What a website actually costs in Phoenix

Ask five people what a website costs and you will get five versions of "it depends." I understand why they say it. The honest answer really does depend on what you are building. But "it depends" is no help at all when you are trying to work out whether you can afford this yet, so here are my actual numbers and what sits behind them.

I publish prices on this site. Most studios do not. The reason usually given is that every project is different, which is true. The reason nobody says out loud is that a number you cannot see is a number that can move depending on how much you seem able to pay. I would rather you knew the floor before you called me.

The numbers

• Logo design: $500. One-time.
• Website: from $1,500. One-time.
• iOS and Android app: from $5,000. One-time.
• Custom CRM or point of sale: from $5,000. One-time.
• Domains and hosting: monthly, scaled to traffic and storage.
• Local SEO: monthly, scaled to how many cities and services you want to rank for.

The word "from" is doing real work in that list. It is a floor, not an estimate. A five page site for a trade business lands close to it. A site with a store, a booking system and eleven years of blog posts to migrate does not, and I will tell you that on the first call rather than in an invoice.

What the cheap end actually buys

There is a whole market below my floor and I am not going to pretend it is worthless, because sometimes it is the right call.

Squarespace or Wix, built by you: roughly $200 to $400 a year. If you are a brand new business and you genuinely do not know yet whether the thing sells, spending a weekend building your own site is a reasonable decision. I mean that. Do not spend $1,500 proving demand you have not proven.

A $150 freelancer or an overseas shop: $150 to $800. You will get a site. What you usually will not get is anyone to call in eight months when the contact form quietly stops delivering. That is the actual risk, and it is not about skill or geography. It is that the relationship ends at launch.

Where the cheap end goes wrong is rarely the day it launches. It goes wrong later, and it tends to go wrong the same four ways:

• You cannot change anything without paying someone, so the site slowly goes out of date and stops matching what you actually sell.
• The template is running on forty other businesses, three of them your competitors in the same city.
• Nothing was ever measured, so nobody can tell you whether it worked.
• You do not own something you assumed you owned. Usually the domain.

None of those show up in the quote. All of them show up in the second year.

Where the money goes on a $1,500 site

The part people picture is the design, and the design is maybe a third of it. The rest is the work that has no screenshot.

Working out what the business actually does. Not the services list. The reason people pick you over the other six results. This is a conversation, and it is the single biggest predictor of whether the site earns anything.

Writing it. Most quotes assume you will supply the copy. Most clients then do not, because writing about your own business is genuinely hard, and the project sits for five weeks. I write it. That is deliberately in the price, because a site that never launches has cost you everything and returned nothing.

The unglamorous half. Speed, so it loads on a phone on a job site with two bars. Testing on real devices rather than a browser window dragged narrow. On-page SEO, structured data, a sitemap Google can actually read. Analytics installed and verified to be reporting. Forms that arrive in your inbox instead of your spam folder. An SSL certificate that renews itself. Hosting that stays up in August.

That last group is where cheap sites are actually cheap. It is invisible on launch day, which is exactly why it is the first thing dropped.

What moves the price up

Four things, in roughly the order they show up:

1. Page count. Fifteen service pages is more writing and more design than five.
2. Selling online. Products, shipping rules, tax, payment handling.
3. Booking or scheduling. Especially when it has to match a calendar you already run.
4. Migration. Moving years of existing content without breaking the links Google already knows about.

If none of those apply to you, you are near the floor, and you should be suspicious of anyone quoting you five figures.

Why my number holds

I run ten projects at a time. Right now eight are taken and two are open. That is not a scarcity trick, it is the thing that makes the price honest.

I used to charge $300 for a website. I raised it to $1,000 last year and to $1,500 last week, and I want to be straightforward about why, because it is the most useful thing in this post.

At $300 the only way the maths works is volume. Volume means templates, templates mean the same site with a different logo, and the client who needs an hour of actual thought does not get it, because there are nine more in the queue. I was doing worse work and charging less for it, and both of those were the same problem.

Ten at a time and $1,500 means I can spend a day on your copy without resenting it. If I ever quote you above the floor, that is what the extra is buying: attention, not markup.

What to ask whoever you hire

Whether or not you call me, ask these five. The answers tell you more than any portfolio.

1. Who owns the domain, the hosting account and the design files when this is finished? The answer should be you, in writing, without a conversation about it.
2. Is this a template, and which one? A template is not automatically wrong. Being unable to get a straight answer is.
3. What happens when I need to change a price or add a service? Find out now whether that is an email, a login, or an invoice.
4. Will analytics be installed, and will you show me it recording a real visit? Installed and working are not the same thing, and the gap between them is invisible for months.
5. What is deliberately not included? Good answer: a specific list. Bad answer: "everything is included."

The short version

A logo is $500. A website starts at $1,500 and goes up for reasons I will name before you agree to them. Apps and custom software start at $5,000. Hosting and SEO are monthly because they are ongoing work, not a product.

If your budget is under the floor, build it yourself on Squarespace this weekend and come back when it is paying for itself. I would rather tell you that than take money you need more than I do.

I have been doing this in Phoenix since 2009. Two of the ten seats are open. If you want a straight number for your specific project, tell me what you are building and I will give you one.