The price of the website can range from $3,000 to $9,000 or more, depending on your desired level of customisation and design. The more functionalities you include, the higher the price of the website, blog, or online store will be.
As each web design project is unique, each website has its own needs. Therefore, the price of a site varies depending on its size. To provide estimated rates, we have compiled a range of pricing options. A basic static website created from a template by a semi-professional web designer goes from $400 to $900 or more.
Your guide to Web Design Cost in Australia
Custom Design – $3000 to $9000 or more
Pros of a custom website design
A solution just for you
A custom design is tailored to fit your unique needs and requirements. The team hired to construct your website will be fully focused on meeting your specific expectations. You may provide feedback during the website-building process. In this way, web designers and developers are more effective because they know your priorities and needs. Furthermore, it increases your chances of being satisfied with the final product.
Originality and uniqueness
If you want your site to be 100% different from competitors, you must use a custom design. A custom design allows you to express your unique style. There’s nothing more detrimental to your brand identity than having website content and design that closely resembles that of your competitors. Only a custom solution guarantees that your website is unique.
A site for your brand
The team building your site precisely understands its purpose, the industry, the brand, the core values, and your growth strategy. In this context, the site aligns with the brand, ensuring a consistent user experience. People associate the quality of your services with the quality of your site.
Strong partnership
A site isn’t a set-and-forget item. It needs perpetual code tweaks, A/B testing, and proper ongoing maintenance. There is no one better prepared to do it than the ones who created it from scratch. Continual collaboration with the site creators is a win-win situation. Moreover, a good collaboration with the site builders helps you in precisely determining the total cost of ongoing website maintenance.
Professional consultation
Perhaps your plans for the site you want to create are good. However, professional designers and developers know those details that matter better. The pieces of advice from experts are what make the difference between a good and an outstanding site. For an ecommerce business owner, having limited knowledge about web hosting costs or website builders is perfectly normal. An expert guides customers to save money and choose the optimal services for their business.
Cons of custom website design
An expensive price tag
In the early stages of any business, capital is vital. Only a few start-up businesses can afford the expensive services of a professional design team. It’s common to start a website using a pre-made design and redesign it after the cash flow becomes consistent.
It takes time
A bad design and an unsatisfied customer hurt the reputation of a design agency. Hence, a serious agency will do serious research for every client. Also, web designers will spend time creating a good design. Writing clean and compliant code takes time too. Quality work takes time. Be prepared to wait possibly even for a month in the instances of complex sites.
Pre-made Templates – $200 to $500 or more
Pros of pre-made templates
The cheapest solution
The template creators get paid multiple times for the same piece of design. You pay only for a fraction of the work invested. Practically, the website cost is dramatically lowered because the seller gets paid by hundreds, thousands, or even millions of customers.
Quality design and code
People associate pre-made templates with poor quality. The current site templates market (WordPress themes, HTML templates) is ultra-competitive. You can’t make a profit unless you deliver top-class pre-made templates. These templates or themes for WordPress sites look great and are perfectly optimised for search engines.
Tried and tested by the community
Some templates have been sold tens of thousands of times. Countless webmasters have tested them and shared their opinions. Choosing a pre-made template isn’t a guess – it’s an educated decision. Check the review websites, the ratings received on the marketplace, and the opinions of other users.
Ease of use
The developers of pre-made templates have learned how to create easy-to-use products by constantly refining them. Nowadays, you don’t need coding skills to customise pre-made templates. For instance, you don’t need to be a professional web designer to create a WordPress site. It’s enough to use a free website builder like Elementor to create a functional website.
Although some pre-made templates don’t, most of them include support and extensive documentation. Some well-known WordPress themes are the core of an active and helpful community. Tons of users have created in-depth reviews and tutorials about these templates.
Support and documentation
Although some pre-made templates may not, most of them include support and extensive documentation. Some well-known themes for WordPress sites are the core of an active and helpful community. Tons of users have created in-depth reviews and tutorials about these templates.
