How Much Does a Website Cost in Australia?
Straight answer pricing for Australian websites, from a $1,500 one pager to a $200,000 custom build. What each band buys, what you pay every year after launch, and how to tell a fair quote from a padded one.
Most Australian small businesses pay between $3,000 and $12,000 excluding GST for a website that earns its keep. A one page starter site runs $1,200 to $3,000. A five to ten page brochure site sits at $3,500 to $8,000. Mid tier custom marketing sites reach $12,000 to $35,000, and ecommerce generally starts near $8,000.
That range is useless until you know what moves it. So here is the honest version: what each band actually buys, what pushes a quote up, what you keep paying every year after launch, and how to read two proposals that are $10,000 apart without flipping a coin.
We have been quoting Australian websites since 2004. Nobody in this industry publishes real numbers, mostly because vague pricing protects margin. Here they are anyway.
How much does a website cost in Australia?
Use the bands below as your starting point. They reflect what Australian businesses are genuinely paying, not headline offers. Every figure excludes GST, because that is how web work is quoted here, and a 10 per cent surprise at invoice time sours an otherwise good project.
| Type of site | Typical price (ex GST) | What that buys | Build time |
|---|---|---|---|
| DIY builder (Wix, Squarespace) | $0 build, $290 to $700 per year | Your own time, a template, a subscription you cannot leave without rebuilding | A weekend to a month of your evenings |
| One page or starter site | $1,200 to $3,000 | Single scrolling page, enquiry form, mobile responsive, basic on page SEO, your logo and colours applied to a template | 1 to 3 weeks |
| Small business brochure site (5 to 10 pages) | $3,500 to $8,000 | Home, about, three to five service pages, contact, blog set up, Google Business Profile tie in, forms, analytics, light copy editing | 3 to 6 weeks |
| Mid tier custom marketing site (10 to 30 pages) | $12,000 to $35,000 | Original design (not a template), professional copywriting, location or service landing page system, CRM or booking integration, conversion tracking, staging and QA | 8 to 16 weeks |
| Ecommerce (WooCommerce or Shopify) | $8,000 to $40,000+ | Catalogue build, payment and shipping setup, tax and GST config, product data migration, accounting or inventory sync | 6 to 20 weeks |
| Custom web application or client portal | $40,000 to $250,000+ | Logins, permissions, databases, custom business logic, third party APIs, security review, ongoing dev retainer | 4 to 12 months |
The bands overlap for a reason: a ten page site with hard integrations can cost more than a thirty page site that is mostly text. And the cheap end is not automatically bad. A sole trader electrician with a decent one pager, a clean Google Business Profile and a phone that rings will out earn a $30,000 site nobody can find.
A rule we use internally: if your website needs to generate more than about $50,000 a year in trackable work, stop looking at the $2,000 end. Under that, a lean build plus a properly optimised Google Business Profile is usually the smarter allocation of the same money.
What actually drives a website quote up or down?
Page count moves the number far less than most people assume. The three biggest levers are how much of the design is custom, how much logic sits behind the forms, and who is producing the words and images. A twelve page site where the client supplies finished copy can quote lower than a six page site where we have to write everything and integrate a booking system.
These are the factors that show up on nearly every quote we revise:
- Template versus original design. Applying your branding to a proven layout might be $1,500 to $3,000 of the build. Designing screens from scratch, with a designer, revisions and a prototype, adds $5,000 to $15,000 before anyone builds anything.
- Copywriting. Professional web copy runs $150 to $400 per page, or $2,000 to $5,000 for a small business site done properly. It is the most commonly cut line item, and the most common reason a good looking site does not convert.
- Photography. A half day with an Australian commercial photographer is roughly $700 to $1,500, a full day $1,500 to $3,000. Stock photos are free to $80 an image and every competitor has seen them.
- Functionality. Bookings, member logins, quote calculators, multi location pages, payment gateways. Each is real development time, and a decent booking integration is rarely under $1,500.
- Integrations with systems you already run. Pushing enquiries into a CRM, syncing jobs with field service software, connecting invoicing: $800 to $6,000 depending on whether the software has a sane API.
- Migration. Moving 400 pages and mapping redirects so you do not torch your rankings is a genuine job, usually $800 to $4,000.
- Accessibility. Building to WCAG 2.1 AA (often required for government, health and education tenders) adds roughly 15 to 25 per cent to a build. Worth asking about even if you are not tendering.
- Approval layers. One decision maker is fast. A committee of five on a monthly meeting cycle adds weeks and cost, and any agency burned before will price it in.
Deadlines matter too. Compressing a six week job into two means overtime or re-sequencing other clients, so a 20 to 30 per cent rush loading is normal and fair. Say so at the enquiry stage if you have a hard date. Our approach to scoping and pricing a web design project settles these variables before a number is written, which is the only way a quote means anything.
Is a freelancer cheaper than an agency, and what is the catch?
