"It depends" is the honest answer to this question — and also the most useless one, which is why most web design agencies lead with it instead of a real number. Here's the less comfortable but more useful version: what actually moves the price, and what you should expect to pay for each type of project in the Australian market.
What actually drives the price
Two websites that look similar on the surface can cost very different amounts, because the price isn't really about how many pages you can see — it's about what's happening underneath them.
- Custom design vs. a theme. A well-chosen WordPress theme, configured properly, is a legitimate and cost-effective option for a lot of small businesses. A fully custom design built around your brand from scratch costs more because someone is designing every screen, not adapting one.
- Ecommerce vs. brochure. A site that just needs to explain your business and capture an enquiry is a fundamentally simpler build than one that needs to handle products, stock, shipping rules, tax and payment processing correctly.
- Integrations. Connecting your site to Xero, a booking system, a CRM, or a third-party API is real engineering work, priced separately from the website itself.
- Content and migration. Moving 200 existing blog posts and product listings from an old platform without breaking your search rankings takes real time — it's not a checkbox.
- Ongoing maintenance. A website is not a one-off purchase. Security updates, backups and small changes are either a monthly line item or a risk you're carrying yourself.
Realistic ranges by project type
These are general Australian small-business market ranges, not a quote — every project is priced against its actual scope. Use them to sanity-check whatever number you're given.
- Simple brochure/small business website (5–8 pages, template-based): typically the entry point for a professional, properly built site — the low end of the market, and worth being suspicious of anything dramatically cheaper.
- Custom WordPress website (bespoke design, CMS-managed): a meaningful step up, reflecting real design and development time rather than theme configuration.
- WooCommerce or ecommerce store: priced on product count, payment/shipping complexity and any inventory integration — usually the largest jump from a brochure site.
- Custom web application or portal (Laravel, React, bespoke backend): priced like software development, because that's what it is — scoped project-by-project rather than by a package tier.
If a quote for a fully custom ecommerce store lands far below what a brochure site usually costs, that's not a bargain — it's a sign something is being skipped: security, testing, or a support plan that doesn't exist after launch.
Questions worth asking before you accept a quote
- Is this a fixed price, or will "extra pages" and "extra revisions" show up as surprise line items?
- Who owns the source code and the domain once the project is finished?
- What happens after launch — is there a maintenance plan, or are you on your own the day it goes live?
- How many rounds of revisions are included, and what happens after that?
Why working with a remote team changes the equation, honestly
Overseas delivery genuinely can lower cost — lower overheads translate into a lower price without necessarily lowering quality. But it only works in your favour if the process is still tight: fixed scope, clear milestones, and a team that answers during your business hours, not three days later. That's worth confirming before price becomes the only thing you're comparing.
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