The article was initially published on Codica blog.

When we buy a product or service, what is important for us? Certainly, the cost is essential.

Website development is a sophisticated process. So, many factors influence the website’s final cost.

Let’s see what they are and how they influence the price of creating a website.

What does the website cost include?

Of course, the cost of a website mostly depends on the functionality you’d like to include. The more complex your solution is, the longer it takes to develop and test it.

However there exist other aspects that influence the website cost. These include the following:

• Building a website;
• Website hosting;
• Domain registration;
• Support and maintenance;
• Creating content;
• Promotion.

Below we discuss what these stages imply and how much it costs to implement each of them.

Building a website

Website development is a process that involves different specialists and includes many steps. It starts with validating the website idea and finishes with ensuring security. Let’s see what the steps that bring a full-featured web solution are.

Project discovery

The aim of this step is to validate the market fit for your website and clarify the client’s requirements.

Project discovery also helps provide an outlined functionality for the website and the time and cost estimate, as well as forming the development team.

Creating UX/UI design

The next step is creating UX/UI design, an essential part of a website. This is the first thing that users see when coming to your webpage.

At this stage, designers create layouts and prototypes of the website. The more complex they are, the higher the cost of this stage. For example, simple pages like news and promotions are cheaper than shopping carts and product lists.

The website design cost varies from $300 to $20,000. We recommend creating a custom design as it is better promoted in search engines than ready-made solutions.

Source: GoodFirms

Front-end and back-end development

After the website elements are included in prototypes, the web development team proceeds to ‘enliven’ the designed layouts. This stage includes creating client and server sides and linking the solution with databases.

The cost of website development itself varies depending on the functionality and is discussed in each particular case.

QA and optimization

QA engineers check the functionality, performance, and usability of the website. They detect and fix bugs and errors. Also, their work helps optimize the code to ensure the higher performance of the solution.

Launch, control, and support
After deploying your website, you need to ensure its stable and secure operation. It is especially relevant if your website is designed for posting news, videos, or other content.

Website maintenance is a multi-facet process that occurs on different levels, such as functionality, design, and security. So, web development companies typically engage specialists who ensure the website’s continuous work.

Additional costs

As the “scenario” of a website development depends on the specifics of a project, more costs may be involved.

For example, the website’s promotion in search engines requires costs for the website SEO optimization.

Website’s promotion

Many venture owners hope that customers will discover their websites on their own. But this is far from reality. Unless you offer people unique products or services, there are dozens of competitors. So, you need to promote your website after launch.

Let’s see what marketing expenses you may encounter when promoting your website.

Pay per click advertising (PPC)

The prompt way to market your website is to set up an advertising campaign on Google. After you enter the product or service info, it is displayed to potential customers.

In this case, you pay every time a user visits your website. The cost per click differs depending on the niche. For example, the ad cost for products varies between 1 cent per click and 2-3 dollars.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

The survey by Backlinko shows that 59% of users visit the first page of search results. Users bring organic traffic to your website.

So, it is vital that your site ranks higher. SEO promotion requires a specific set of skills, which affects your website’s development cost. On average, SEO services cost $500 - 1500 per month.

Adding content to your website

High-quality content is essential for your website. It attracts users with interesting information and helps sell your products and services. Also, the content optimizes your site for search engines. So, spending costs on copywriting is a sound idea.

Copywriting services cost varies from $25 to $500 and beyond per page.

Social media marketing (SMM)

Social networks play a significant role in promoting your website. As Statista’s survey shows, the most popular social networks globally have millions of users. So, it is a powerful source where you can build brand awareness and trust with customers.

Typically, The SMM services cost starts from $400 per month.

Hosting and other costs

Web hosting

Web hosting is crucial to making a website visible on the web. The hosting price varies from a few dollars per year to hundreds of dollars per month.

Domain name

A domain name is your website’s address. It distinguishes your webpage from others on the Internet. The domains can be rented for a certain time. Then, you can renew it for as long as you plan to use it.

Security certificates

Moreover, your site needs proper certificates and encryption to protect sensitive data on your website. The appropriate data protection means that you take care of your customers, which makes your company trustworthy.

The cost of security certificates may range from $1 to $125 per month or $10 to $1500 per year.

How much does it cost to build a website?

As we already discussed, the more complex website functionality you wish to implement, the higher the website will cost, and the longer it will take to develop it. The price range for developing and maintaining a website also varies on the type of website.

Based on the average hourly rate of Eastern European software development agencies, creating a landing page will cost $700. To compare, developing a complex job search website will cost nearly $75,000.

For more details about the cost structure for your website, see our full article: How Much Does It Cost to Build a Website in 2022?