What a website actually costs in Devon

I get asked this on nearly every first call, usually carefully, because the person has already had a quote that surprised them. So here is the honest range, and what actually moves the number.

The three quotes people usually get

The first is a template site for two or three hundred pounds, often from someone doing this alongside another job. It exists, it works, and sometimes it is the right answer for a brand new business that needs to look legitimate this month.

The second is the monthly deal: no upfront cost, forty to eighty pounds a month, cancel any time. This is the one to read carefully. In most of these arrangements the site and often the domain remain the property of the company building it. Stop paying and it goes offline. Over three years you can spend more than a fixed price build and own nothing at the end.

The third is an agency quote, three to eight thousand pounds and up. For a business with several branches, a booking system or a shop, that can be entirely reasonable. For a five page site for a plumber in Cranbrook, most of it is paying for the agency, not the website.

The most expensive website is the one you have to pay for again in two years because you never owned it.

What actually changes the price

• The number of pages, and whether each needs its own writing and photographs.
• Whether the words already exist. Copywriting from scratch is real work and takes real time.
• Photography. Your own photos are always better than stock, but somebody has to take them.
• Functionality: a contact form is quick, online booking or payments is a different job.
• Whether anyone is on the hook afterwards when something breaks.

What I charge, and why it is published

My prices sit on the pricing page: £595 for a single page, £950 for five pages, £1,750 for up to ten pages built to compete on local search. Half to start, half when you are happy for it to go live, agreed before I begin.

They are published so you can compare properly before you ever speak to me, and so I have to be honest about what fits inside the number.

The part nobody mentions: ownership

Whatever you pay, three things should end up in your name. The domain, registered to you at a registrar you can log into. The hosting account, or at least the ability to move it. And the files that make up the site.

If you could not take all three with you, you are renting. That is fine as long as you know it, and a problem the day you want to move.

Ongoing costs are small if the site is simple

A hand built site needs a domain, around ten to fifteen pounds a year, and hosting, which for a small business site can be free on Cloudflare Pages. There is no licence, no plugin subscription, no theme renewal. Changes cost whatever the person making them charges for their time.

A WordPress site has a longer list: hosting that can cope with it, premium theme and plugin renewals, and updates that need doing whether or not you have changed a word. None of it is enormous, but it adds up quietly to a few hundred a year.

Questions worth asking any quote

• Who owns the domain, and which registrar is it with?
• If I want to leave, how do I take the site with me?
• What happens if I stop paying you?
• Is the price fixed, and what would take it over?
• Who answers the phone if it breaks in six months?

Any decent developer will answer those in a sentence each. If the answers get complicated, that tells you something useful before you have spent anything.