Last Updated on November 24, 2022

Digitization is changing the way of business operations. The first thing customers look for in any business, even before planning to deal with them, is the business’s official website. Do you know that more than 57% of internet users have agreed that they’ll never recommend a business with a poorly designed website on mobile? Thus, the importance of dedicated and user-interactive websites is immense for any business.

However, small and medium businesses feel skeptical about the costs of effective website development. Let us know all about the website development costs, top factors affecting the costs, and the costs based on different website types. We’ll evaluate all the terms and points related to the website costs to help decide on user-friendly website development.

Why is it Difficult to Estimate the Website Development Cost?

Before even jumping to the factors determining the website development cost, it is important to know about the different steps involved. Once the steps are clear, it becomes easy to determine the difficulty in website development. The average cost to build a website depends on this design, development, and other costs. Let us briefly summarize the steps involved in end-to-end website development.

UI/UX Design

UI UX Design of a website
UI UX Design of a website Dribble

It forms the prime facia of any website. If any website aims to attract customers, it is impossible without a great UI/UX design. It should be clutter-free and attractive while maintaining quality informative content. The different cost factors involved in UI/UX design are research, wireframe, and prototype. The research starts by defining the target audience, understanding their preferences, and creating a final prototype. The next step is to create wireframes to make a schematic elements placement and verify it by the client. The UI/UX design ends with the final user interface to check the website’s working on different devices. The average UI/UX design cost for any website ranges between 750USD to 4,000USDSome popular tools to create these designs are Adobe Creative Cloud, Zepplin, InVision, Sketch, etc.

Front-end Development

The front-end is all about the visitors seeing the website and comes after the UI/UX designs. It includes the login or registration pages, shades, shapes of the input fields, register or login button, etc. The key factors affecting the front-end development costs are animation complexity and website adaptiveness. The average costs of front-end development for any website range between 1,000USD to 12,500USDSome popular tools to create front-end development are React, Angular, LESS, SAAS, TypeScript, JavaScript, Bootstrap, CSS, HTML, etc.

Back-end Development

After the front-end development comes backend development, which comes to sharing data from the servers to the visitors. The bunch of codes set in the backend development takes charge of taking commands and sharing a response to the users. Hence, any website needs to have a powerful and feature-rich backend development. Some top factors in backend development are complex queries, non-standard data processing, third-party services integration, etc. Any website’s average cost of backend development ranges between 4,000USD to 12,500USDSome popular tools to create backend development are .NET, Nest.js, Express.js, Node.js, etc.

Admin Panel Development

admin panel dashboard of a plant marketplace
admin panel dashboard of a plant marketplace Dribble

Last but not least is the dedicated content management system or admin panel, which is the dedicated solution for editing, managing, and creating website content. Hence, no need to go for the developers’ help when you can go for the admin panel to make small changes to the website. The average costs of admin panel development for any website range between 3,000USD to 9,000USDSome popular ready-made CMS engines are Drupal, WordPress, Shopify, etc.

Final Development Cost of all Stages 

Let us review the final development cost of all the website development stages in the table mentioned below-

Sr. No.StageTimeMinimum priceMaximum price
1UI/UX design15-80hrs750USD4,000USD
2Front-end development20-250hrs1,000USD12,500USD
3Back-end development80-250hrs4,000USD12,500USD
4Admin panel60-180hrs3,000USD9,000USD
Total175-760hrs8,750USD38,000USD

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Factors Affecting the Cost of Web Development

After going through the costs of website development based on different development stages, let us go through the main three factors affecting the website development cost. The average cost of development varies from 1,000USD to 300,000USD. These are:

