The items that determine what a corporate website costs

Three quotes obtained for a corporate website often come out very differently. That difference usually arises not because "one is expensive and one is cheap" but because the quotes cover different work. Below are the items that determine cost; once these are clear, quotes become comparable.

1. Not the number of pages but the type of page

"How many pages" is a misleading question. Five pages in five different layouts is more work than twenty pages in the same layout. What determines cost is how many different templates will be designed and built: home page, listing page, detail page, contact and content page, and so on.

2. Who will prepare the content

This is the most frequently overlooked item. Is the copy yours, or does it need writing? Do images exist, or is a shoot or stock imagery required? If content is not ready, the project can wait months for that reason — and waiting usually costs more than development.

3. Number of languages

A multilingual structure is not only translation cost. Each language needs its own meta title, description and URL structure; cross-language links (hreflang) and per-language editing in the panel are required. Technically, adding a language to a site built multilingual from the start is easy; adding one to a single-language site usually means rebuilding.

4. The scope of panel-managed areas

"Content should be editable from the panel" is ambiguous on its own. Only text, or images too? Menu order as well? SEO fields? Will the order of home page sections be changeable? Every additional manageable area adds both development and testing load.

5. Integrations

Will form submissions arrive by email, or go to a CRM? Will an appointment calendar be connected? Is there an invoicing or ERP integration? Each integration is a separate item, and its duration varies greatly with the quality of the other system's API.

6. SEO and migration

Building from scratch on a new domain is not the same job as renewing an existing site. If a 301 redirect map is not produced for the URLs live on the existing site, the rankings already held in search engines are lost. When this item is missing from a quote, it is the one that costs the most.

7. After launch

Who will run hosting, domain, SSL, backups and security updates? Is there a maintenance agreement, and what does it cover? Annual running cost is an item independent of the initial build fee, and should be assessed as a total when deciding.

What to ask when requesting a quote

• How many different templates will be designed?
• Who prepares the content and images?
• Which areas will be editable from the panel?
• Which integrations are included?
• Will a redirect map be produced for existing URLs?
• What is the post-delivery maintenance scope and the annual running cost?

Quotes that answer these six questions in writing are comparable. In those that do not, the price gap is usually a scope gap.