The Cost of Creating a Website
Because we see all types of prices for websites, ranging from a few dozen euros to several tens of thousands, it is normal to wonder how much creating a website really costs. // Spoiler alert // the answer is “it depends.” Since the price of a site largely varies based on the time spent on its design and implementation, it is impossible to provide a general answer to this question.
We will still strive in this article to detail the steps involved in creating a website, as well as the various costs, and give you a sense of the price ranges practiced at Ronce Bleue for better clarity.
Fixed Costs
First of all, a website, whatever it may be, will incur a certain number of fixed expenses. These include server rental and domain name registration. Depending on the providers and especially the power of the servers chosen, the cost will vary. It is therefore important to analyze the target traffic to select an appropriate server size. You can also choose to subscribe to cloud servers that charge based on usage; these solutions are generally more interesting for large-scale projects that require more computing power.
Domain names must also be paid for each year. Depending on their popularity and the chosen extension, the price varies from around ten euros for common extensions such as .com, .net, or local extensions like .fr and .co.uk. In contrast, some extensions like .io or .ai are much more expensive, costing around forty euros. There are also free hosting services that offer extensions like .[hosting provider’s name]; although technically there is no effect on SEO, we prefer common or specific extensions to gain trust from visitors.
Thus, you need to add the cost of the server and the various domain names. For a site with average traffic and two domain names, for example, .fr and .com, you would expect to pay between 5 and 10 euros per month for the server plus 20 euros per year for the domain name, resulting in a total of between 80 and 140 euros annually.
Design Phase
The pre-production phase helps to clearly define your website’s needs. This requires auditing the current site, if it exists, to gather maximum information about current users, retain strengths, and identify the most relevant areas for improvement. A competitive analysis will also be conducted to highlight industry practices and provide a comparative analysis of the components of these websites. This competitive analysis will help us understand the sector and identify key areas where it is relevant to differentiate ourselves.
From these audits, we will establish the site’s structure, main features, priority pages that will be more developed, and the tone and character of the project. For instance, we will determine whether it is necessary to create a blog, which contact forms are relevant, and how to direct users to them. We will also define our target audiences and how to interact with them in terms of media quantity, visual identity, and animations.
Depending on the complexity of the site, you can expect to invest between 2 and 5 days of work on these issues.
Design
This will be followed by a design phase that can be summarized in two steps: creating the graphic universe and applying it throughout the site. There will be a fixed base and a variable component depending on the size or complexity of the site. Keeping the previously defined objectives and issues in mind, the designer will determine the colors, typography, graphic rhythm, media placement, and ensure message consistency across pages while optimizing components for their utility. We will also define possible interactions, appearance animations, and creative sections. It will be necessary to plan the arrangement of elements according to different screen sizes.
For the design phase, you can expect between 3 and 10 days of work, depending on the number of pages that need to be produced and, more specifically, the number of different components required to build these pages, as they will be reused with different content to create overall coherence. These times may vary if we decide to enhance interactions, animations, add 3D elements, or create additional assets.
Development
Next comes the site development, which includes both translating the previously created mockups into interactive versions adapted to different screen resolutions and creating the back-office to manage the site’s administration. The developer will ensure to optimize their code for performance and provide a smooth user experience, minimizing the use of existing libraries and instead creating their own functions to maximize efficiency. Attention must also be given to the site’s accessibility for people with disabilities, implementing the architecture planned during the design phase and the library of reusable components. They must create clean and well-documented code. This is a complex task that requires time to develop a robust, high-impact website.
For a site of medium complexity, you can expect between 10 and 25 days of development. This time is certainly adjustable depending on the complexity of the services to be implemented, the level of graphic expectations, and the project’s size.
SEO
Your project may require an SEO audit and the definition of objectives regarding search engine optimization. It will be necessary to conduct a specific competitive audit to highlight opportunities in terms of keywords and the types of content that should be produced (articles, bullet points, recipes, etc.). Analyzing the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) for selected keywords will help plan how to position ourselves against existing results. A backlinking strategy should also be proposed, ensuring that our site is cited on other authoritative sites in their field, along with relevant internal linking. Following these audits, an SEO action plan with recommendations will be proposed.
For a complete audit, expect between 2 and 7 days of work; again, this value depends on the project’s size and SEO stakes.
Other Costs
We have seen the main components of website design and creation; in this section, we will list the less obvious tasks that are still part of a project.
Project Management
A well-managed project saves a lot of time and energy for everyone involved. Time will be allocated to plan the site’s production stages, hold feedback meetings, prepare interim deliverables, and train clients to manage the site. At Ronce Bleue, we allocate 2 days of management per project; if necessary, we can dedicate more time.
Maintenance
Once the site is launched and the project validated, we plan maintenance time, which will only be charged if used. Optional but highly recommended, we estimate 2 days of maintenance to be spent based on needs. This maintenance may include ergonomic evolution, component additions, or technical updates.
Specific Costs
Depending on project requirements, it may be relevant to add paid third-party services to a website. For example, a CDN service for images or videos that compresses and resizes media in real-time for even more effective optimization. Depending on the CMS solution, paid plugins may exist that are relevant, such as SEO plugins, form managers, or effective caching managers.
These costs are therefore project-dependent and should be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
Conclusion
We have thus reviewed the main expense items involved in creating a website: its design, development, launch, SEO optimization, and related project tasks.
This range includes all creation stages; for instance, the design can be internalized, thereby reducing production time, provided that necessary documents and information are supplied for the project’s smooth execution.
All that remains is to multiply the number of days by the daily rate of the chosen agency, which ranges from 400 to 800 euros per day.
To simplify, for a typical project with a homepage, a few landing pages, a contact page, and a blog, fully customized and developed with high graphic standards, we can expect:
- 2 days of design (optional)
- 3 days of design
- 12 days of development
- 2 days of SEO optimization (optional)
- 1 day of project management
At Ronce Bleue, we charge 500 euros per day, totaling 20 days of work, which amounts to 10,000 euros. If we don’t handle the design or SEO optimization, we would be looking at around 8,000 euros. It’s worth noting that these figures heavily depend on the project’s scope. For a more modest project requiring fewer pages and different components, the price could drop to around 6,000 euros.