  • Type of website: The different types of websites define the overall development costs. The business custom website design cost varies from 30,000USD to 70,000USD, the electronic ecommerce custom website design cost varies from 80,000USD to 120,000USD, and the simple landing custom website design cost varies from 7,000USD to 15,000USD.
  • Type of team: The brain behind the website development is the next important point to consider when it comes to estimating the overall costs. Any website development team consists of requirements analysts, project managers, information architects, UI/UX designers, web developers, QA engineers, and user acceptance testers. The main options available in the team are the in-house team or the outsourced team. The cost of the website development team depends on the type of team, which depends on the skills and technology used by them. The outsourced website development team has options in skills and technology, while the in-house team is an expert in a single technology. The cost of the overall team for website development varies from 150,000USD to 250,000USD. 
  • Team’s region: Last but not least is the region of the website development team. Some expensive regions for website development are the US, Europe, etc. If you’re looking for cost-effective yet highly-functional website development, it is easy to go for the South-Asian regions. Regarding the areas, the cost of a website development team ranges from 2,000USD to 53,000USD in the US, 1,000USD to 25,000USD in Europe, and 500USD to 10,000USD in Asia. This difference in the costs of hiring a website development team is due to the expertise and skills of the designers, developers, testers, project managers, etc.

The Cost of Website Development Based On: The Types of Website

Let us discuss in detail the effect of the website types in impacting website development. We’ve incorporated a list of the types of websites and associated costs, including the time. It is:

  • Social media website: 80,000USD and time taken is 2,000 hours
  • Marketplace website: 50,000USD and time taken is 1,300 hours
  • Entertainment website: 64,000USD and time taken is 1,600 hours
  • SaaS website: 48,000USD and time taken is 1,200 hours
  • Educational website: 40,000USD and time taken is 1,000 hours
  • Web portals: 48,000USD and time taken is 1,200 hours
  • E-commerce website: 40,000USD and time taken is 1,000 hours
  • Directory website: 12,000USD and time taken is 300 hours
  • News website: 50,000USD and time taken is 1,300 hours
  • Blog website: 4,800USD and time taken is 120 hours
  • Portfolio website: 4,000USD and time taken is 100 hours
  • Landing pages: 3,000USD, and the time taken is 80 hours

The Cost of Website Development Based on The Type of Team

Let us understand the type of the different website development teams which significantly impact the overall website development costs. These are:

  • Build an In-House Team: It is important to go for an in-house website development team that knows your business, works on your business goals, and is readily available. The average cost of building and maintaining an in-house team is around 500,000USD. These include team maintenance, office costs, accounting costs, taxes, salary, etc. Some of the issues with an in-house team are that increased dependency on one person develops limited expertise, lacks sources, and is an expensive option.
  • Hire a Local Website Development Agency: The second option is to go for the local website development agencies which have detailed expertise, are easy to hire, offers quick development, and have a seamless development process. The overall website development costs using a local website development agency are 225,000USD for marketing, 60,000USD for maintenance, and 150,000USD for design and development. Some issues with local website development agencies include timely process, working on agency’s terms, low availability, higher charges, etc.
  • Hire a Freelancer or a Freelance Team: Going with freelancers or a freelance team can work wonders for your website development. It is easy to hire freelancers having expertise in the same segment of websites. These charge around 15,000USD per website and are one of the highly cost-effective ways of website development. Some of the issues while working with freelancers is reliability issues, weak guarantee on project completion, etc.
  • Hire an Outsourcing Agency: Last but not least is going with the outsourcing agencies, which effectively nullifies freelancer issues. Such agencies have dedicated team members, a single point-of-contact, a client-specific development process, proficient and expert work, etc. An outsourcing agency takes around 20,000USD for website development.

The Cost of Website Development by the Team’s Region

The final factor affecting the cost of website development is the team’s location. The significant difference in the figures of the costs from different continents reveals the difference in skills, expertise, and technology used in the projects. Let’s go through the hourly costs of the different regions one by one:

  • India: 10USD to 30USD
  • Ukraine: 40USD to 80USD
  • Western Europe: 70USD to 100USD
  • The UK: 90USD to 130USD
  • The USA: 100USD to 150USD
  • Australia: 80USD to 120USD

How do UX/UI Design Costs Impact the Website Development Cost?

All websites aim to attract traffic, so it is important to consider the impact of the UX/UI designs while creating websites. Hence, the user experience and the user interface designs contribute to a significant extent to the overall website development costs. Let us understand all about these designs one by one.

