a straight answer
A small-business website in New Zealand runs about $900 to $4,000 built once, or $95 to $350 a month on a subscription with little or nothing up front. Agencies start around $5,000. Put a booking system, a login or a roster behind it and it’s a different job again, from about $4,500.
Almost none of that gap is design. It’s the five things below, and they decide your number before anyone quotes you.
what actually moves the number
A site people read is a different job from a site people book on, which is a different job again from a site your staff log into. Most of the price gap between a $900 website and a $9,000 one is not design. It is how much of your business the thing has to actually do.
If the answer is never, buy it once and own it. If the answer is prices in spring, staff in summer and a new service in autumn, then a one-off build is the expensive option: you'll either pay by the hour every time or you'll stop asking, and a site nobody changes is a site that stops being true.
This is where most website projects actually stall. A build quote that assumes you'll supply finished copy and photography is not a complete price. It is a price plus two jobs you haven't done. Ask what's included; if it isn't, add $650 for a shoot day and a fortnight of your own evenings.
Cheap builds are cheap partly because the answer is nobody. Ask who is watching for downtime, who renews the certificate, who patches it, and how you reach them. If there isn't a name, budget for the day you find out there isn't one, usually the day a customer tells you the form has been broken for a month.
Ask before you sign, not after. Who owns the brand, the copy and the photographs? Can you take the site with you? Ours: brand, copy and photos are yours from handover; the site you can buy outright for six months of your rate, or pay once up front from $3.9k and own it on day one.
who sells websites here, and what they charge
You're starting out, you have more time than money, and the site's job is to exist so people can check you're real.
the catch It looks like the template, because it is the template. And the weekend you spend on it isn't free, it just isn't invoiced.
You know exactly what you want, you can write your own words, and you're happy owning what happens next.
the catch One-off means one-off. Changes are billed by the hour, so you stop asking for them, and availability is the risk, because freelancers get busy and move on.
You have a marketing budget, several stakeholders, and a site that has to do more than one job for more than one audience.
the catch The person who pitched you isn't the person building it, and the scope is the contract, so changing your mind is a variation.
You want it built properly, kept alive and changed as the business changes, without a four-figure cheque up front.
the catch You're on a minimum term and the site usually lives on their hosting. Ask what leaving costs before you join, not after. And at the cheapest end, check what 'designed' means.
what people ask
and where we sit
Retrofit is the fourth one, a subscription studio in Christchurch, at the upper end of that range, doing the work a template can’t. Nothing to pay up front on either website plan: $149 a month at the bottom, $299 in the middle, and no GST on either because we aren’t registered for it.
If the job is a booking system or a staff tool rather than a website, the build starts at $4.5k and it’s $349 a month. Every figure is on the pricing page rather than behind a quote.
Half an hour, no charge. Tell us the job and we'll say which of the four you want, even when it isn't us.
