Part 1: If you’re just starting out

Part 2: If you have a customer base and want something better

Part 3: If your entire business model is reliant on your website

Common Pitfalls

TL:DR It’s recommended that you spend anywhere from $1000-$5000+ for a website if you have an established business model. You also shouldn’t spend more than $100 per month for hosting or management. (this excludes and marketing budget that you may have). If you are being charged over $100/month for your website and getting little to nothing in return contact us and we can save you lots of money in the long run.

The price of your website depends on many things, the size or complexity of your website, integration with third-party systems, and the technologies used. For most small business owners, their budget will always be an important factor when choosing anything for their company. Let’s look at how much you should spend on your first website.

You’re just starting out

What is your main objective with a website? Is it to convert potential buyers into customers, retain existing customers or just show off some of your work? Depending on your answer to this question will tell you how much you should spend on your new website. Our first recommendation is to start small if you are a brand-new business with zero customers you should be spending $0-$50 on a website, we would recommend that you use any of the simple website builders such as Wix, Weebly, GoDaddy, or Squarespace. Most of these services have a free plan and for businesses that are just starting out this is a great solution.

You have a few customers and want something better

Ok now you have your first website online and you have acquired a few customers and you have an extra $1000-$5000 to spend on a website. What do you do to upgrade your site? There are two ways to go about doing this.

The first route is to find a freelancer, this is an induvial who doesn’t work for a company and makes websites alone. The upside of picking a freelancer is that you will probably get a bit more bang for your buck however since it’s only one person the support for your website will be slow and if they choose to move to a different career path you might be left high and dry.

Your second option is to pick a web design/marketing agency (like Excl Networks). The advantages of choosing this path is you will get much better support and the developers tend to be more experienced and specialized. Also, most companies will have a lot more opportunities for expansion, perhaps today you only need a website but lots of development/marketing companies (including us) offer a variety of services from ad-campaigns to phone systems.

You need custom features and real developers.

Let’s say your idea is the next big thing and your entire business model is built around your website. Your best option is to hire an application development company and let them handle all of the development. This usually starts at $10,000 and can go as high as a million or even more.

Common Pitfalls

Most people fall into the second tier with roughly $1000-$5000 to make a new website so here are some common pitfalls that you need to be aware of.

• No initial cost but high monthly fees: this is becoming more and more common within this industry and can leave you paying more and more for no additional work. If you are the type of person to “set it and forget it” paying a high monthly fee just for hosting is probably a bad idea because over time you will be paying thousands of dollars for a site that you could have bought for $2000. Our recommendation is if you are not paying for any marketing services your monthly cost for hosting should be under $100/month depending on your user base and how often you call to have updates made to your site.
• Not owning your website or getting a premade template: a lot of web development agencies don’t allow you to own the content on your website or they just give you a premade design which costs them <$100 to set up for you. If you are paying more than $1000 for a website, make sure that your website does not look generic and you keep the rights to the design and source code.
• Letting your agency buy your domain for you: Here at Excl Networks we will never keep your domain or website hostage however this is not true for the rest of the industry. I have seen countless times where people are being charged $500 a month and they try and switch providers, but their existing company is holding their website hostage and it takes months to get back.

Here’s the takeaway. If you just starting out you should spend very little money on your website; anywhere from $0-$100. If you have an established business model you should be looking to spend $1000-$5000 with <$100/month. Finally, if your business is centered around your website and you need custom features you should be looking to spend well over $10,000