How Much Does It Cost to Design a Website? (Cost Breakdown for 2024 and Beyond)

Are you a startup founder, tech executive, brilliant innovator, or serial entrepreneur looking for answers to the question how much does it cost to design a website?

Or do you aim to redesign the website of your business and you’re wondering about the price tag?

If yes, it’s imperative to read through every aspect of this article, as we’ll provide you with information on what a web design costs.

Here’s a summary of web design prices we’ll elucidate on in this article:

• eCommerce site–$25,000 to $40,000
• Corporate web apps–$20,000 to $30,000
• Landing pages–$1,500 to $2,500
• SaaS web apps–$25,000 to $45,000
• Blog websites–$12,000 to $20,000

If you prefer a visual text experience, you can also head straight to the bonus infographic.

Let’s delve into the crux of the article:

What’s the Cost of Website Design?

In a nutshell, the cost of designing a website can start from $3,000 and can go up to $40,000 and over.

The precise cost implication for a web app design depends on a gamut of factors which will be discussed in the subsequent section.

Factors that Affect Web Design Pricing

There is a host of information to consider in determining average website design costs.

Here’s a checklist of some of these factors:

• Type of website
• The complexity of the design
• The location of the web design team
• The type of team involved in development.

Let’s discuss their intricacies and elucidate how price ranges based on each factor:

Cost of Designing Defined by Type of Website

Cost can be priced based on the type of web app you’re interested in designing.

For example, a design firm will charge higher for e-commerce web apps than corporate sites. How so?

Here’s a comparison and how they stack up against each other:

Type 1: Cost of Designing an eCommerce Website

An eCommerce website is a platform where people can purchase and sell digital products, physical goods, and services.

The business meets the client and receives payment for the service or product offered without having physical contact with the buyer.

Typical examples are Amazon, Shopify, Salesforce, Volusion etc.

Ideally, an eCommerce design should enable users to discover items, add items to the cart, and make payments.

The cost of designing an eCommerce website by a professional web design agency ranges from $15,000 – $40,000.

Type 2: Cost of Designing a Corporate Website

A corporate website is designed and created to represent a company, an institution, or an organization and provides its audience with information online.

Target users get to understand the company and can reach out via online forms or through a contact-us section on the site.

Examples of corporate websites are HSBC, KPMG, Daniel Corp, Sparkbit, IWG, etc.

Designs here are simplistic and tailored to encourage page viewers to contact the company for specific tasks.

The site design cost for a corporate website ranges between $20,000 – $30,000.

Type 3: Cost of Designing a Landing Page

This is a single-page platform with monopolistic information that aims to convert traffic and increase conversions.

Usually, they’re part of a website that a person lands after clicking an ad campaign or call-to-action social media post.

An example of a landing page within a website is “how to hire dedicated developers for your startup.” There are also standalone landing pages–a website with just a single page and nothing else. Here’s an example of that: “ApplePlugs.”

Single-page designs are unique from others as they highlight a call to action button.

Designs here highlight the page’s goals and emphasize the brand making the offer.

The cost of custom website design for a landing page is around $1,500 – $2,500.

Type 4: Cost of Designing a SaaS Website

SaaS, also called Software-as-a-Service, are solutions that are hosted in Cloud and are delivered to computers via the internet. Rather than installing the software onto a mobile app, or computer, you’ll simply access it online.

Examples of SaaS websites are HubSpot, Salesforce, Hyper Context, and Buffer.

Its functionality, user interface, and user experience must be optimally considered to design a SaaS platform.

It requires a simplified registration page, a simple onboarding process, streamlined information architecture, and engaging dashboards.

The cost of designing the UI/UX for a custom SaaS website is $25,000 – $45,000.

Type 5: Cost of Designing a Blog Website

A blog is a website that viewers can visit to read about generic content or get information on a subject matter.

Examples of blogs are Ryan Robinson’s blog, Copyblogger 101, and Little Fat Boy.

An essential element for a blog design is readability.

The UI/UX design should have foreground and background colors that contrast sufficiently to make texts readable.

The cost of designing the UI/UX of a custom blog website is $12,000 – $20,000.

Another way custom website design cost is defined is the design’s complexity.

Let’s discuss this briefly.

Cost of Website Design Defined by Complexity of the Design

The complexity of a design depends on several factors, such as the number of pages involved, animation, tools required to design the product, and the number of characters per page.

It can be a basic design with few pages and minimalist characters or a complex website redesign with multiple characters, animations, and a complex UX mapping.

If you don’t know what type your prospective design fits in, below is an explanation of each.

Basic Complexity

A web design of basic complexity has less than 15 user interfaces and few or no animations.

This complexity requires a few experts to integrate and is usually for portfolios, blogs, and landing pages.

Average Complexity

Website designs of average complexity have up to 50 pages of interfaces, multiple 3rd party integrations, and advanced animations.

Examples of web designs of medium complexity are large corporate sites and cloud software products.

Difficult Complexity

Designs of difficult complexity have interactive animations, over 50 pages of interfaces, a complex UX process, multiple-page navigations, and characters.

Examples of websites like these are banking websites, animated web builders, etc.

Another cost-influencing factor to consider is the team location.

Let’s touch on this:

Website Design Cost Defined by the Team Location

The geographical location of your team is another factor that can impact web app design cost.

Living expenses differ from nation to nation–consequently, services cost also differ–even when deliverables are the same.

Take India for example; the cost of web design there is 3x-4x cheaper than in the US.

