What are the costs of creating a website? A question that is fair to ask, and to which it is never easy to answer! Many factors come into play in the launch of an online platform, and taking into account only the development costs of the site would be looking at a problem from a too narrow perspective... In fact, every time you will ask how much does it cost, you will always be answered “it depends”. This is why all prices indicated below should be considered in light of their own context!

For instance, it is not the same building a small and practical apartment, or a loft apartment. For each alternative you will have a lot of different options, such as the that will impact your house reliability, quality and/or practicality.

Building a website, like building a home, is not a long and winding road, it is an exciting adventure that gather very different and complementary profiles. So let’s see what are the main investments you should do when creating your website!

 

Summary

1. Domain
2. Hosting
3. Design
4. Development
5. SEO...
6. ...and copywriting
7. Maintenance

# Domain

 

Enquiring directly on the internet, it is very easy to find something that match your needs. For instance, OVH is a url provider :

For an extension with “.com”, you can target a price between 6 to 8 € per year. But be careful, because sometimes it can cost several thousand euros ! For more informations, you can search for a name domain here : https://www.ovh.co.uk

IMPORTANT :

It is sufficient to buy its name domain with only one extension, but for a matter of safety, we would advise to also buy linked extensions such as .com, .co.uk, etc...
Why do we have to buy several name domain ?

Let’s imagine that after your first year on the market, you have built your brand awareness progressively, have bought your domain “food-delivery.com”, and you start seeing results and benefits of your efforts and positioning strategy. All of a sudden, your website generates half visits it used to have: you realize that when you type the name of your website in a search engines, a new website with the same domain as you but a diferent extension “food-delivery.co.uk” is using your notoriety.

To be protected against copy, and avoid unpleasant surprises like that, book various extensions for your domain!

 

 

 

# Hosting

 

The hosting quality is as important as the development of the website. It is indeed an inversion for the good performance of your website and for your online marketing. The better the hosting, the faster the site will load (although it is important to consider other criterias such as your monthly number of visitors, or the browser cache of your users, etc...). Also, the speed of loading is an important criteria for SEO, therefore a good server hosting also generates traffic to its website.

What are your options to choose a server?

• A shared server : that is to say a unique server for various websites.
  It is generally the cheaper option, and it does not exceed more or less 20 € per month.
• A dedicated server : it is a unique server for your website only.
  It is a bit more expensive than the first option, but it offers more flexibility in its management. It costs from 100 € to several thousand a month.

Other hosting solutions exist, such as the VPS or the Cloud. You have to know what type of option fits your needs!

 

# Professional design or template design

 

We can easily buy ready-made designs on the internet, for almost nothing: there are many platforms that gather website design templates already created, from $ 2.

Nevertheless the real question is : what do you need, and what do you want? Is a template okay and perfectly fits your needs, or do you want to stand out from the competition? If you choose the second option, you will have to request a professional designer.

He is indeed one of the central pillars to attract users on your site, because he not only creates the design of your platform, but he also focuses on making interactive pages. In short, it makes the user's experience enjoyable: his watchwords are ergonomics, usability and accessibility.

The price to pay for a professional and unique web design depends on the specifications of your website, but two aspects are key in determining the price:

• The website number of pages
• The site complexity

For example, a website showcase of about 5 pages could cost between 1000 and 3000 € with a professional designer or a web agency.

 

 

# Web development

 

Even if I already tackle the subject in an article… For those who still doubt it, we fully support specific development solutions and not CMS platforms such as WordPress. For more information see : Top 5 reasons to prefer a specific development to a CMS.

It is always a really sensitive topic to talk about, because saying a price for the creation of a website depends on a whole range of things : How many pages you want to have? Would you like a professional showcase site? Or an ecommerce? Or an intranet? Or rather a solution that addresses very specific issues of your business ? And so on...

By way of background, here are two examples:

• In the simplest case : a showcase website of a few pages
  It is easy to find online platform to build few pages yourself from 400 € in full. However, if you want a specific development, a showcase web with few pages could worth at least 1500 € in full.
• In a more complex case : a tailor-made solution
  It is very difficult to estimate the price, because some websites can be worth up to several millions: the developers are going to spend hours and hours to build your project!

In brief, the price adapts according to the complexity levels of the website, the desired functionalities, and the quantity and quality of work from developers you expect (newsletter, multi language version, chatbot, specific features etc ...)

 

 

# SEO…

 

 

Having a website is not enough, online visibility is unavoidable to attract many people: the term referencing is used. For more info on SEO, see our post: Reach the best online referencing.

It's a task that needs to be done in the long run, to gradually build an adapted SEO strategy to its target market and its competitors. If your market is competitive, it's even more important to dedicate time and resources to it!

 

# … and content creation (copywriting)

 

 

To be well position on search engines, creating your own blog is not only useful, but it becomes almost essential: having content that speaks about yourself and your activities is a great help for referencing its online platform.

Here again there are a lot of options, the price can totally vary if you want to treat very broad and known topics, or else very specific and documented. You can write articles yourself, or ask to an agency. In both cases, be very attentive to the quality of writing! In general, the price is proportional to the writing quality. You can spend 10 euros in an article: be sure it won’t be your best investment. If your content doesn’t bring value to your clients, it won’t bring money to you neither.

 

A 2500/3000 words SEO article, well documented and specific like THIS ONE about the cost of copywriting worth about 1000 €.

 

# Maintenance and customer service:

 

Last but not least, the maintenance and outsourcing include services such as server and risk management. It tackles security concerns and prevent from attacks and hardware issues.

Generally it includes:

• Fixing bugs and security flaws
• The tests and settings: that is to say the weekly and monthly checks of your website
• Improvements and modifications of the site, in other words what is called the development and adaptations made for your website

This is certainly one of the inversion amount we are not used to think about, but that is a crucial and necessary expense for your platform.

Why?

This ensures the durability and stability of your site, thanks to regular updates! It is extremely difficult to give a cost for the maintenance of a website, because it depends on many factors such as the host, the number of visits per month, etc ...

 

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For your information, at SubForce, we offer packs according to your needs, which include all the investments above. It's a monthly subscription for low budget entrepreneurs, with a high quality result. You just have to worry about your sales strategy, we take care of the creation of your website and its positioning!

Contact us for a quote!