How Much Does it Cost to Build a Website?

Everyone living in the 21st century at least once came up with the idea of creating their own website. Whatever hobby it is, you can always make it more interesting by creating a website about it.

And I’m not telling you about business. I needn’t do that because even a child knows that if you have a business, you should have a website.

Whatever the reason is why you are reading this article, I bet you want to know how much does it cost to build a website.

 

Let me start by saying that of course there’s always an option of creating a free website. You may choose a free hosting, free plan, set a free website template and spend all your free time enjoying your free website.

Of course, you can. But will you? Or should you?

I think it’s not necessary to talk about all the pros of choosing a paid hosting and premium template for your future website, especially if we are talking about running your own business. You want your site to look solid and present your company as a team of professionals, not amateurs.

That’s why let’s see what other options we have.

• Create your site on your own. So-called “Do It Yourself” or DIY site.
• Use a sitebuilder like Wix, Weebly or Weblium.

In this article, we will figure out the expenses of creating a website in both ways.

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Cost of DIY site (Cost $668.40 - $847.04)

If you decide to create a site on your own, you have to take care of many factors. Let us consider what the things you will have to think about are:

• hosting and domain name
• template
• web developer
• design

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Hosting and domain cost

You probably are aware that if you want to have your own site, you must have a hosting and domain name first of all. I must say that you also have a wide choice here. You can end up on Bluehost, GoDaddy or HostGator  services.

Let’s see what options you will have if you end up on Bluehost.

They offer their clients three possible hosting plans:

• Basic
• Plus
• Prime. Let us examine each of them in details.

Now, you know the prices. But notice that you buy a hosting plan with a free domain name included only for the first term. The renewal of it will cost you $11.99 for the next year.

Let’s summarize.

How much is a website domain and hosting? The answer is $59.40 - $185.04 per year on Bluehost, depending on the plan you choose and extras you include into the package.

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Template Website Cost (cost $45-$98)

Now, as you’ve bought a hosting and domain name, you’ll need to take care of the visual display of your site. I don’t need to tell you that there’s a hell of a lot of themes on the web to choose. Whatever business you own, whatever hobby you have, you can always find a template on the topic you need.

You probably know that there are many CMSs and templates are being built on their basis. Among the leaders in this field, I would name WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. If you have doubts, you might need to explore a little about How to choose the right CMS for your website. You may also find helpful these comparative articles: WordPress vs. Joomla! and WordPress and Drupal, Which One is Better?

Let’s assume you want to buy a WordPress template because it’s the most commonly used CMS on the web. How much would it cost? On TemplateMonster for example, you’ll find plenty of themes built on different CMSs. You can choose the one on your taste. Most of the WordPress templates cost around $45 - $98. So, this would be our price.

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Hire a Web Developer (cost $194)

If you are creating a website for the first time, you should get help from a specialist. They will set up the template for you and customize it.

So, you have WordPress template. And you want to hire somebody to make all the adjustments for you. How much would it cost?

You can find a freelance developer on Upwork Upwork for example. The price, of course, depends on developer’s qualification and other factors. For instance,

• What kind of business do you own?
• What kind of site do you want to build?
• What features do you want your site to have?

Anyway, let’s find out what’s the rough price of developer’s services.

We’ve already ended up on WordPress. Let’s use the Upwork to find out how much would WordPress developer cost  you.

They can bill hourly or set a fixed price for the project. If you hire a developer for a fixed price, make sure you give them accurate and detailed information from the very beginning what you want your site to look and have.

Upwork says the price varies from $20 to $100 per hour and the average cost for the project is $194.

Let’s assume we hired a professional for the fixed price; it would be around $194.

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Hire a Web Designer (cost $370)

You shouldn’t forget that setting up a theme is not all.

Now you might be asking:

• Aren’t the template images not enough?
• Why?
• There’s a tone of them on photostocks. Why can’t you get what you need there?

Yes, that’s true. You can find plenty of images of any sort on the photobanks. But what about headers, footers, call-to-actions, buttons, unique images for your business and so on? Remember: visual part of your site is one of the most important things you should care about.

Imagine. You are interested in some services. You see a link to the site of a company that looks like they’ll give you what you want. You follow the link and see an ugly website with worn out pictures from free photostocks. I’ll stop here.

If you run your business, you better take care of the visual part of your site. We’ve come to a place where it’s time to talk about hiring a designer. And the prices, of course.