Cons of website based on pre-made templates
Thousands of sites based on the same pre-made template
Some templates package tons of options and demos to help you design a unique site. Still, there is a high chance that some design items will look similar to many other sites. Your site can’t stand apart when thousands of other sites are based on the same template.
Extra Add-ons
A pre-made template may be offered for free. Other cheap templates or themes for WordPress websites may cost less than $50. No one provides excellent value without a purpose. Usually, a product cheaper than the average hides unwanted consequences. For instance, a theme for a WordPress website suits your needs and the price is acceptable. However, you may need to invest in special add-ons for extended functionality. In the long term, the money invested may end up being the same as for a custom design.
A pre-made template serves too many purposes
Some templates are specially crafted for a particular niche, but most developers create templates for a large array of purposes to cover a bigger market. Practically, many templates are a jack of all trades.
Website Builders – 0 to $300 or more
Pros of Website Builders
A Solution for Everyone
A website builder may represent a solution for each Australian who has decent technical skills and a good aesthetic sense. Many of these are extremely performant and allow the creation of complex websites like online stores and news outlets. You can create your own website without much hassle.
No Coding Skills
DIY website builders use a drag-and-drop interface to construct the website layout. In most cases, you drag site elements from the sidebar onto the canvas. No coding skills are required, but they have the option to insert custom code if needed.
Fast and Intuitive Process
Creating a new website is a matter of hours by using a website builder. They include top-notch templates and a drag-and-drop system to design layouts. Your job is to customize them to match your brand and style. Forget about technical things like dedicated server, SSL certificate, or backup system. Modern website builders take care of these for you.
Optimised for Search Engines
One major complaint about website builders in the past was their inability to achieve top positions in search engine results pages. Nowadays, most website builders are optimised for search engines, allowing you to attract customers organically.
Cons of Website Builders
Not a Genuine Alternative
Indeed, the website builder prices are lower than the web designer costs, but no builder can replace the expertise of a web designer. A website builder isn’t a long-term solution if you need a complex project. It’s a near-impossible job for a non-techie person to learn all the ins and outs of a website builder to design outstanding websites in a short time.
Limited Features
A website builder cannot be both extremely powerful and incredibly simple to use at the same time. The more features a website builder has, the more complex it becomes for users. As a result, most website builders have limited features to help users lacking technical skills.
Small Business Websites
A small website with the usual pages (home, blog, about me, services, and contact) is not the same as one with dozens of services, and different points of sale in different countries and languages.
If you are considering a web designer to make a professional website or redesign the one you already have, this article will help you get a little familiar with Australian web development market prices.
Everything depends on your needs and demands. When a company or small business decides to launch a professional site, thousands of questions arise as to how much it will cost, or if it will be cheap. The investment in a website is proportional to its design; therefore, there is no secret formula that allows determining the price of a website.
Website Building Cost Explained
You can roll up your sleeves and create a website, blog, or eCommerce website. Despite not having the technical knowledge to do so, there are very intuitive platforms that allow you to create a site quickly and simply. In this case, website cost is affordable, as you only need to cover expenses for domain and hosting.
Website-building platforms such as WordPress or Wix are popular among users for several key benefits:
- Intuitive interfaces that streamline site construction and can almost replace the need for a professional web designer.
- Hundreds of templates and themes suitable for all kinds of projects, from small business websites to blogs and news outlets.
- Included website hosting, and for premium plans, you may even get dedicated hosting or a virtual private server.
- Attractive perks like a free SSL certificate, custom domain name, automatic backup/restore, and enhanced website security.
These options are always somewhat limited because you depend 100% on the site-building platform used and your knowledge of web development.
On another hand, web design prices go high by hiring a web design agency or a freelance web developer. The website cost depends on plenty of factors such as:
- site’s functionality and how many pages it includes;
- experience and reputation of the web design agency or solopreneur;
- the number of hours invested by the developers, web, and graphic designers;
- web hosting.