  • User experience (UX) impact: It defines the interaction of the website elements with visitors. Developers create wireframes for a practical layout to identify informational hierarchy. It is followed by adding features, design strategies, and creating different user personas. The cost of implementing UX design or any website depends on the information and the elements contained in it.
  • User interface (UI) impact: It defines how visitors navigate the website. Hence, mockups are created by the developers, which may need customization according to the website’s needs. Designers can go for the component libraries or the ready-made templates. The component library offers the facility of the independent library with frameworks, while in the ready-made libraries, customization is not available and makes it a cost-effective option. Depending on the type of user interface development the developers select, the overall website development costs rise or fall.

The Cost of Website Development Based on Technology

The next line is the use of the effective technology stack for creating your website, which can increase or decrease the overall website development costs. It is important to understand the different technologies used to create websites. These are:

  • Front-end technology: The main front-end technologies are JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc. Other top technologies used are Tailwind CSS, JQuery, Vue.js, React, Angular, Bootstrap, etc. 
  • Backend technology: The key backend technologies are Java, .NET, Node.js, cloud services like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, etc. Further, there are options to choose from modern serverless applications or the traditional server-based approach.
  • Database technology: The next line is the database technology selection, which stores the application’s data. For serverless architecture, the top database technologies are MongoDB, DynamoDB, Amazon Aurora, etc., while the relational database technologies are Oracle, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, etc.

The Cost of Website Development Based on Time

When it comes to the timeline, it is based on the features required in the website, which further impacts the overall costs of website development. The websites with complex features need more time and are expensive, while simple websites can be completed in reduced time. Let us understand the cost of website development based on time under different steps:

  • Project management: 40 hours
  • Backend development: 60 hours
  • Front-end development: 100 hours
  • MVP and prototype designing: 60 hours
  • Mockups and creating wireframes: 60 hours
  • UX/UI research: 40 hours
  • Competitor research: 40 hours
  • Market research and business analysis: 40 hours
  • Iteration, maintenance, reviews, and feedback: Based on website requirements

How Much Does it Cost to Make a Website in 2022? A Statistical Insight

Let us back up our research on the overall costs of making a website with some statistical insights from the top sources. These are:

  • Web Hosting Secret: It has completed an investigation to find the website development cost for 10 pages website. It reveals that the cost to make a simple website range from 200USD to 1,500USD, a custom design website ranges from 1,500USD to 5,000USD, and a custom design and feature-rich website ranges from 5,000USD to 10,000USD, etc. It further found that ongoing website development and marketing activities range from 1,000USD to 10,000USD monthly.
  • WebFX: It is a leading digital marketing agency that has calculated that the design and launch phase costs from 12,000USD to 150,000USD. Further, the website maintenance costs are between 400USD to 60,000USD annually.
  • ClutchIt is the popular vendor-listing platform that has successfully calculated website development costs from different regions. Developers from North America charge around 46,200USD to 237,600USD, Western Europe charges around 21,350USD to 109,800USD, and Eastern Europe charges around 12,250USD to 63,000USD.
  • Upwork statesThe total costs of the website development depend on the website pages and type of website. Small business websites with 8 to 16 pages cost 2,000USD to 9,000USD, and large business websites with 25 to 75 pages cost 10,000USD to 35,000USD. The e-commerce websites with 100 to 1,000 pages cost 5,000USD to 55,000USD, and the database websites with 20 to 2,000 pages cost 6,000USD to 75,000USD.

Explaining the Cost of Web Development with Examples

Let us now move towards the detailed website development cost with the key category examples.

Cost of an eCommerce Website 

Examples– AmazoneBay

eaby

The cost of developing an e-commerce website varies on its features in it. Further, the time taken to create an e-commerce website may increase or decrease the overall website development costs for the online commerce category. The average cost of developing an e-commerce website is between 10,000USD and to 20,000USD.

Cost of an Educational Website  

Examples– UdemyCoursera

Coursera

The cost of developing an educational website depends on the type of syllabus and subject that need to be shown. Hence, the average cost of developing an educational website is between 10,000USD and 25,000USD.

Cost of a Small Business Website  

Examples– TraackrSoundstripe

traackr

The cost of developing a small business website varies on its simplicity or complexity. Further, adding features or customized elements can increase or decrease the overall website costs. The average cost of developing a small business website is between 2,000USD and to 10,000USD.

Cost of a Blog/News Website

Examples– GreatistNomadic Matt

Greatist

The cost of developing a blog or news website varies on the goals and the blog types. The overall website development costs are setup costs and monthly costs. The average blog setup costs range between 50 USD to 200USD, while the monthly costs are around 20 USD to 60USD. 

