Ask three agencies to quote the same website and the numbers can range from a few hundred pounds to five figures. They are not quoting the same thing. The price of a website is really the price of four separate decisions, and knowing them is how you read a quote.
The four decisions inside the price
- Template or from scratch: a reskinned template is cheap because the design work already happened, for someone else's business.
- Brochure or system: pages that describe you cost less than ordering, booking, or quoting tools that work for you.
- Who can edit it: if every menu change needs the agency, the cheap build gets expensive by month six.
- What happens to enquiries: a contact form that emails an inbox is not the same as capture that alerts you in seconds.
The item most quotes leave out
Ask directly: "is an admin panel included, and can I log in and change prices, menus, and photos myself?" Most non-technical buyers assume yes. Many quotes assume no. It is the single most common gap between what a business thought it bought and what it got, which is why we scope it explicitly in every quote we send.
Questions that expose a quote
- Is this designed for my business or adapted from a template?
- What can I change myself after handover?
- Where do my enquiries go, and how fast do I find out?
- What does it cost to keep running per month, honestly?
The takeaway
Cheap and expensive quotes are usually both correct prices for different products. Decide which of the four decisions you are actually buying, get the admin panel question answered in writing, and compare quotes on what they build, not the number at the bottom. Every site we build is designed from scratch and live to click through, which is the fairest way to judge any builder: their shipped work, not their pitch.
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By Dxims, AM:PM Media.