Yes, usually 40 to 60 per cent cheaper on the build. The catch is continuity. A freelancer is one person with a holiday schedule and the option of taking a full time job halfway through your project. An agency costs more per hour because it carries redundancy, and part of what you buy is someone answering when the one person cannot.
| Who builds it | Typical build (ex GST) | Hourly rate | Best fit | Main risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| You, on a DIY builder | $0 plus $290 to $700 per year | Your own time | Testing an idea, a side business, a very simple service offer | It eats 40 to 80 hours you should have spent selling, and it looks like a template because it is one |
| Freelancer | $1,500 to $6,000 | $60 to $130 | Small brochure sites, tight budgets, owners who can project manage | Single point of failure, patchy documentation, slow support when they take on a bigger client |
| Offshore team | $600 to $3,000 | $15 to $45 | Rarely a good fit for an Australian service business | Timezone lag, copy that reads slightly wrong to Australian customers, no recourse if it goes bad |
| Small Australian agency (2 to 15 people) | $4,000 to $25,000 | $120 to $200 | Most small and medium Australian businesses | Quality varies a lot between shops, so check the last three sites they built, not the portfolio highlights |
| Large agency or digital consultancy | $35,000 to $250,000+ | $200 to $350 | National brands, complex ecommerce, regulated industries, multi stakeholder projects | You may be sold by the senior team and delivered by a graduate; account management overhead is real money |
The offshore option is not always the disaster people claim. It is just rarely right for a business whose credibility depends on sounding local. We have rebuilt enough $900 sites at full price to have an opinion on that.
What ongoing costs do people forget to budget for?
The build is a one off. The running cost is forever, and for a typical small business site it lands between $1,200 and $4,000 a year excluding GST. Most bad website experiences start with someone budgeting for the build and nothing else, then being surprised at renewal.
| Item | Typical Australian cost (ex GST) | Can you skip it? |
|---|---|---|
| .com.au domain | $20 to $40 per year | No. Register it in your own name, not the agency’s |
| Shared hosting | $10 to $30 per month | Fine for a small brochure site |
| Managed WordPress hosting | $30 to $150 per month | Worth it once the site produces leads or sales |
| SSL certificate | $0 with Let’s Encrypt, or $80 to $250 per year for a paid certificate | Never skip the certificate; you can usually skip paying for one |
| Plugin and theme licences | $200 to $900 per year (page builder, forms, security, backup, booking) | No, and expired licences are how sites get hacked |
| Maintenance plan (updates, backups, monitoring, small edits) | $50 to $350 per month | You can self manage, but budget the time honestly |
| Email hosting | $4 to $12 per mailbox per month | No, and free ISP addresses look amateur on a quote |
| New content and copy edits | $150 to $400 per page as needed | Yes, if someone in house can write |
| Photography refresh | $700 to $3,000 every two or three years | Yes, but new photos lift a site more than a redesign does |
| SEO or content marketing | $800 to $4,000 per month | Yes, and plenty of businesses should for the first year |
Maintenance is the line people argue about. An unmaintained WordPress site is not a saving, it is deferred cost with a risk premium: plugin conflicts, a PHP version bump, an expired licence, a contact form quietly sending spam. The repair is usually $600 to $2,500 and it lands in the week you are busiest. More breakdowns sit in our costs and pricing guides.
Should you pay upfront or take a monthly website deal?
Pay in stages, and treat monthly bundled deals with open eyes. The standard Australian arrangement is 50 per cent deposit and 50 per cent on launch, or a three way split at kickoff, design sign off and go live. Anyone asking 100 per cent upfront on a $10,000 build is asking you to carry all the risk.
Monthly bundles advertise a website for $99 to $399 a month with hosting, maintenance and support included. The cash flow suits a new business. Just do the arithmetic first. At $199 a month over 36 months you have committed $7,164 excluding GST for a site that sells outright at $4,500, plus roughly $1,500 of hosting and maintenance over the same period. That is about a $1,100 premium for spreading the cost, which is fair enough. The problem is rarely the price. It is the exit.
Before signing any monthly deal, get written answers to five questions:
- What is the minimum term, and what does it cost to leave in month 14?
- Do you own the site outright at the end of the term, or are you renting it forever?
- Is the domain registered in your business name with your ABN, and do you have the registry key?
- Can the site be exported and moved to another host as a standard WordPress install, or is it on a proprietary platform you cannot take with you?
- What happens to your site if you stop paying? Suspension is normal, but hostage taking is not.
We do not use lock-in contracts, and that is a discipline rather than a slogan: if a client can leave at 30 days notice, we have to keep earning the fee. Any confident provider can offer the same. A 48 month term with an exit fee equal to the remaining balance is a finance product wearing a web design costume.
Check this before you sign anything: who is listed as the registrant on your .com.au domain. If the agency’s name is there instead of yours, you do not control your own web address, and that single detail has cost Australian businesses more grief than every pricing dispute combined.
How do you compare two quotes that are $10,000 apart?
