Ask five agencies what a website costs and you will get five very different answers. That is not always because some are overcharging. Usually they are pricing different projects. This guide explains what actually sets the price so you can compare quotes fairly.

Start with the job the site has to do

A five-page site can cost more to build than a fifty-page site. Page count tells you how much content there is. It does not tell you whether someone has to design a booking flow, connect a CRM, take payments or rebuild a product catalog.

The better opening question is: what should happen when the right person lands on your site? For a Miami service business it might be a qualified phone call. For a distributor it might be a customer finding the right product and asking for a quote. Those are different projects, even if both start with a homepage.

What moves the price

  • What the site must do. A brochure site, a lead-generation site, a booking site and an online store are four different builds.
  • Design depth. A design built on a pre-made theme is quicker than a design system created around your brand.
  • Content. Who writes the words and sources the photos? Copywriting, photography and product data entry are real work.
  • Integrations. Connecting a CRM, payment processor, calendar, inventory system or email platform adds build and testing time.
  • Search and tracking setup. Page titles, structured data, redirects from an old site, analytics and call tracking take care to do properly.
  • Speed and quality bar. Meeting performance targets on real phones takes more than installing a plugin.
  • Timeline. A tight deadline usually means more people on the project at once.

What a proper quote includes

Look for these parts, each described in plain words:

  1. Planning: audience, page structure, user journeys and requirements.
  2. Design: layouts, mobile behavior, graphics and an agreed number of revision rounds.
  3. Development: working pages, a way for your team to edit content, forms and connections to other tools.
  4. Content: who writes, edits, supplies and uploads the words and images.
  5. Tracking: analytics, conversion tracking and call tracking, live on launch day.
  6. Launch: testing, redirects, domain setup and a handover.
  7. After launch: what happens when something breaks or you need a change.

Two proposals can both say "custom website" and include very different amounts of that list. One may cover original design and finished copy. The other may expect you to supply both.

Questions worth asking

  • Who owns the domain, the hosting account and the code when we finish?
  • Is the price fixed, and what would change it?
  • Which parts do you need from us, and by when?
  • What is not included?
  • What does it cost to keep the site secure, backed up and fast after launch?
  • Can I see a site you built, and talk to the owner?

Red flags

  • A price with no description of what is in it.
  • A site that lives only on the agency's account, so leaving means starting over.
  • No mention of tracking, so you cannot tell whether the site is working.
  • A promise of first-page rankings. Nobody can guarantee that.

How we quote

Every TGI proposal has a fixed price, in writing, before any work starts. You own every account, credential and file. We start with a free review of your current site, search visibility and tracking, then send a written plan with the three fixes worth the most money. If a simpler path meets your goal, we will say so.