Full Breakdown of Website Cost in 2023 (Less than You Expect)

Creating your own website has never been so... easy. All this is thanks to the development of no-code website builders, such as BOWWE. No-code and low-code tools that enable the creation of beautiful and professional websites, even for people who had their last contact with IT in high school.

However, with the prevalence of websites and easier access to tools, did their implementation become less expensive? Or perhaps quite the opposite; more demand means higher prices? How much will you pay for creating a website in 2023? How to make it the cheapest? I have broken down all (even hidden) costs into prime factors. Find out how much you will really pay for a website in 2023! 

On average, people spend around 6 hours online each day. What are they doing during this time? They search for important information, shop, pay bills through banking applications or simply relax while browsing their favorite social media. 6 hours spent on the Internet in one day is a lot of time, considering that there must be enough time for work or study, rest, sleep, and other activities during the day. However, it is worth using these 6 hours ... especially if you run a business.

Your potential customers, partners, "recommended" customers, and everyone interested in learning more about your business will be looking for information on the web. The website will be the first place they will find, so it must give them the best first impression. On its basis, visitors will verify the credibility of your offer.

If you want your business to grow effectively, you need a website. It is a proven way to attract customers, increase turnover and generate sales. Did you know that as many as 73% of consumers trust the information posted on the company's website more than information obtained from other sources? Don't hesitate and use it to your advantage as soon as possible, creating a professional website! Thanks to it, you will immediately increase the trust in your company and lead it to several levels higher.

There are many benefits of having a website, but I will present the most important ones:

1. Access to data about your customers, including contact details, such as telephone or e-mail address. 

2. Possibility of online sales. 

3. Current statistics on people visiting your website and the activities they take on it. 

Even if you do not have your own business, the website can serve you for many other purposes. Maybe you are looking for a job and want to stand out among other candidates by creating a professional online portfolio? Perhaps you want to share your knowledge with others, and the best place for that would be your own blog? Or maybe you are creating a website for an event that is important to you, e.g., a wedding, and you want to put all the photos on it so that all the invited have easy access to it? A website can significantly help you achieve many goals. So think about what you want to accomplish now and how your website will help you do it faster and better!

Before starting (or commissioning) a website, it is worth considering a few key issues. 

Knowing the goals to be achieved by your website, it will be much easier for you to choose:

• how the website is to be made
• website content
• functions that must be included on the website 
• website design.

Plan how many subpages it will have and what is necessary for its proper functioning. Think of it this way - "If I offer accounting services, I need a price list, a contact form on my website ... feedback will also be useful."

Typically, small and medium-sized business websites have up to 7 subpages, including the home page. However, treat it only as a reference point - maybe you will need a larger or smaller number of subpages in your case.

Here, too, the answer to this question has a significant impact on what way of creating a website you should choose. Suppose you are unfamiliar with programming and commission a programmer to create a website in a tool that requires programming, such as WordPress. Consequently, you will not be able to manage your own website on your own, i.e., change its appearance. Therefore, you will be forced to establish permanent cooperation with a specific developer, which may limit you and cost you a lot. By choosing, for example, a website builder, you will be able to freely and fully independently manage the website. 

If you've already done some preliminary research on possible website costs, you know that they are very different. So, where do these price differences come from, which can sometimes be several times greater? 

In the case of a professional agency, the costs depend to the greatest extent on the working time of various professionals and the scope of work included in the company's offer. 

Therefore, the more extensive and more advanced website you want to have, the higher the cost of creating it will be. The average hourly rate for 2023 page creation is approximately $45. Of course, it will differ more or less depending on which agency or freelancer you choose, but the rate provided may give you a first glimpse of how much you can pay for your website.

In the case of website builders, the situation is much easier because, on their pages, you can find a price list, which usually includes several plans along with the available services they contain. In this case, the cost of creating a website in the tool is much easier to estimate. 

Let's start with the most essential issues you will encounter while creating a website. The items listed below are costs that you only pay once. Exceptions may be, for example, complete rebranding or refreshing the page. 

Before you read my website build cost summary, remember these are only estimated costs. Use this as a useful benchmark, and keep in mind that the final price of such an endeavor is influenced by many things: page size, budget, availability, etc. Let's move on to the average cost of a website.

If you outsource your website to a professional company, they should first analyze your industry to know exactly what your website should look like to meet its goal. The costs of analyzing the industry will depend on the time spent on it. Assuming the average hourly wage is $45, the analysis can range from $45 to $270. 

As many as 48% of people say that the website design is a factor No. 1 for them, which determines the credibility of the website. So what must the design be like in order not to scare potential customers away? Professional, modern, industry-specific, and responsive. How much will you pay for such a website design? The average website design cost can be anywhere from $200 to $50,000.

Hosting is an essential part of a properly functioning website. Choosing the wrong hosting is just asking for trouble: slow website, little disk space (so you can't put, e.g., a lot of content, photos, or videos on the website), etc. So make sure you choose a stable hosting that will not negatively affect your website's speed - 47% of users expect the website to load in no less than 2 seconds. What is the cost to host a website? The cost starts at $5 to $200 per month. 