Cost of a Portfolio Website

Examples– Jennifer Fernandez, Sean Halpin

Sean Haplin

The cost of developing a portfolio website varies on the plugins, themes, hosting services, etc. The website builders can be used to create these websites according to their needs. Further, the average cost of developing a portfolio website is around 6,300USD. 

Cost of an NGO Website

Examples– Canadian Blood ServiceCharity: water

Charity Water

The cost of developing an NGO website varies depending on its essential features. Hence, it is important to decide on any NGO website’s main elements and functions. The average cost of developing an NGO website is around 5,000USD.

Additional Website Creation Cost 

Some of the other factors contributing to the website creation costs are:

  • Domain name: Any website needs a unique address. The specific address of the website is shown in the browser’s address bar and is called a domain name. Hence, it forms an important part of the website creation cost and comes from different domain name registrar. These prices vary from 5 USD to 15 USD yearly.
  • Hosting: Using hosting services, it is important to keep your website live and accessible on the internet. The dedicated hosting offers improved loading time of the website. Different hosting providers offer much-needed services for improving the website’s live duration. These prices vary from 75USD to 200USD yearly.

Hidden Costs of Website Development

Maintenance

It is important to consider the ongoing maintenance costs of the website development. These costs revolve around the resources required to ensure the website’s protection, time, and speed. Further, the complexity of the website defines the maintenance costs, which cover:

  • 3rd-party integrations: These integrations enhance the overall functionality of the websites and can significantly impact the cost of website development. The cost of 3rd party integrations depends on the specific integration only.
  • SSL certificates: It is important to ensure the website’s and other marketplaces’ security. Hence, out of all the maintenance costs, installing SSL certificates for your website is important. Your website will have an “s” added after the HTTP to safeguard security standards. SSL certificates cost between 10USD and to 300USD.
  • Domain name: The domain name is one of the prominent costs of website maintenance. Multiple names like .global, .store, .io, .org, .com, etc., are available and come in free or paid varieties. The cost of a domain name ranges from 10USD to 30USD per year.
  • Website hosting: It is important to have a website hosting plan which helps run the website online. Different types of website hosting like shared or independent are available for complex or corporate websites. The cost of website hosting depends on the type of website hosting model.
  • Other maintenance costs: The other maintenance costs involved in the website are servers, storage costs, cloud maintenance, infrastructure costs, etc. These costs depend on the types of servers, storage, cloud, and infrastructure used in the website.

Marketing     

It is easy to create a website, but your prospective customers must know about it. Hence, it all comes down to the dedicated marketing of your websites. Some of the different marketing strategies that amount to the cost of marketing for any website are:

  • PPC: Pay-Per-Click Advertising is one of the top marketing methods for any website. It helps customers convert visitors and know about your products. PPC comes from the Google Network, the most powerful and popular advertising network. PPC professionals go for Google AdWords, which helps them manage marketing campaigns. The only issue with PPC is that its price depends on the industry and can go up to 50 USD per click. The cost of PPC depends on the demanding keywords. 
  • SEO: Search Engine Optimization works to optimize the search results for Google. It is one of the recommended marketing strategies for websites as the higher website ranking in search engine result pages (SERP) hints at higher optimization. The SEO cost depends on the amount of work and ranges from 300USD to 1,500USD on average monthly.
  • SMO: Social Media Optimization uses different social media platforms to improve the company’s online business presence. The cost of SMO depends on the type of work required and hence ranges from 100USD to 200USD monthly.
  • Copywriting: It promotes the content on different websites. Hence, customers know more about the products, services, and business details. The cost of copywriting depends per word and ranges from 50USD to 500USD monthly.

How to Choose a Reliable Web Development Partner?

Do you know that the US web design services market size is 40.8 billion USD? There are numerous website development companies operating globally. Hence, any company may feel confused selecting the perfect web development partner for their business needs. Different factors contribute to the hit or miss for any web development company. Some of these factors are:

  • Determining the services: To start with, it is important to determine the type of services needed for your website. You may need to create a website, but not all website development is the same. Multiple websites like content management systems (CMS), e-commerce, dynamic, responsive, etc., require specific expertise. Hence, it is important to decide on the website development company based on the type of services required.

