How much should you pay for your website?

You’re a new business owner. You know you need a website, but aren’t sure how much of your hard-earned money you should spend on it.

The biggest determining factor of cost is whether you’ll be building this kickass new site yourself, or if you’ll have a professional web designer create it for you. What’s the difference? Thousands of dollars, to begin with. (Yowza.) But as you’ll see below, there are pros and cons to both options.

Going with a pro

There are lots of great reasons to hire a professional to build your website, the greatest of which is not having to build the damn thing yourself. Hiring a pro means not having to think about design and functionality. And it means you’re more likely to get an original design and layout.

Of course, originality comes at a cost.

If you want just the basics — a simple design, security and hosting — you could get away with spending $2,000-$5,000, which is not totally unreasonable. Howevs. There are things you might need (e-commerce capabilities, content management system, responsive web design) that will jack up the cost of your website considerably. We’re talking $20,000+ for your website.

And when it comes time for updates and regular maintenance, that’s all on you, unless you want to pay someone else to handle that stuff, too.

Bottom line: Mo’ website, mo’ money. A website is an investment; one that will, if done right, pay off for you. A professionally designed website will look better, and will spare you the headaches and hassle of creating your own site.

Designing your own site

Designing your own site is a great way to get yourself onto the world wide web before you spend top dollar on a new site. The biggest attraction to creating your own starter site with an online website builder is, of course, cost. It will cost you significantly less to build your own site — up front, at least (more on this in a sec). In fact, many website builders will let you build your site for free.

Build my own site? Girl, you’re trippin’, I hear you thinking. (Yes, I hear your thoughts. FEAR ME.)

Building your own site is much easier than it sounds, though. These days, drag-and-drop website builders allow anyone to easily build his or her own website in just a short while, without having to know anything about coding. Many will also host your site and provide adequate security, as well.

However. With a DIY website builder, you have to choose from a select number of pre-designed templates, which makes creating the site easier, but at the expense of originality and uniqueness.

As for price, you can build your site for free, but keep in mind it may cost you to add certain features, like more security, or e-commerce capabilities, or even email. And, although it’s cheaper to set up the site, you will be paying a monthly fee to host your site on the website builder’s server.

That means, depending on how long your website is up, it could end up costing you more in the long run than if you’d simply paid a professional up front for a site you own outright.

Bottom line: Creating your own site is a great option if you want a simple website without tons of bells and whistles. And it’s tough to beat free/cheap if you don’t have the money to invest in a professionally built site up front.

The takeaway

Ultimately, you have to determine how much money you can spend on your website, and whether or not you can get the features and services you need for that price. If you can afford to pay $2,000-$10,000 up front, a professionally designed site is something you should consider. If you can’t pay that much, create your own site, or get your cousin Bobby, who’s always on his iPhone, to create one for you.

Save some cash: Try Buildcus

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Buldicus is a website builder that won’t cost you an arm and a leg.

If you want to build your own site, take advantage of our 30-day free trial. After 30 days, it’s just $19 a month. If you sign a one-year contract, we’ll even give you two months free.

And if you don’t want to build your own site, try Buildicus Concierge. We’ll build your site for you, and charge you just $1,900 for everything. Design, hosting for a year, maintenance and updates. Everything.