Estimated Website Development Cost in 2022: The Ultimate Guide

Successful websites are the foundation stones in the growth of businesses. They capacitate to build the first impression in front of the customers, help sustain them as well as boost sales. Hence, businesses need to have a website in order to make the most out of their marketing. And the website should be a successful one so that their business needs can be fulfilled. 

Now to create a new website, businesses need to bear some costs. And before hiring a website development company, they need to estimate these costs. However, website development cost estimations are not as easy as they appear. How? Let’s understand this in the following section. 

Is it Difficult to Estimate the Cost of Website Development ?

“How much money do we need to spend to develop a website?” This is the most important question that business owners typically ask. However, there are a lot of factors to consider and calculate here and one needs to understand them in depth to estimate the cost. 

So, let's begin by first knowing what these significant factors are. 

Factors Determining the Cost of Website Development

There are a number of factors that one needs to consider in order to determine the cost of website development. These factors usually depend on the type of website, its purpose, development phase, and necessities. Let’s categorize these factors to understand them better:

1. Type & Objective of Website

• Personal Website and Blog

Personal websites or personal blogs are created to present content with personal essence, unlike that of a business, company, or institution. Individuals can create them to share specific news, suggestions, or information with their potential customers. 

• Brochure Websites

Small businesses choose brochure websites to display their content. These websites primarily consist of some web pages, business details (About Us section), contact details, and a Call To Action (CTA) to channel a customer request. The objective of these websites is to attract potential customers and drive sales. Check out Evoulve website to understand.

• Corporate

Corporate websites are created with the objective of engaging target audiences by displaying their portfolio, business values, and objectives. The website of Verizon is a great example of a corporate website. Visit the website to see how splendidly they have made use of different corporate web pages.

• eCommerce

An eCommerce website, as the name represents, is created with the objective of buying and selling products and services. Hence, it is developed to perform transactions on a regular basis. Plus, it houses a number of registered suppliers and retailers. 

The best examples of such websites include Amazon, eBay, etc.

• Educational

Educational institutions or online education services have such websites. Check out websites like Udemy to understand more about educational websites.

• Web Portal

Websites like Yahoo and AOL are web portals. These websites gather information from a number of online sources and present it on a single platform matching the relevance of user queries. They also offer discussion forums, emails, search engines, etc.

• Catalog

Catalog websites are more of directory websites, that offer in-depth search systems. They are developed for users searching for a specific category of product or service. Plus, they consist of useful location-based features, feedback, and rating and reviewing mechanisms. Websites offering real estate properties, hotels, cars, jobs, etc. are included in the catalog category. Check out websites like Airbnb, TripAdvisor, etc. to get a detailed idea.

• Social Media or Community Building Website

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, etc. are popular names, we all are familiar with. These websites are social media websites, developed with the objective of encouraging connection, communication, and community building.

When it comes to considering the type of website in determining the cost, the complexity of its web pages plays a crucial page. 

2. Phases of Website Development

• UI/UX Design

The user interface and user experience design are significant factors that determine a website’s success. The design phase goes through researching, wireframing, and UI/UX designing. These steps can take 1-2 weeks on average and can cost between $750-$4,000 or even more. 

• Front-End Development

The front-end development phase begins with designing the user interface and ends with QA testing. What determines the cost in this phase is website responsiveness and the intricacy of animations. 

This phase may take 2-6 weeks on average and can cost between $1,000-$12,500 or higher.  

• Back-End Development

Once the user interacts with the visible interface of the website, the back-end comes into the scene. Also called server-side, the back-end makes sure that the website functions smoothly. Third-party integration, complicated queries, data processing, etc. are some of the factors that affect the cost in this stage.

It may take between 3-8 weeks to complete this phase, and costs $4,000-$12,500 or higher.

• CMS or Content Management Systems Development

CMS software allows users to manage and edit website content by themselves, without poking developers every now and then. WordPress, Shopify, and Drupal are popular CMS engines, that although have limited functions can save much time and cost. 

It usually takes between 3-8 weeks time and costs $3,000-$9,000 and higher.

Business requirements and website complexity together determine the time every phase goes through during website development. This in turn determines the costs to be borne by the business.

3.Other Essential Development Factors

• Domain Name

A domain name is the address of a website, that appears in the URL bar of the browser. When it comes to standard domain extensions, the yearly charges fall between $5-$15. While customized domain extensions like .online, etc. can cost between $200-$300. 

GoDaddy, Hostinger, Bluehost, etc. are popular domain name providers.