A designer can charge hourly or set a fixed price for a project. Let’s go to Upwork again to find out what’s their rate per hour. It says they can charge $15 - $75+ depending on project scope, the complexity of design and other factors. Their article How Much Does it Cost to Hire a Web Designer? How Much Does it Cost to Hire a Web Designer? might help you to find out what you should take into consideration when hiring a web designer.

And for figuring out what will be the price for a project let’s use Design Pickle as an example. They offer you lots of services you might need. And the fixed price for their services would be $370 as you can see below.

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Let’s summarize and do a little math.

Cost of building DIY website:

Purchase	Price
Hosting and domain	$59.40 - $185.04
Template	$45-98
Developer	$194
Design	$370
Total:	$668.40 - $847.04

We’ve found out how much how much to start a website if you wanted to build a DIY site. The rough price would be $668.40 - $847.04.

Now let us find out how much does a website cost if you build it with the sitebuilder.

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Cost a website using a sitebuilder (Cost $525)

Now let’s talk about the second way to create a site.

Instead of compiling it yourself you may want to choose the easier way: use a sitebuilder. What’s sitebuilder?

Sitebuilder is a tool with the help of which you can build your site without using any code. It’s a perfect option for those who know nothing about coding and doesn’t even want to try. Sitebuilders are based on drag and drop principle which allows you to construct the visual part of your site by dragging its parts to a place you want and dropping them there. Intuitively easy to use, this tool might be a great help for your purpose to build a website.

I probably won’t surprise you saying that you can easily find a sitebuilder on the web, it’s not a problem at all. You may end up with such popular platforms as Wix, Weebly or Weblium. As for this article, I will stick to Weblium as an example for finding out website startup costs (isn’t it our primary goal for now?) if building it in that way.

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Create your own website with Weblium

What is Weblium?

Instead of Do-It-Yourself site, try the Do-It-For-Me way to build it. Yes, the team of professionals will get everything done for you. What’s your part? The idea. You have an idea. You describe your idea to the Weblium team. You check how your idea is implemented in practice. You get your ready-made website! Afterward, you’ll get access to the admin panel of your site, which gives you an option to edit your site later on. And you won’t even need to use any single line of code. Cool, huh?

Their team researches your field niche before design your website, so you can be sure that the work will be done on the level. Here are the examples of the websites built on their platform. See it yourself.

And what’s the best part? You don’t have to wait long! Give them two days top and get your brand-new site!

Now, what will you get with Weblium?

• Hosting and domain name
• Unique design on your taste
• CCL certificate
• SEO tools
• Support

Briefly, you’ll get everything you would get if had compiled the site on your own! The only difference is that you won’t need to search, hire and buy things separately.

Pretty convenient offer. What about the price?

Weblium offers you their services for $399. Add the annual subscription for $126 and what we got here? $525 would be the total price for all the work done.

What are the other reasons to set your choice on Weblium?

• Since your site is placed on Weblium platform, it automatically gets its domain range which is 54. Your website is brand new, but it’s already ranked highly! I think this is really cool because you don’t need to invest money to increase your website’s rank.
• Weblium is optimized for any device, which means responsiveness. Moreover, Weblium platform provides a remarkable loading speed for your site.
• And the cherry on top. In case you don’t like the result, Weblium guarantees 100% refund within first two weeks since you get your ready-made website. Quite a reason to try it yourself! Why not?

I’m going to stop singing praises to Weblium here. But I’ll let the others speak. People who chose Weblium to build their site weren’t disappointed. They share their own experience.

Here’s what Boo Jonson from the USA says:

And here’s Jacob’s experience:

Therefore, we’ve got to the main question of our article.

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Conclusion: who’s the winner?

Let’s compare the prices.

$668.40 - $847.04 if you build the site on your own.
$525 if you build your site with a sitebuilder.

Yay! We’ve got a winner at a price!

What about other criteria?

Think about the things you don’t need to do if you create a site with a sitebuilder.

Advantages of using a website builders: 

• You don't need - search and hire freelancers.
• You don't need - spend much time to manage the process.
• You don't need - care about each step separately.
• You don't need - know coding to work in the admin panel.

It’s your choice. Both require your ideas and concerns about conveying your point to specialists working on your project.

What do you think is the best way to create a website? Feel free to share your thoughts in comments below!

I wish you good luck and inspiration in this serious yet amusing process of creating a website!

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Written by Alice Margis