In South Africa a brochure website runs R12,000 to R35,000. A WooCommerce store starts at R35,000, a Shopify store at R45,000, and a fully custom build is quoted on scope. Those are our prices. The range is wide because it tracks scope rather than page count, and scope is decided by you.
What a website actually costs
These are our build prices, published rather than hidden, on the theory that nobody enjoys the dance where you ask what something costs and get asked about your budget instead.
| What you are building | Price | Roughly who it suits |
|---|---|---|
| Brochure site, no shop | R12,000 – R35,000 | Services, professional practices, anyone selling by enquiry |
| WooCommerce store | from R35,000 | Most SA retailers, and anything with unusual product rules |
| Shopify store | from R45,000 | Standard catalogues where you would rather not maintain anything |
| Fully custom build | Quoted on scope | Anything the platforms genuinely cannot do |
The brochure range alone spans nearly three times from bottom to top, which tells you most of what you need to know: the thing being priced is not really the website. It is the amount of deciding, writing, designing and building that has to happen before there is one.
Why is the range so wide?
Because a five-page site where the client has their copy written, their photography shot and their mind made up is a fundamentally different job from a five-page site where none of that is true.
Page count is the thing people instinctively ask about, and it is close to the least useful predictor of cost. A single page with a booking system, a payment step and three integrations costs considerably more than twelve pages of well-organised text.
- Is the content written? Copy is the single most common reason a project stalls. If we are writing it, that is time, and time is the price.
- Do photographs exist? Stock imagery is free-ish and looks it. Real photography costs money and is almost always worth it.
- How much is bespoke? A well-chosen template, properly adapted, is a legitimate answer. Designing every section from nothing is a different budget.
- What has to connect to what? Accounting software, stock systems, a CRM, a booking engine. Each integration is its own small project.
- How many people must approve it? Not a line item, but genuinely one of the better predictors of how long a build takes.
What is not included in the build price?
The build is a one-off. A website is not, and the running costs are where budgets quietly come apart about four months in.
| Ongoing cost | Roughly |
|---|---|
| Domain name | A few hundred rand a year |
| Hosting | From well under R200 a month, and you get what you pay for |
| Maintenance and security | Our WordPress Care plans start at R499 a month |
| Payment gateway fees | A percentage of every sale, if you are selling |
| Content and changes | Either your time or ours |
None of these are optional in practice. A site with no maintenance is not saving you money, it is deferring a larger bill and gambling that the bill arrives at a convenient moment. It does not.
Is a R3,000 website worth it?
Sometimes, genuinely. If you need a presence so that people who already know your name can find your phone number, a cheap template site does that job and there is no shame in it.
What it will not do is compete. It will not rank, because nobody wrote it with search in mind. It will not convert particularly well, because conversion is a design discipline rather than an accident. And it will usually be built on something you cannot easily change or move, which is how a R3,000 saving becomes a R20,000 rebuild two years later.
The question is not whether cheap websites work. It is whether the website is meant to be a business card or a salesperson, because those are different products at different prices and a lot of disappointment comes from buying the first while expecting the second.
What makes a quote go up, and what brings it down?
If you want to influence the number before you ask for it, these are the levers that actually move it.
| Pushes the price up | Brings the price down |
|---|---|
| Custom code rather than existing plugins | Choosing the platform that already does what you need |
| Copy and photography that still need producing | Arriving with content written and images shot |
| Integrations with other systems | Launching without them and adding later |
| Bespoke design on every section | A strong template, properly adapted |
| Requirements that appear mid-build | Deciding everything up front, in writing |
That last row matters more than the rest combined. A requirement raised during planning is a line in a quote. The same requirement raised in week six is a rebuild, a renegotiation and a conversation nobody looks forward to.
See why quotes for the same brief land so far apart if you are holding three numbers that do not resemble each other.
What should you actually budget?
For a professional services business that needs to be found and trusted: R20,000 to R35,000 for the build, plus maintenance. That buys something written properly, structured for search, and built to be changed later.
For a first online store: R35,000 and up, and be honest with yourself about the running costs before you commit. Gateway fees are a percentage of every sale forever, which is a different shape of cost from a build.
For anything genuinely unusual, get it scoped properly before anyone quotes a number. A quote given without understanding the requirement is not a quote, it is a guess with a rand sign in front of it.
Common questions
How much does a website cost in South Africa?
A brochure site costs R12,000 to R35,000 with us. A WooCommerce store starts at R35,000, Shopify at R45,000, and fully custom builds are quoted on scope. The range tracks how much has to be decided, written, designed and built, rather than how many pages there are.
Why do agencies hide their prices?
Usually because the honest answer is that it depends, and the range is wide enough to frighten people. We publish ours because we would rather have one useful conversation than five where the budget was never going to work.
What is the cheapest a real website can be done for?
Around R12,000 for something built properly, with content you supply. Below that you are into templates and site builders, which are a legitimate option for a simple presence but are not the same product.
Does a more expensive site rank better on Google?
Not by virtue of price. It ranks better if the money bought content, structure, speed and internal linking. It is entirely possible to spend a great deal and rank for nothing, if none of the spend went on the things search engines weigh.
What is the ongoing cost after the build?
Domain, hosting, maintenance and, if you sell, payment gateway fees. Our WordPress Care plans start at R499 a month. Skipping maintenance does not save money, it defers a larger bill to a moment of its own choosing.
Want a real number for your project?
Tell us what the site has to do and what you already have. We will give you a figure and the reasoning behind it, which is more useful than a figure on its own.