Insight

Ask what a website or app costs and you will get "it depends" from almost every agency, us included. That answer is true, but it is not particularly useful when you are trying to budget for a real project. Here is what those numbers actually look like, broken down by project type.

Websites:

• Brochure or marketing site ($5K to $20K+): at the bottom of this range, you are generally looking at a template or AI-generated build. These can work for a very small business, but they tend to look generic, because hundreds of other businesses are running the same template. Once you move into custom design and development, you are at $20K and up.
• Content-heavy site ($20K+): blogs, resource hubs, or publications where the CMS is doing real work, structured content types and editorial workflows, not just a handful of static pages.
• E-commerce site ($20K+): product catalog, cart, checkout, payment gateway, and inventory sync. The integrations are what push this above a standard brochure site.
• Web app or customer portal ($30K+): logins, dashboards, user-specific data, and real business logic. This is where "website" pricing starts turning into "app" pricing.
• Complex or enterprise site ($80K+): a large business with many products, technical data sheets, calculators, and integrations with internal systems like an ERP or CRM, sometimes across multiple languages.

Apps:

• MVP or proof of concept app ($2K+): a stripped-down build to test whether an idea is worth building properly, before you commit to the full thing.
• Simple, single-purpose app ($10K+): one core feature, minimal or no backend, built for a single platform.
• Custom business app, both platforms ($30K+): standard functionality, user accounts, a proper backend, built for both iOS and Android. On cross-platform frameworks, the gap with native has mostly closed for standard functionality. Native is still the better choice if you want the very best possible UX.
• E-commerce or marketplace app ($70K+): product catalog, cart, payments, and often two-sided logic for buyers and sellers, or users and providers. The backend and integration load is heavier than a standard business app.
• Complex or enterprise app ($100K+): heavy backend work, integrations with internal systems, complex user roles and permissions, and sometimes offline support or real-time data.

Ongoing costs:

The build price is not the whole picture. Once the site or app is live, there are a few ongoing costs worth budgeting for:

• Hosting ($0 to $400+ a month): this varies a lot depending on traffic and the technology behind it. Most standard business sites and apps sit well under that upper figure. You would only approach $400 a month with unusually high traffic or demand.
• Maintenance and support (roughly 10% of build cost a year): this is not fixed, and it can be $0 for a while, but a site or app you never touch again eventually becomes a problem: security patches lapse, platforms move on, and browsers change. Budgeting around 10% of the build cost per year is a reasonable rule of thumb.
• Domain: genuinely cheap, a minor line item compared to everything else here.
• Content updates: for most builds, this is something you or your team can handle yourselves once the site is live. It is rarely a recurring cost you need to pay an agency for.

These are ranges, not quotes. The number that actually matters is the one built around your specific features, not a generic tier. If you are not sure which of these fits what you are planning, give us a call.

Still have questions? Give us a call, book a quick meeting, or send us a message to understand more without any pushy sales tactics.