Here’s a table depicting how web design price differs per location:

From the table above, it’s only logical to conclude that when you hire a designer from India, it’ll give you the best cost-quality design ratio.

This is particularly important for early-stage startups.

Another factor to consider is cost, as determined by the preferred team type.

Let’s also discuss this:

Web Design Cost Defined by The Type of Team

Your team type astronomically affects the cost of custom website design.

For example, hiring three in-house developers to design a product is more expensive than outsourcing to a website design company. Why so?

When you hire developers, you’re legally bound to provide their equipment and convenient work environment and have to pay for unproductive hours.

Let’s help you understand how cost differs from one team type to another.

We’ll assume that you’re designing a complex solution requiring 400 cumulative design hours.

Before settling for a preferred team type, let’s educate you on what they entail:

In-House Design Team

These are a team of experts hired by a company, as its full-time employees, with a mandate to help create, manage, and innovate on its technical goals.

They receive daily instructions from the management team.

Before choosing this employment model, it’s best first to understand its advantages and disadvantages, which are:

Another common hiring model is outsourcing to a local design agency.

Local UI/UX Design Agency

This is a software design company resident in the same location as your startup.

For example, if your organization is based in the US, then a local design agency is one based in the United States of America.

For this article, we’ll group design agencies in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia as one.

Another option to consider for your web design is freelancers.

Let’s educate you on this:

Freelance Designer

These are UX/UI designers that work independently to design mockups, prototypes, and user experience maps.

They are not employees of any organization and only handle projects per contract.

As with other options, they also have their pros and cons, which include:

Another cheap yet effective option to consider is an offshore design agency.

Let’s also educate you on this:

Offshore UI/UX Design Agency

As the name implies, they’re designers situated in a foreign country with experience designing User Interfaces.

This is particularly common with companies in the US and India-based outsourcing providers.

Here are the pros and cons of this option:

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Popular Websites and their Custom Website Design Cost

Below, we combined the cost of designing some reputable websites and the items that make each unique.

Cost of Designing a Website Like Facebook

The cost of designing a website like Facebook is between $10,000 – $15,000.

Characters in Facebook Design

The platform is designed such that its blog posts are placed on the left to draw users straight into the app’s content the moment they hit the app.

Since blue is a generally good color, Facebook claims it adopted blue and white because those two colors are in its design elements as they’re associated with religion, peace, and calmness.

Features Designed into the Facebook App

Facebook’s features are:

Beyond Facebook, another example of custom web design cost we’ll consider is Udemy:

Costs of Designing a Website like Udemy

The cost of designing a website like Udemy is between $5,000 – $10,000.

Udemy is a platform with over 50 million users and over 46,000 instructors.

Some interesting characteristics of this site are:

• Subtle call-to-action icons
• White background
• Interactive cards
• Compelling texts.

Features in Udemy Website

Udemy’s features are:

Another web app we’ll use as a case study is Uber.

Let’s discuss this:

Cost to Design a Website like Uber

It’ll cost you $15,000 to design the Uber website.

Uber has over 93 million users and over 3 million drivers.

This makes the platform the most visited ride-hailing service in the world.

Parts of its success can be attributed to the app’s UI/UX design, which stands out for the following:

• The app uses icons and images for description
• Icons explain the texts
• Simple and easy-to-use User Interface
• It is designed for one-handed use.

Features in Uber

Here are some features designed for that platform that makes it stand out:

You now have a better idea of website design pricing cost per different examples of web apps.

Let’s discuss the steps to costing a web design:

Steps to Determining Custom Website Designing Cost

We follow these steps to cost your web design project:

Step 1: Discovery Phase

The discovery phase is a research stage where we highlight the most desired deliverable and the steps to achieve that.

The extent of time needed to map out a preferred workflow, and deliverable will be considered here.

The discovery phase of a web app design of average complexity entails:

For a more complex web project; the discovery phase may extend to 100-150 hours.

Another step to consider is UX wireframing.

Step 2: UX Design

Another critical factor we consider in costing a web design is the UX design.

This is the process of designing a platform to ensure it’s usable, efficient, enjoyable, and provides relevant experience to its target users.

The aim here is to design an easy-to-use platform.

The time spent with a UX design also differs based on the complexity and the number of features in a solution.

Here’s a table showing UX design activities per hour required:

Step 3: UI Design and Wireframing

The cost here depends on whether it’s a unique UIs, averagely unique UIs, or a single UI design repeated on different web pages.

For a unique screen, you’ll design every web page on the website from scratch.

An average unique page entails designing about half of the page from scratch, while repeating the designs on the other half.

For repeated screens, we’ll design a single user interface, and repeat the design on other pages–only the texts will differ.

This is common with blogs, and portfolio websites.

Here’s how much each type costs for a website of average complexity (20-50 web pages):

Step 4: Additional Components

This step entails inputting extra buttons, icons, pages, and characters into the custom website design, based on the client’s recommendation.

The price you’ll pay on additional characters varies with the type of components you’re requesting for.

Here’s how each additional characters stack up:

Once this cost is known, there’s more.

You’ll also have to figure out the total, as the design phase is just one of the 4 major steps to launching a website.

And for that, you can read this titled: “how much does it cost to develop a website?” It’s very detailed.

It’s also worthy of note that for custom WordPress website development, the design may not have much impact on the development cost due to the use of plugins and themes.

Bonus Infographic

Check out our summary of our detailed guide “Cost to Design a Website” to learn some key points about the costs of designing a website.