Ask for the price of a website and you usually get one number: the cost to build it. But a site does not stop on launch day. There is what you pay every month, what you pay for every change, and your own time. The number that matters is the full cost of the first year.
What you pay once
- Design and build: it varies widely between a freelancer and an agency, and between a brochure site and a store with a cart and checkout.
- A logo and identity, if you do not have them yet.
- Product photography, or getting the photos ready.
- Entering the products: names, prices, sizes and colours. In a store with a hundred products, that is hours of work.
What you pay every month or year
- The domain name, renewed every year.
- Hosting, the place the site runs on, monthly or yearly.
- A platform subscription if you build on a ready-made platform, usually billed in dollars, plus paid add-ons.
- Payment gateway fees on every transaction, once you take cards.
- Maintenance: updates, backups and fixing what breaks.
The cost the quote leaves out
The biggest cost of many sites never appears on the invoice. A small change after launch is priced as new work. The freelancer gets busy or disappears, and nobody is left to fix the store. A site that is slow on phones loses orders you never see. And your own time adding products and answering messages has a price too.
Three ways, and who each one suits
- A ready-made platform you set up yourself: cheapest at the start if you have the time and patience for the settings, but subscriptions and add-ons pile up.
- A one-time build by a freelancer or agency: you own the files, you pay for every change, and you find hosting and maintenance yourself.
- A monthly subscription that covers the build, hosting, support and changes: a fixed cost you know in advance, and someone who answers you.
How to work it out for your brand
Add the build cost to twelve months of hosting and subscriptions, then estimate how many changes you will need in a year and multiply by the price per change. Compare quotes on that number, not on the build price alone.
For comparison: Rawaq costs ₪399 a month or ₪3,990 a year, with no setup fee. It covers design, build, hosting, support and 10 change requests a month, and the domain is registered in your name. The full terms are published before you start.