Hiring a website designer to build your website greatly depends on the size of the website you require as well as the structure of the website you desire. If your website is simplistic and only requires a few pages without any fancy additions, you will pay much less than a large shopping cart with hundreds of pages for each item they sell, or if you want a robust website that has imported hundreds of articles you have written in the past, includes a comments forum, the ability to sell and track product sales. The more time it takes to build your website results in higher fees.

If you choose to hire someone in Asia or India, your website may cost in the range of $500-$1,500 to start you off, but have many grammatical or technical errors you can’t get fixed because they aren’t bound by U.S. laws and frequently disappear after the initial set up.

American freelancer websites generally range in the $2,000 range. This is usually a college student who is still in school learning about web site design. 

When you hire an agency or skilled Website Designer/Developer within the USA can cost you $10,000 to $30,000 for a basic website, depending on your needs, their skills, and the person or agency you select. Complex websites, custom e-commerce websites, and pages with a lot of custom features cost upwards of $20,000-$100,000. Agencies often outsource to India, but still charge $150+ an hour for their time without disclosing that they are outsourcing the work. Ask questions so you know what you are getting for your money.

In my experience, I have heard of businesses with revenue in the millions and/or hundreds of cart pages pay $25,000 to $50,000 for a website.

CMS websites cost around $200 per web page while template websites cost around $500 per web page and custom websites cost $1000+ per web page. A CMS website is Wordpress and they have no security, are phished dozens of times daily, and frequent updates that can result in critical failures are very common, so read the article about that before you invest in a headache. 

This should give you a solid idea of how much a website costs to design it. This does not include the fees to keep it live online, which we will discuss later in this article.

Because investing in a new website for your business can quickly become costly, it is important to know what you are looking for before you even get started, so you do not end up paying for your mistakes or changes to the scope of the project.

With a clear vision of your website and a complete understanding of how to find the right website creator, you can move forward with a professional that you can trust to create a website you love.