“How much does a website cost?” has no single-number answer. A landing page on a website builder runs $500–1,000. A corporate website for a mid-sized company: $10,000–25,000. An online store with integrations starts at around $35,000. A custom web app with customer accounts and analytics can climb past $100,000–170,000.
Below you'll find concrete figures for each type of website, the factors that drive the budget, a comparison of approaches (website builder, CMS, custom development) and the hidden costs contractors would rather not bring up. Prices are current as of early 2026.
Website prices by type
A quick summary. These are mid-sized studio prices: not a freelancer's and not a top agency's.
(1–5 pages)
(10–50 pages)
(catalog, payments, shipping)
Now let's go through each type.
Landing page (single-page website)
Cost: $1,500–6,500. Timeline: 1–3 weeks. A landing page is 1–5 screens with one goal: turn a visitor into a lead. It's the right format for promoting a specific product, service or event.
What drives the price: the number of screens (page length), custom design vs a template, animations and interactive elements, CRM and analytics integration. A simple landing page on Wix or Squarespace: $500–1,500. A landing page with custom design and animations: $3,500–6,500.
Corporate website
Cost: $4,000–25,000. Timeline: 3–8 weeks. This is the company's online office: home page, services, portfolio, team, contacts, blog. 10–50 separate pages.
The low end ($4,000–8,500) means a template design, a CMS such as WordPress, basic SEO and a responsive layout. The high end ($17,000–25,000) means custom design, a framework build (Next.js, Nuxt), a customer account area and complex integrations.
Online store
Cost: $10,000–100,000. Timeline: 2–4 months. Catalog, filters, cart, payments, shipping, customer accounts, an admin panel for managing products. And that's just the basic set.
A simple store with 100–500 products on an off-the-shelf platform: $10,000–20,000. A store with custom filters, integration with your accounting or ERP system, marketplaces (Amazon, eBay) and a loyalty program: $35,000–65,000. A marketplace with seller accounts, moderation and complex logistics: from $85,000.
Web app (SPA / PWA)
Cost: $17,000–170,000+. Timeline: 2–6 months. This isn't a “website” in the usual sense. It's a full application that runs in the browser: customer accounts, dashboards, a CRM, an ERP, a SaaS product. It works like a desktop app but opens from a link.
Find out what your website will cost: request an estimate and we'll prepare a quote within 2 business days.
What drives the cost: 8 factors
CMS vs custom development: which to choose
This is one of the decisions that shapes the budget most. Let's look at three approaches.
Website builders (Wix, Squarespace)
Cost: $500–2,500. Timeline: 3–10 days. Good for landing pages, simple promo sites and testing hypotheses.
Pros: fast, cheap, no developer needed. Cons: limited functionality, slow loading (3–5 seconds), platform dependence (the site and its data belong to the service), SEO problems as you grow.
A website builder is a good way to test an idea. But if the site makes money for the business (leads, sales), within 6–12 months you'll run into its limits. Set aside a budget for a “proper” build within the next year.
CMS and e-commerce platforms (WordPress, Shopify, Magento)
Cost: $3,500–20,000. Timeline: 2–6 weeks. Good for corporate websites, blogs and small online stores (up to 5,000 products).
Pros: a big community, thousands of plugins, developers are easy to find, and you can manage content yourself. Cons: vulnerabilities (WordPress is hackers' #1 target), slow loading once you add many plugins, dependence on updates, hard to customize without a developer.
WordPress holds 60% of the global CMS market. It's ideal for content sites and blogs. For an online store there's WooCommerce, but past 5,000 products it starts to slow down.
Shopify is a go-to platform for small and mid-sized online stores. It's hosted, so there are no servers to manage, and its app store covers payments, shipping and sync with accounting systems. The subscription starts at around $39 a month, plus paid apps. The downside: you rent the platform, and any logic that doesn't fit its model is slow and expensive to build.
Custom development (frameworks)
Cost: $10,000–170,000. Timeline: 1–6 months. Good for complex projects, online stores with non-standard logic, SaaS products and portals.
Pros: full control over the code and architecture, top performance, unlimited customization, strong security. Cons: more expensive upfront, and you need a qualified team to maintain it.
Typical stacks in 2026:
Next.js (React) leads for SEO-friendly websites: server-side rendering, static generation, excellent performance. It fits corporate websites, blogs and stores. This is the stack we use to build web apps.
Nuxt (Vue) is the Vue counterpart of Next.js. A great choice if your team works with Vue.
Laravel (PHP) is a reliable backend for complex projects, often used as the API behind a React or Vue front end.
Don't pick a technology for its own sake. WordPress covers 80% of what a corporate website needs. You need a framework when the job goes beyond a standard CMS: complex logic, high load, non-standard integrations.
Hidden costs nobody mentions
Development is only the beginning. Here are the costs contractors leave out of the initial quote. Not out of malice: these things just aren't “their area”.
Hosting and domain
Domain: roughly $10–60 a year, depending on the zone (a .com sits at the cheap end, niche zones like .io cost more). Hosting: from a few dollars a month for shared hosting to several hundred dollars a month for a VPS or dedicated server. An online store with 50,000+ products and 10,000+ visitors a day needs a server at roughly $100–250 a month at minimum.
SSL certificate
A free certificate (Let's Encrypt) is enough for 90% of websites. A commercial Extended Validation (EV) certificate costs roughly $100–1,000 a year. It's recommended for online stores and financial services where trust matters more.
