Trusting a website quote on its total alone is usually a mistake. I walk you through this exercise in transparency, helping you to understand, identify and validate quotes for web design and development.
This is one of my quotes, exactly as a client receives it: the one for an Essential Website, the page that presents a business with its services, its team and its contact form. Four lines and a total.
Item
Amount
Bespoke design
€230
Development
€370
Technical SEO and analytics
€95
Go-live and documentation
€95
Total excluding VAT
€790
VAT (21%)
€165.90
Total including VAT
€955.90
Let us be honest: the first thing anyone looks at in a quote is the total. But the total has to be broken down in detail to understand properly what it includes. Those €955.90 do not say whether the website is designed from scratch for you or comes out of a reusable template, how many pages it has or what will happen to it next year. All of that is spelled out in each of the items, but you also have to look at what the quote leaves out.
What each line says
The first line, the design, answers a key question: whether the website is designed from scratch for you. Those €230 cover the sketches and the visual design of up to five pages with your corporate identity, and nothing gets programmed until you have approved that design. If a quote has no such item, the website most likely comes out of a template, even if it does not say so.
The second line, the development, is the building of the website itself: the layout, loading the content, the forms and the testing on mobile and desktop. It is the largest item because that is where most of the work is concentrated, and it is also the one that varies most from one project to another.
The last two lines are the smallest, but they deserve a close look. Technical SEO and analytics cover what Google needs to find the website and what you need to know who visits it. Go-live and documentation cover the day the website is published, with its security certificate, and the documentation you are left with so you can manage it afterwards. Because the amounts are small, many quotes take them for granted and do not even mention them. That is a mistake, because what does not appear in the quote has no defined scope and ends up causing arguments at the end of the project.
Besides the table, you have to read the conditions, which matter as much as the items. This quote covers up to five pages, the domain and hosting for the first year and one round of revisions; the estimated timeline is 2 weeks and it is paid in two parts, one at the start and one at the end.
Where the price grows
Reading a quote this way explains something the total does not: why one website costs more than another. To see it clearly, these are my three packages with all their items drawn on the same scale.
Essential Website
€790
~2 weeks
Custom design€230
Development€370
Technical SEO and analytics€95
Go-live and documentation€95
Corporate Website
€1,290
~2-3 weeks
Custom design€360
Development€575
Blog€130
Extended SEO€130
Go-live and documentation€95
Online Shop
€1,990
~3-5 weeks
Custom design€390
Shop development€590
Blog€130
Extended SEO€130
Catalogue loading€200
Payments and legal texts€280
Integrated invoicing€175
Go-live and documentation€95
All the bars are on the same scale. The longest one is the development of the shop.
Between the Essential Website and the Corporate one there is a difference of €500, and most of it sits in the first two items. You go from five pages to twelve, so there is more to design and more to develop, and a blog is added on top. In short, it is the same kind of work in a larger quantity.
Between the Corporate Website and the Online Shop the difference is €700, but here the opposite happens: design and development barely change. The difference lies in three new items that did not exist before: loading the catalogue, payments with their legal texts, and invoicing, which together add up to €655. In other words, an online shop is a corporate website with three additional jobs, each with its price, and that is why it costs more without necessarily being bigger.
Finally, there is one item that does not change across the three packages: the go-live. Publishing a website and documenting it costs the same whether it has five pages or fifty products. So if every item in a quote grows in the same proportion, it is worth asking how each one was worked out.
What is not written down
That leaves the hardest part to review, precisely because it is not written down. Every quote leaves things out, and that is normal; the difference between a complete quote and one that is not lies in the first one stating clearly what it does not include.
My quotes leave out five things: writing the copy (I work with the content you provide or with the content of your current website), photography and video, the logo, legal advice beyond the basic legal texts, and maintenance, which is contracted separately through plans with no lock-in.
Another common omission is the second year. The price of a website includes publishing it, but a published website still needs a domain and a server. In my packages, both are included for the first year and the domain is always registered in your name. From the second year on, hosting is included with any maintenance plan, from €35/month, and the domain is renewed at cost. If you would rather not take out any plan, I hand you the website with its code so you can host it wherever you like. A quote that does not mention this part tells you how much it costs to build the website, but not how much it costs to keep it running. The detail of that second year is in What keeps a website standing.
The same goes for extensions. An additional page costs €60, business email on your domain €75 and importing the blog from your current website, with its redirects, €150. If you have these figures clear before signing, any extension of the scope comes down to adding up what applies, with no need to negotiate again.
Two quotes, side by side
Now imagine you have two quotes in front of you, the cheapest and the dearest of those you have been sent. The first thing anyone asks is which of the two is expensive, but that question has no answer until you know exactly what each one includes. The cheap one may be a five-page template with the domain charged separately, and the dear one may include the copy, the photographs and a year of maintenance. In that case, both prices would be consistent with what they offer, and judging one by the other would make no sense.
The useful comparison is made line by line. Check the same points in both: how many pages are included, who takes care of the design and from what starting point, who provides the content, how many rounds of revisions there are, in whose name the domain and the code remain, what happens from the second year on and whether the price includes VAT. If either of them has no item for one of these points, ask. And if you want a third quote to compare them against, the web development page has one that is worked out on the spot, with each item, the extras and the tax that applies to your territory.
Once all these questions have an answer, the total, which at first was the line that said the least, will be the only one you have left to read.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a basic website cost?
My entry package, the Essential Website, costs €790 excluding VAT. It includes up to 5 pages with a bespoke design, technical SEO, analytics, the domain and hosting for the first year and one round of revisions.
How much does a corporate website cost?
The Corporate Website costs €1,290 excluding VAT. It goes up to 12 pages and adds a blog, extended SEO and a second round of revisions.
How much does an online shop cost?
The Online Shop costs €1,990 excluding VAT, with up to 50 products loaded, a payment gateway, the legal texts and integrated invoicing. It is built on free software, so you pay no platform fee and no commission on sales.
What should a website quote include?
The items with their amounts, the number of pages, the timeline, the rounds of revisions, the payment terms, what is left out and what happens from the second year on with the domain, the hosting and the maintenance. It should also say in whose name the domain and the code remain.
Does a website quote include VAT?
The prices in this article exclude taxes. In mainland Spain and the Balearic Islands 21% VAT is added, and the quote works out the tax that applies to your territory.
How much does it cost to keep a website running per year?
In the first year, the domain and the hosting are included in the price of the website. From the second year on, hosting is included with any maintenance plan, which starts at €35/month (€420 a year), and the domain renewal is charged at cost.
How long does it take to build a website?
These are estimated timelines. A website of up to 5 pages is online in about 2 weeks, a corporate one in 2-3 weeks and a shop in 3-5 weeks.
