What does a business website cost? Prices and pitfalls

Three routes to a website

• Build it yourself in a website builder. Often costs SEK 100 to 500 a month plus your own time. Works for a newly started company that mostly needs to exist online.
• Hire a freelancer. A smaller website often costs between SEK 10,000 and 40,000. Quality varies and you depend on one person.
• Hire an agency. A custom website for a smaller company often costs between SEK 20,000 and 100,000, and larger sites with integrations considerably more.

The figures are approximate. They still show that the same order can get very different prices, which is why it is important to know what is included.

What drives the price

1. 1Number of pages and page types. Ten pages with the same layout are cheaper than five pages that all look different.
2. 2Design. A unique design takes longer than an adapted template, but it is what keeps you from looking like the competitor.
3. 3Copy and images. Should the supplier write the copy and produce images, or do you do it yourselves? This is the most common cause of delays.
4. 4Features. Booking, several languages, customer sign in and connections to other systems each have a cost.
5. 5Search engine optimisation and measurement. A technical foundation for Google is often included, but keyword research and follow up are not always.

Running costs after launch

• Domain name, often SEK 100 to 300 a year.
• Operations and hosting, from a few hundred kronor a month depending on the solution.
• Updates, backups and support, either by the hour or through a support agreement.
• Licences for plugins, themes or tools if the website is built on them.

Fixed price or hourly billing?

With hourly billing you pay for the hours used, and the risk is yours. With a fixed price the risk is the supplier's, but it requires the scope to be clearly described in advance. For an ordinary business website a fixed price is almost always preferable, since the scope can be decided before the work starts.

Questions to ask before you sign

• What exactly is included, and what does the rest cost?
• How many revision rounds do we get?
• Can we change copy and images ourselves afterwards?
• Who owns the website and the content if we change supplier?
• What do operations and support cost per month?

Cheapest is not always cheapest

A website that generates no enquiries is expensive whatever it cost. So do not only compare the price but also what the website should lead to, and ask the supplier to show how it will be measured.