Sometimes, the website prices include the future website maintenance costs for a set period of time. Be aware that all these details should be precisely stipulated in the contract with the hired agency/freelancer.
Elements that Influence the Website Price
Let’s consider that you want a customized website design. In this case, you must understand the primary variables, such as custom functionality, SEO services, and other factors that influence the price of a website. By combining them according to your needs, you can get a clear idea of the cost of your website and adjust it to your budget.
As a professional website designer, you often hear questions like, “How much does a website cost?” or “Why does an ecommerce site cost more than a blog?” or “Why is dedicated hosting more expensive than shared hosting?” These questions are natural, and experienced web developers know that part of their job is to educate customers.
Therefore, a brief but clear explanation of the factors influencing website costs is much needed for both web design agencies/freelancers and customers.
Custom Domain Name
Set a strategy and achievable objectives once you are ready to launch a website. Next, it’s time to choose the name for your business, and the web domain for your website.
The domain is one of the most critical aspects because it’s the first thing your users will see, alongside the name itself. In fact, it is an essential element that, although to a lesser extent, also influences the price of the website. Depending on your chosen TLD (domain extension), it may even become more expensive than hosting. The reason is simple.
A domain .com or .com.au costs, depending on the provider, from $10 to $ 15 per year in Australia.
Popular Domain Name Registration Providers
Website Hosting
The web hosting company you select to keep your website’s files is of crucial importance. It’s responsible for your online business performance, security, and reliability. You may ruin your website’s reputation by purchasing hosting services from a poor-quality web host. Therefore, hosting costs shouldn’t be a top priority in this respect. You’d better go for a reliable hosting company to rest assured that your online business is in good hands. Fortunately, there are numerous web hosting alternatives available.
Hosting costs can vary significantly depending on the requirements of your project. For example, shared hosting is a suitable choice for a personal blog or a small business website. On another hand, you may need your own server for a complex ecommerce site.
No matter the type of the project, keep in mind these tips when you buy web hosting for your website:
Remember that cheap isn’t automatically synonymous with poor quality, and expensive doesn’t guarantee good quality. Before making any decisions, it’s essential to read reviews, check user opinions, and consult the professionals hired to build your website.
Look for deals and special offers. All web hosting companies periodically offer promotional prices to attract customers.
Secure the hosting services for longer periods of time to benefit from the maximum discounts. Introductory prices are often significantly discounted.
Hosting plans go beyond just storing your website’s files. These come with additional goodies like SSL certificates, website builders, backup systems, or site templates. Be cautious with these extras to manage your website costs effectively in the long term.
In a nutshell, hosting cost varies from $1.99 to $39.99+ per month, depending on numerous factors like the rename of the web hosting provider, the type of web host, required features, bandwidth, or storage capacity.
Website Functionality
Websites can be developed within numerous frameworks and many of them provide a seamless user experience. Some of them require basic web development knowledge while others target people lacking coding skills.
According to a recent survey, the loading time of a web page plays a vital role in delivering an excellent user experience to website visitors. They can interact with the web content without reloading the page again and again. Loading speed is crucial for an ecommerce website because each millisecond of delay means losing money. It’s essential to understand that optimizing web design costs should not come at the expense of website performance. A slow-loading website is a source of frustration for customers and they will go to the competitors.
Different outstanding media tools have been invented so that customers can interact with the brand directly. For example, because of the ubiquity of iPhone applications, widgets, or Google gadgets, customers can watch and interact with online ads.
No matter the website building platform, your website must be mobile-friendly and responsive. It’s an additional cost, but it’s mandatory if you want to satisfy your website visitors.
Moreover, virtual data can be smoothly blended with the real world. The website or mobile functionality has been augmented. For instance, Android and iPhone users can easily track their location or find local restaurants using GPS. Most business owners leverage local search to get more visitors to their brick-and-mortar locations.