Normalise them before you judge them. Nine times out of ten the gap is scope, not margin: one includes copywriting, photography, migration and three months of post launch support, the other includes a template and your text pasted in. Put both on one page line by line and the difference usually explains itself in ten minutes.
Ask both providers the same seven questions and compare the answers rather than the totals:
- Who writes the copy, and how many pages of it are included?
- Is the design original for us, or a customised template? Will we see it before build starts?
- How many rounds of revisions are included, and what does an extra round cost?
- What happens to our existing URLs and rankings? Is a redirect map included?
- What is included after launch, for how long, and what is the hourly rate afterwards?
- What are the annual running costs in dollars, listed out?
- Who owns the site, the domain, the hosting account and the licences on day one?
If the dearer quote answers all seven clearly and the cheap one is vague on four, the gap is not $10,000 of profit. It is $10,000 of work that will be done by them, done by you, or not done at all. If both answer well and the numbers still differ, ask the higher one directly what the extra buys. See how we break a build into itemised web design deliverables so a comparison is possible at all.
What are the red flags in a website proposal?
Most bad proposals share the same handful of tells. None of them are subtle once you know to look.
- A single lump sum with no line items. If scope is not itemised there is nothing to hold anyone to, and every variation becomes an argument.
- Guaranteed first page rankings, or a promised traffic number. Nobody controls Google’s results, the ACCC takes a dim view of guarantees that cannot be substantiated, and an agency making one is telling you how it handles the truth.
- No mention of ongoing costs at all. Every site has them. A proposal that hides them is either inexperienced or setting up a surprise.
- Long lock-in with an aggressive exit clause, particularly on a platform you cannot export.
- Portfolio links that are dead, or all built four years ago. Ask for three sites launched in the last twelve months and phone one of those clients.
- An unrealistic timeline. Custom design and copywriting across ten pages in seven days means corners cut, or a template already built for someone else.
- No named point of contact. Ask who you deal with weekly, not who is selling.
- Payment terms that are 100 per cent upfront, or milestone payments with no defined milestone.
We broke two of those rules ourselves years ago, learned it the hard way and rewrote our templates. Everyone in this trade has a version of that story, and the ones worth hiring will tell you theirs.
So what should you actually budget?
For a typical Australian service business (a trade, a clinic, a consultancy, a small professional firm) budget $6,000 to $10,000 excluding GST for the build and $1,800 to $3,600 a year to run it properly. If cash is tight, spend $3,500 on a solid five page site, put the rest into copy and photos, and upgrade in year two once the site has proven it brings work in.
What we would not do is spend $25,000 on a beautiful site and nothing on getting anyone to see it. That mistake costs more than any band above, and it is the one we get called in to fix most often.
Common questions
Is a $500 website ever worth it?
Occasionally, for a sole trader who needs a credible address and nothing more. At that price you are buying a template with your logo dropped in, no strategy, no copywriting and usually no support. If it gets you off a free social page and onto your own domain, it beats nothing. Just treat it as a placeholder with a twelve month life, not an asset, and keep the domain in your own name.
How long does a small business website take to build in Australia?
Three to six weeks for a five to ten page site, assuming you get content back to your builder promptly. Client delays are the single biggest cause of overrun; projects that stall almost always stall waiting for copy, photos or a decision on a page. Bigger custom sites run eight to sixteen weeks, and ecommerce with product data migration can stretch to twenty.
Do web design prices include GST?
Usually not. Australian agencies quote business to business prices excluding GST, then add 10 per cent on the invoice. A $6,000 quote becomes $6,600 payable. If you are GST registered you claim it back, so the ex GST figure is your real cost. If you are not registered, budget the full inc GST amount. Always check which basis a quote uses before comparing two of them.
Who owns the website when it is finished?
You should, and it should say so in writing. Ownership means the domain registered to your business, the hosting account in your name or transferable, admin access to the site, and the files exportable. Some providers retain ownership on monthly plans, which is legal but needs to be disclosed. Ask the question before you pay a deposit, not when you want to leave.
Is WordPress cheaper than Squarespace or Shopify overall?
Cheaper to run, usually dearer to build. A WordPress site costs $3,500 to $8,000 to build and maybe $600 to $2,000 a year in hosting and licences. Squarespace is near zero to build if you do it yourself and around $500 a year, but you are renting the platform. For ecommerce, Shopify’s monthly fee plus transaction costs can exceed WooCommerce hosting once revenue climbs.
How much should I expect to pay for changes after launch?
Australian agency hourly rates for small edits sit between $120 and $200 excluding GST, often billed in 15 or 30 minute increments. A maintenance plan at $80 to $250 a month typically bundles a set amount of edit time, which works out cheaper if you change things monthly. If you barely touch the site, pay ad hoc and skip the retainer.
Want a quote you can actually read?
Tell us what your business needs and we will scope it properly, with every deliverable and every ongoing cost written down in the same document. No lock-in contracts, no surprises at renewal.