How Much Does a Website Cost in Australia?

The cost of building a website varies depending on your approach. If you’ve hired a professional web designer to build your website, you’ll pay between $3,000 to $30,000, depending on the size and complexity of your website. If you’re building one yourself using a website builder or a Content Management System (CMS), you’re looking at between $0 and $600, depending on the scope of the project.

If you’re looking to save money (and let’s face it, a lot of businesses are at the moment), then doing it yourself with a website builder is the cheapest option.

However, professional web design isn’t something to be snubbed either. It can cost in the tens of thousands, but what you’ll get for it is a unique website that’s tailored to your specific business needs.

So, which is right for you, and how much does each website building method cost? Read on for a full breakdown of all website-associated costs, plus a bonus outline of hidden costs you might not have considered, like website maintenance costs.

If you want to use a website builder but are unsure which provider to choose, you can check out our side-by-side website builder comparison.

How Much Does it Cost to Build a Website in Australia?

You can expect to spend $0-$600 using a DIY website builder tool, or $3,000-$30,000 for a custom website built by a professional web designer.

The overall cost of your website will vary depending on the following factors:

• Whether you hire a professional, an agency, or use a DIY tool
• The number of webpages you need
• The website’s complexity
• How much multimedia you want to upload
• Whether you need sales and payment features
• The level of security and malware protection you need
• How competitive the website (domain) name is
• How much traffic (flow of visitors) you expect

The reason there’s a much bigger variation in costs when using a web designer compared to using a website builder is that for the former, the size and complexity of your website will greatly impact the amount of time it takes the web designer to create it. Since you’re paying them for their time, this will impact the price.

For DIY website builders, price is determined by the number of features your website has, but time-based labour costs aren’t a factor since you’ll be building the website yourself.

Website Costs by Website Type and Size

For simplicity, we’ve created a comparison table detailing the average cost of different types of websites, broken down by size and complexity, and website builder costs vs web designer costs:

Website builders are priced within stated limits, so it’s much easier to predict running costs on a long-term basis. By contrast, custom web projects are designed specifically to your requirements. On top of that, each professional or agency sets its own rates, which is another reason why there is a wide price bracket.

Bear in mind you’ll need to add on the cost of templates, content (such as copywriting, articles, photos, and videos) plus plug-ins. As a quick reminder, plug-ins are the additional apps that add extra features to your website.

We’ll break down website costs by type of expense in the following section.

Website Builder Costs

DIY website builders operate on monthly subscriptions, and it typically costs between $10 and $600 per month to use the software.

Some website builders also have free plans, but these usually include ads and don’t include a domain, which means the website builder’s name will also appear in your URL. A lot of website builders also offer custom plans – typically $2,000+ per month – for larger businesses that require specialised support for their website.

Wix is our favourite all-around website builder because it offers great business features, like the ability to take bookings via an online calendar. Best of all, the Wix free plan allows you to try out some of its premium features and doesn’t request any payment details.

Ecommerce platform costs

Ecommerce platforms are a type of website builder that are designed specifically for creating an online shop and selling online. Their starting price is usually higher than a standard website builder, with most providers allowing you to start taking payments through your website from $30 per month.

Using our research, we created this summary table of the top online shop website builders:

If you’d like a more detailed comparison of the two closest mid-range online shop tools, read our Wix vs Squarespace guide. Or, for our full list of recommendations, see our ranking of the best ecommerce platforms for small businesses.

Professional Web Design Costs

Hiring a web designer to build a website typically costs $3,000 to $30,000+ depending on the size and complexity of the website.

There are two ways to hire web designers:

1. Freelancers: reachable on websites such as Upwork, Toptal, and PeoplePerHour (don’t discount word-of-mouth)
2. Web design agencies: these are companies that have a staff of web designers, such as AKQA, Straight North, or HigherVisibility

On average, it’ll cost between $50 and $250 per hour to hire a web designer, regardless of whether they’re freelance or agency.

Freelancers used to be slightly cheaper to use than agencies, but nowadays there isn’t much of a price difference between the two because a lot of highly skilled web designers operate as freelancers.

Ongoing Website Costs Explained

Whether you’ve created your website yourself using a website builder or hired a web developer to design one for you, there ongoing costs for keeping your website online and running once it’s been created.

Domain Costs

Registering a domain costs anywhere from $0.50 to $40 per year, although most domains are in the $10-$20 range.

Your domain is the name of your website and appears in the URL. For example, “learningaboutdomains.au.” You have to pay for the rights to use it, sort of like renting out a property, and if you stop paying, someone else can snatch it up.

The cost of a domain typically isn’t included with a website builder subscription, but you can sign up for one at the same time that you sign up for their software. Some website builders let you have a domain for free in your first year.

If you’ve hired a web designer to build you a website, you’ll have to purchase a domain through a third-party domain registrar. Popular registrars include GoDaddy and Namecheap.