Choosing your website name is very important as people will look for you on it. So make sure that it relates to your brand and the industry in which you are developing. The cost of a website domain starts at $2 to $20 a year.  

A fundamental issue you must not forget is the website's security. Google has officially added an SSL certificate (which has HTTPS pages) to their recommendations, which is the page positioning factor. If you do not take care of this issue, users will not come to your website because they will not consider it safe and trusted, which will eliminate the sense of having it. 

How much does an SSL certificate cost? Typically from $4 to about $50 per year. However, with BOWWE, you will get free SSL when using the Advanced or Professional plan.

The functionalities and extensions needed on your website depending on the purpose of your website. For example, if you want to run a shop, you will need a photo gallery or the option of making payments, which is not necessary in the case of a business card page. 

What is the cost of installing website functionality? By using tools such as WordPress, PrestaShop, or Wix AppMarket, you can pay for some functionalities or extensions in the range of several dozen to even several hundred dollars (once or monthly). At BOWWE, by using the Standard, Advanced and Professional plans, you also gain free access to our numerous applications and great functionalities.

Once you have a website created, your expenses don't end there. So what is included in your website maintenance budget? Website audits, backups, plugin updates, and much more. 

Building a website is like starting a business or building a house - it costs the most in the beginning, then it's much better, and you can enjoy the results, but from time to time, you will incur costs. In the case of a company, you have to pay employees or rent a space to run a business (or some other example), and when you live at home, you pay your electricity or water bills. The same is with the website - you have to remember about the low maintenance costs, which include:

• System updates
• Backups
• Plugins updates

How much is the cost of maintaining the website? This cost can range from $5 to $5,000 per month. At BOWWE, you don't really pay for its maintenance; everything is included in the plan you choose from the price list!

Each website, in order to be as effective as possible, must be properly managed and constantly improved, which involves fixed and additional costs that you should be aware of. 

This is an area in which you can save some money. All you have to do is prepare your own materials. You can use platforms with free materials, such as Unsplash or Canva. However, some people prefer to leave the issue of multimedia to professionals or buy a license to use the materials available on the web (e.g., in iStockPhoto). How much can such a service be? Monthly it will be from $2 to about $250.

Creating content for a website is not easy for three main reasons:

1) Texts should attract recipients' attention and encourage them to do what you care about, e.g., purchase or registration - without it, your website will not achieve your goals!

2) Texts should reflect the character of your brand and emphasize the uniqueness of your offer - otherwise, it will disappear among dozens of other offers, not standing out with anything. 

3) Texts must be optimized for SEO - if your website is on the 5th page on Google, probably no one will click and see it.

For these three reasons, it is best to have a professional copywriter create a copy on your website. How much can you pay for it? Such services are calculated based on, for example, the number of subpages for which you need to create content or the number of words it will contain. You can pay from $25- $25.00 for such a service, depending on the length of the content.

It should be an obligatory element of website costs for everyone. Such tools as, for example, Google Analytics, require interference in the website code to access the website data and its users. For many, access to such statistics is essential to oversee the effectiveness of their business. So what are the costs you incur for connecting this type of tool? The standard is that website contractors offer this for free because it takes a few minutes. Beware of contractors offering you to connect, for example, Google Analytics, for something likeks of $50 - $250.

Without a well-optimized website, it will be impossible to position it high in the search results and make it noticed by potential recipients. Website optimization costs can range from $50 to $2000 per month. 

As I mentioned before, depending on how your website was created, you can manage it to a greater or lesser extent, easier or harder. Website builders offer the greatest freedom and possibilities, in which you can quickly and conveniently add new content to the website and make even progressive changes to it independently.

On the other hand, if your website has been programmed from scratch by a programmer and you do not have the appropriate knowledge, you will simply have to bind your website developer for a longer time to make the necessary corrections on it. How much can it cost? Website monthly costs may vary from $ 20 - $500.        

As you may have noticed, the total cost of creating a website consists of many elements. Most of them are necessary for your website to be of high quality, follow the standards of your industry, and bring you high profits. However, I know that a website for thousands of $ is simply too expensive for some people. So how to reduce its costs?

The best way to reduce the cost of creating a website is to do it yourself. Thanks to this, you will save money instead of paying for various individual specialists. But how to do it without having the appropriate skills? After all, your website must be beautiful and professional; it should not stand out from your competitors. The best solution is to use website builders! They provide everything necessary to create a website (and even offer much more), which you can manage freely without incurring high costs.

Just look at the plans in the BOWWE offer. In one plan, you have everything I mentioned earlier, discussing the individual costs of creating a website. Hosting, SSL, Responsiveness ... all of these add up to the fixed costs of one plan, which you can pay monthly or annually. It's a pretty convenient option, don't you think?

Are you not sure if you can create the website you need? You don't have to worry about it! Website builders are no-code tools, meaning you don't need to have IT knowledge to develop your business with them. What's more - in BOWWE, you can choose from over 200+ templates, which were created based on in-depth analyses of the targeted industries. This means you can create a better and more effective website than your competition!

Create BOWWE account now and realize your dream website vision - quickly, effectively, and for free. And when you find that you are ready to expand your business goals and implement them effectively, switch to a plan that will allow you to develop your business even better!