Tip: Go for the company with expertise in creating websites like your immediate needs, which will help you get a highly responsive website from the domain specialists.

  • Analyzing the team: The second important point to consider after selecting the services is the team of the website development company. It is important to look at the team involving designers, developers, testers, and the customer support team. The company has a dedicated team of website development professionals is the best to go with to eliminate different sources for different work. Analyzing the company’s team can help you determine the core strengths like technology experts, experience, previous assignments, etc.

Tip: Go for the website development company which shares details of their team, expertise, and core strengths while maintaining full transparency.

  • Finding team’s review: Who else can tell you about the good and bad of the website development company than its existing customer? Knowing about the team’s review from the existing customers or companies is easy. The details about the team’s behavior, expertise, and after-development services help make or break the deal with these service providers. These reviews can help connect to the ideal team according to your business needs.

Tip: Go for the team’s review of the website development company on leading platforms like Clutch, Glassdoor, etc.

  • Considering the speed of replies: Last but not least, it comes down to the responsiveness of the website development company. While many companies may have a dedicated customer support team, others may let you talk to the development team directly regarding your queries. The quick responses from the company helped establish their willingness to serve your needs, while the delayed response hints at the problems in the company’s operations. Further, it is important to determine if the company has understood your need and expectations from the website development to reduce post-development queries.

Tip: Go for the website development company which takes every initiative to offer clients a speedy reply. This time should be between 24-48 hours.

How Can EmizenTech Help You?

With viewers giving your website about 50 milliseconds to form an opinion about your business, all you need is professional guidance while making the website. Our team understands the need for user-interactive websites and helps you expand business through a strong virtual presence. Some of the top-notch points where we can help you in creating an affordable but user-friendly website are:

  • Different types of website creation: We offer comprehensive website creation services like dynamic websites, content management system CMS websites, e-commerce websites, responsive websites, etc.
  • Top-notch technology: Experts know that websites created with high-end technology are the best. Hence, we use the technologies like PHP, ASP.Net, Ruby on Rails, Node.JS, AngularJS, Java, Drupal, Magento, WordPress, Joomla, and ASP.NetFront, .Net Nuke, etc., for creating high-performing websites.
  • Experienced team: We understand that any business is as strong as its team. Hence, we have a dedicated team of website creators with experts in development, designing, QA, and deployment areas. 
  • Previous track record: We’ve delivered more than 1,000 websites with high conversion rates. Hence, your website development work is with the industry’s top professionals only.
  • Dedicated after-development support: Our team doesn’t rest at website development only as we do offer desiccated after-development support to all clients. Hence, you’re never alone while tackling any issues with the websites created with us.
  • Competitive pricing: While many organizations claim to offer competitive pricing for website development, it all comes down to the actual development costs. We maintain transparency in our website development process to eliminate hidden costs.

Frequently Asked Questions about Cost of Making a Website

  1. How long does it take to build a basic website?

    The time taken to build a basic website depends on its features and functions. However, the detailed website building process, including designing, development, testing, and deployment, may take around five to six months. There are options to go for the do-it-yourself website designs or hire a professional website development organization to complete the work in the stipulated time frame.

  2. Can I make a website for free?

    Yes, it is possible to make a website for free. Many businesses or professionals seek free sources to create functional websites due to cost factors. While it may have a low conversion rate or limited functions, the free website can be created easily from different sources. All you need is a customized domain name to add business credibility.

  3. What is the best software to design a website?

    Multiple software is available in the market to create user-interactive websites. The best software to design a website includes Wix, Adobe XD, Weebly, Webflow, Pattern Lab, Bootstrap, Sublime Text 3, WordPress, PageSpeed Insights, etc. All these software help professionals and guide beginners to create highly responsive websites.

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Author

CTO at Emizentech and a member of the Forbes technology council, Amit Samsukha, is acknowledged by the Indian tech world as an innovator and community builder. He has a well-established vocation with 12+ years of progressive experience in the technology industry. He directs all product initiatives, worldwide sales and marketing, and business enablement. He has spearheaded the journey in the e-commerce landscape for various businesses in India and the U.S.