Content and copywriting
A beautiful website without content doesn't sell. Copy for 15–20 pages, SEO articles for promotion (paid per article), photos and video: all in, content can cost about as much as the development itself.
Support and updates
A website isn't a book you write once and forget. There are security updates, bug fixes, adjustments for new browsers, improvements based on analytics. Basic support: $300–1,000 a month. Active support with ongoing development: $1,000–2,500 a month.
SEO and advertising
A website without promotion is a business card nobody sees. SEO services: $1,000–5,000 a month. Paid search (Google Ads): an ad budget from $1,500 a month plus $500–1,000 a month for campaign management. The first SEO results show up in 3–6 months.
Budgeting rule: for support and promotion in the first year, set aside an amount equal to the development cost. Built a site for $15,000? Plan another $15,000 for content, SEO and support. Otherwise the money spent on development goes to waste.
How to save without losing quality
Our approach: corporate websites from $3,200
At March Code we build on Next.js + TypeScript + Tailwind CSS. It's not the cheapest approach upfront, but it pays off over time: the site loads in 0.5–1.5 seconds (instead of 3–5 on WordPress), scales easily and doesn't need workarounds for every change.
What the base price includes:
Analysis and planning: we work through the business task and define the site structure and page priorities.
UX/UI design: desktop and mobile mockups, 2 rounds of revisions.
Development: front end, logic, integrations, an admin panel for managing content.
SEO: meta tags, Schema.org markup, sitemap, robots.txt, Core Web Vitals.
Testing: manual and automated, cross-browser, mobile devices.
Launch and handover: deployment to the production server, an admin panel guide, 30 days of warranty support.
Read more about our approach on the web app development page. If what you need is a mobile product, see our breakdown of mobile app costs.
Comparison: a website on a CMS vs a framework
To make it concrete, here's how the two compare on the key parameters for a typical corporate website (15–25 pages, a blog, forms, CRM integration).
WordPress: development $3,500–8,500, 2–4 weeks, load time 2–4 s, support $300–1,000 a month. Security needs constant updates (plugins are the main weak spot).
Next.js (custom): development $7,000–20,000, 3–6 weeks, load time 0.5–1.5 s, support $300–1,000 a month. Security is high: no plugin holes, and SSR shrinks the attack surface.
With a budget under $5,000, go with WordPress. With $7,000 or more and plans to scale, choose a framework. If you need deep integration with your accounting or ERP system (QuickBooks, NetSuite, SAP Business One), pick a platform with a ready-made connector or go custom and build against the ERP's API.
FAQ
Can I get a website for $1,000?
Yes, but it will be a landing page on a website builder (Wix, Squarespace) with a template design. That's fine for testing a hypothesis or a short-term promo. It's not fine for a business that plans to win customers through its website month after month. Builders lose on load speed (3–5 seconds vs 1–2 for a proper site), SEO and flexibility. In 6–12 months you'll have to rebuild, and the $1,000 you put in is gone.
How long does it take to build a website?
Landing page: 1–2 weeks. Corporate website: 3–6 weeks. Online store: 2–4 months. Web app: 2–6 months. That's from signing the contract to launch. Before the start there's analysis and planning (1–2 weeks), and after launch, content and testing. Realistically, getting from “we've decided to build a website” to “the website is live and bringing in leads” takes at least 2 months for a corporate site.
Which costs more, a website or a mobile app?
A mobile app costs 2–5x more. A Next.js website for a mid-sized business: $7,000–20,000. A mobile app of similar complexity: $17,000–65,000. The reasons: two platforms (iOS and Android), a demanding App Store and Google Play release process, push notifications, updates. More in our article “How Much Does a Mobile App Cost in 2026”.
Do I need an SEO specialist while the website is being built?
Yes, if you plan to get organic traffic from search engines. An SEO specialist at the development stage helps you design the structure correctly (URLs, page hierarchy), set up meta tags and structured data, optimize load speed and avoid common mistakes (duplicate content, wrong canonical tags). SEO support during development costs $1,000–2,500. That's cheaper than rebuilding the site structure after launch.
Is WordPress still worth it in 2026?
For content sites and blogs, yes: WordPress is still the best fit, with a huge ecosystem, a low barrier to entry and thousands of themes. For online stores with 1,000+ products and complex logic, no: WooCommerce will start to slow down. For projects with high security requirements, no: WordPress consistently tops the hacking statistics (30%+ of all hacked websites worldwide). For long-term projects with growth ambitions, start with a framework right away.
What does website support include, and how much does it cost?
Basic support ($300–700 a month): CMS and plugin updates, backups, uptime monitoring, small edits (text, images). Extended support ($1,000–2,500 a month): SEO, analytics, A/B tests, new pages, feature improvements, integrations. Without support a website rots: vulnerabilities stay open, content goes stale, conversion drops. After a year without support, it's easier to build a new site than to fix the old one.
How do I check a contractor's quality before signing?
Five checks: 1) portfolio: open 3–5 sites from it and test their speed in PageSpeed Insights (you want 80+), 2) code: ask for access to one project's repository and show it to your technical person, 3) process: ask about stages, timelines, who will be on the team and how often you'll see demos, 4) contract: fixed price or T&M, what's included and what isn't, guarantees, 5) references: call 1–2 clients from the portfolio and ask what working with them was really like.