Website Maintenance
A website isn’t a set-in-stone entity. Over time, you need to create and delete web pages, implement minor changes, or migrate the website hosting. Besides, Google constantly refines its ranking algorithm, so you have to keep an eye on your search engine optimization strategy to avoid losing traffic. In plain English, you need someone, ideally the web agency or the freelancer who created your website, to maintain your online business.
Website cost in 2023 doesn’t mean only how much you pay a professional website designer. Website maintenance is becoming increasingly vital. Customers’ requirements are numerous and dynamic, so you need a reliable partner to implement strategies to attract and delight customers.
Any functionality and design update should be intuitive and straightforward to not hurt the user experience.
Web Design Agency or a Freelancer?
The cost of a web page varies depending on who is responsible for making the budget. The professional options considered are web design agency, studio or a freelance web designer that, although the result may be similar, they have apparent differences in the way of working, communicating and exposing their work.
As only one person faces the project, it incurs fewer expenses and can offer a more competitive website price. On the other hand, opting for a web design and development agency will generally result in a higher final website cost. These types of companies have professional web designers and web developers with specific knowledge of different areas. Naturally, the work of a professional team is reflected in the price of the site. The rates of a professional website designer depend on the state, and in Australia, prices vary between $25 to $160 per hour.
Building a website needs innate knowledge about online behavioral patterns, usability, and customer behavior. So hiring a junior web designer will not be the right decision. You need to keep in mind that people usually prefer to interact with your brand through this channel. No other marketing channel can act as it does. To stand out in a competitive landscape, consistency is key.
Before hiring any digital design agency, make sure they have a fair idea about the online behavioural patterns of the customers. Then only the final creative solution can relate to the needs of the users.
How to get a business website at a reasonable price?
Designing a website can be a deceptive job. Building a new website seems easy and straightforward. But the real website costs shock so many people. So here is a recap of the t to reduce the website cost in 2023.
Strategical Aspects
Identify a realistic budget. Ensure that your investment aligns with the expected returns. Remember that website costs encompass hosting, website maintenance, and a custom domain.
Avoid guesswork which can genuinely amplify the additional costs at the end of the day. So before investing money identify your goals and potential methods to achieve it.
A good relationship with your digital marketing agency. Before hiring an agency, you need to make sure that the agency experts understand your business and that they can deliver tailored options within your budget. Search engine optimization strategy is also vital for a successful small business or online store.
Targeting, Segmenting, and Positioning are crucial. Targeting means to whom you want to visit your website. Segmenting indicates the industry that you want to focus on and Positioning means what message you want to convey to your customers through your site. In short, just like the traditional market, you have to distinguish and evaluate your targeted audiences.
Choose 5 websites you like the most. It’s okay if it’s not from your industry. It will help you to articulate the features and the look and feel you want for your project.
Technical Aspects
The structure of the site is crucial. You can reduce the development cost by reducing the number of web pages.
Many web hosts offer promotional prices for new customers. Secure the hosting services for two or even three years to benefit from discounted prices.
Use stock photography to avoid increasing the website costs by paying a graphical designer or a photographer. Different photo sites with free stocks are available nowadays.
Do some in-house work like writing content, selecting themes, photos, and graphics, etc. Most importantly – just keep it as simple as you can.
Conclusion
“How much does a website cost” in Australia is a complex question and none can offer an accurate estimation at first glance. This is because some website builders allow you to create multiple websites for free, which means you can run a few websites without spending any money.
On another hand, you need a serious budget if you plan to launch a complex ecommerce website. Obviously, in this case, the web design prices are pretty high. Moreover, you need a dedicated server and a team to perform website maintenance.
However, this article is designed to help you better understand how to estimate web design pricing based on your project type. Consider bookmarking this article so you can refer to it whenever you plan to launch a new website.