• Web Pages

A website can have between 1 to 250 web pages. The number of pages depends on the brand’s products and services. And based on these factors, the web design companies put forward their charges, usually ranging between $1,000-$10,000. 

• Website Layout & Theme

This refers to the appearance and usability of your website. The design cost increases with the increase in design complexity and usually ranges between $2,000-$15,000.

• Adaptable Design

Design adaptability refers to how well your website works on different devices like desktop, mobile, or tablets. The cost usually ranges between $3,000-$25,000. 

• Interactive Multimedia

Visitors tend to engage more with interactive media. The creation of such media takes a lot of resources, time, and cost. Hence, web designers may charge between $250-$10,000 for such factors. 

• Website Hosting

Every website needs hosting to keep it running and accessible on the web. GoDaddy, Inmotion, Hostgator, etc. are popular web hosting services. These services may annually cost between $75-$200.

• Maintenance

Maintenance factors are concerned with resolving website issues, making updates on CMS, and other maintenance tasks. These factors can cost you between $500-$12,000 in a year.

• Security (SSL Certificate)

With an SSL certificate, a website appears safe and secure to users as well as browsers. These certificates are issued by certification authorities and need to be renewed every year, On a monthly basis, you may need to spend between $10-$1,000 on security factors. 

These essential factors are indeed essential to ensure a smooth user experience. Hence, it is important to consider their cost while determining the total cost of the website development. 

The Estimated Cost to Develop a Website

Based on research and the factors considered above:

• The estimated cost to build a small business website may range between $1,000- $10,000 or higher. 
• A custom feature-rich website may cost up to $30,000 or higher. 
• The cost of a complex customized website may range between $2,500-$95,000 or more depending on the complexity.
• For launching and designing a website, the cost may range between $12,000-$150,000.
• Monthly routine website maintenance costs can be between $35-$5,000, while yearly these can be $400-$60,000.

4. Digital Marketing Costs

Then comes website marketing or digital marketing, which plays a significant role in generating higher traffic and leads. A business can invest in digital marketing activities based on its objectives and budget. These activities consist of the following:

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO refers to the process of optimizing a website to get a higher ranking on search engine result pages and earn organic traffic. The cost may range between $300-$1,500 per month on average, depending on the scale of the work. 

• PPC (Pay-Per-Click Advertising)

PPC is paid (or inorganic) process of converting potential customers into buyers. Here, businesses have to pay per click, which is usually $50 or depends upon the keyword competitiveness. Google Adwords is an amazing tool to run PPC ads. 

• Social Media Marketing

Social media websites are not just limited to connecting people but promoting businesses too. On average, it can cost between $400-$20,000, depending on the different marketing settings of websites.

• Content Marketing

Content marketing is all about marketing your website content so that it can reach the target audience. Content may include blogs, infographics, white pages, and so on. Businesses will incur costs depending on the type of content and the frequency of publishing it. This cost may range between $3,000-$5,000.

• Email Marketing

Email marketing aims at creating awareness and generating conversions. There are a number of useful email marketing tools that you can use to automate emails distribution. This type of marketing can cost you between $9-$1,000 in a month. 

• CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization)

CRO aims at boosting website conversions with a call-to-action technique. These techniques include submitting buttons, landing pages, sign-up forms, etc. Plus, can cost you between $300-$600. 

• Copywriting

Copywriting involves removing duplicated content from a website. It aims at boosting client engagement and may cost between $50-$500 per article on average. 

Altogether, the monthly website marketing cost may range between $12,250 and $25,250.

5. Costs of Hiring Website Development Agencies

Hiring a website development agency is although a big decision however the best one to get a successful website. You can hire a freelance website developer if your project is small, the scope of work is less, and the budget is little. Besides these options, you can also use a website builder tool to develop one for your business. Following are the costs involved in getting a website designed using 3 ways:

• Website Development Company :

  $5,000-$100,000

• Freelancer 

$500-$5,000

• Website Design Tool

$0-$300

Among all the above options, hiring a professional website development company is the best. However, the costs of hiring them are high. So, in that case, you can opt for offshoring, where you can get the same work done at cost-effective rates. 

Conclusion- Estimated Website Development Cost in 2022

You know that your website is the first place a user wishes to visits to know about your business products and services. Hence, it should be a professional and engaging one, so that it can boost your business and generate leads. And one can either try to design it by himself (DIY) or hire a professional website development company to get things done smoothly and professionally. 

Before hiring a company, one must determine the estimated cost of developing a website. The above-mentioned factors will help you in making that possible. Hence, consider them all carefully.