading on mobile, which is where most of your visitors are.
• Accessibility. Colour contrast, keyboard navigation, form labels, and heading order are usually the first things skipped. They are also increasingly a legal expectation, not a nice-to-have.
• Technical SEO. Titles, descriptions, canonicals, structured data, clean URLs, and a real sitemap. Cheap to do at build time, tedious and expensive to retrofit.
• Ownership. Some platforms hold your site hostage in a proprietary format. Ask directly what you can export and where the code lives.
• Originality. A recognisable template tells visitors you bought the same thing as your competitors. Whether that matters depends entirely on your market.
• Support. The cheapest builds usually have no named person to call. That cost lands the first time something breaks during a busy week.

The opposite mistake is just as expensive: paying for a bespoke design system, a headless CMS and three integrations for a five-page site that needs to explain one service and take enquiries. Over-building is over-spending.

How to budget for it

Split the money into four buckets and size each one deliberately. The bands below are the ranges Pinenox projects have actually landed in — your quote sits inside them depending on scope.

• The build. Design and development of the site itself — typically ₹60,000 – ₹6,00,000 depending on how many of the seven variables above apply to you.
• Content and assets. Copywriting, photography, illustration, video. Commonly ₹15,000 – ₹1,50,000, and frequently zero if you produce it in-house — but never free in time.
• Running costs. Hosting, domain, email, CMS or platform subscriptions, any paid integrations: ₹8,000 – ₹60,000 per year.
• Maintenance and improvement. Updates, monitoring, small changes, and the iteration you will want after seeing real traffic: ₹5,000 – ₹40,000 per month.

Two habits that save real money. First, hold back part of the budget for after launch — the most valuable changes are the ones you can only identify once actual visitors are using the site. Second, separate must-have from nice-to-have in writing before quotes come in, so you can compare like with like and cut without drama.

Questions to ask before you sign

• What exactly is in scope, page by page, and what is explicitly out?
• Who writes the copy and supplies the images, and by when?
• How many revision rounds are included, and what counts as a revision versus a new request?
• Who owns the code, the design files, the domain, and the hosting account after launch?
• What happens after launch — what is covered, for how long, and at what rate afterwards?
• What will this cost me annually to keep running, assuming I change nothing?
• Can I edit the content myself, and will someone show me how?

If the answers to those are clear and written down, the price is probably fair whatever it is. If they are vague, the low quote is not a saving — it is a deferred invoice.

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