Registrars have a search bar, where you can check to see if the domain you want is free, and how much it costs. If your chosen domain isn’t free, you’ll usually be suggested alternatives. You can also reach out to the owner of the domain you want, and try to get them to sell it to you.

SSL security certificate

SSL certificates cost anywhere from $0 to $250 per year. SSL (secure socket layer), is a digital certification that verifies your website’s identity and encrypts connections to your website. This protects website visitors from cyberattacks.

Websites that have an SSL have a URL that starts with “https”, and SSL certificates are often included as part of a website builder package, which is why the starting cost is $0.

If your website was created with a web designer, or your website builder doesn’t automatically include an SSL certificate, you can expect to pay between $10-$250 per year for one.

They can be bought from certificate authorities, which is a trusted organisation licensed to sell SSLs. Well-known providers include GoDaddy, Comodo SSL Store, and DigiCert.

Hosting costs

Hosting a website can cost anywhere from $0 to $250+ per month. Hosting is what allows your website to go live on the internet.

The starting price for hosting is $0, because a lot of website builders don’t charge extra for hosting, it’s a service that’s included in your monthly subscription fee.

However, if you’re using a CMS, such as WordPress, or had a web designer create your website, you’ll need to pay for hosting separately.

There are three main types of hosting:

• Shared: $3-$20 per month, the most affordable option. Your website shares server space with other websites. It’s best for low-traffic websites, used by businesses such as restaurants, handymen, hair salons, or small consultancies.
• VPS: $5-$120 per month, the mid-range option. Your website gets its own space on a server and won’t share RAM or CPU (memory or processing power), and will run more quickly. You can choose between managed or unmanaged, but you should choose managed unless you’re an IT systems administrator. It’s best for a growing ecommerce store or a business with increasing web visitors.
• Dedicated: $100-$250 +, the most expensive option. A whole server just for your website means massive processing power: think huge amounts of memory and lots of technical capability. This is only for large business websites such as ecommerce stores or sites with loads of pictures, videos or email messages. Mega retailers, media streaming sites or popular entertainment booking hubs need this option.

Add-on and plugin costs

If you’re using a website builder or a CMS (Content Management System), you might want to integrate additional software into your site.

These additions, whether they’re called add-ons, plugins, or apps, can be free, but a lot of them come with a price tag. This could either be a monthly or yearly fee or a one-off purchase. Either way, you can expect to pay between $10 and $100 per plugin.

WordPress, for example, is a CMS that’s known for plugins, and it has a library of around 60,000. Some of its most popular plugins are Yoast SEO (which is a Search Engine Optimisation assistant to help your website rank high in search engines), and WP Bakery Page Builder, a WordPress-made plugin that makes editing pages on the platform easier.

Maintenance and running costs

Once your website has been built and is live, chances are you’ll probably still have to spend money maintaining it, unless you’re using a free website builder.

If you’re using a paid website builder, your maintenance costs will only be around $30 to $600 per year, essentially the cost of renewing your subscription, maintaining your domain and SSL certificate, as well as any plugin subscriptions. If you’re doing all the site content updates in-house, the cost will be you or your employees’ time.

If you have a custom website that’s been worked on by web designers, you’ll need to spend around $200-$9,000 per year on updating and improving your website. Costs will vary depending on the scale of work that needs to be done – for example, a full website redesign is work that will take several hours to complete, and so will cost more.

You can find out more about website maintenance costs in our guide.

Hidden Costs of Building and Running a Website

The hidden costs of building a website are essentially easily overlooked expenses, such as content writing, SEO work, and image production.

None of these are strictly necessary and can be done in-house depending on you and your employees’ set of skills, but they’re worth considering.

Copywriting

Depending on how copy-heavy your website is, you might need to hire freelance copywriters or content strategists to produce ads or articles. Rates vary from $75 to $200 per hour, depending on experience.

SEO Work

You might also want to hire an SEO specialist that can help your website rank higher on search engine results pages, and get it seen by more people. This typically costs $1,200 to $3,000+ per month for SEO agencies, but you can also choose to hire freelancers for around $150 per hour for a more low-touch approach.

Graphic Design

If you want to populate your website with unique ads or visuals to convey information, and you don’t have someone in-house who can do this, you’ll need to hire a graphic designer. Graphic designers typically charge between $50 and $200 for an hour’s work.

Photography and Images

You’ll probably need to populate your website with images to make it visually appealing. If free stock-images aren’t available via your website builder, or if you’ve made your website with a web designer, you can expect to pay between $1 and $30 per stock image. If you need to use a lot of images, it can be cheaper to subscribe to a stock image service, which costs between $50 to $200 per month.

If you’re selling products online and want them professionally photographed to display on your website, expect to pay $300 to $500 per hour, depending on how experienced the photographer is.

WordPress Website Costs

WordPress is in its own category since it offers monthly packages, similar to a website builder, and an open-sourced software that’s often used by hired professional web developers to create websites.

Below is a summary of the costs involved with each type:

As you can see, the costs are variable because most of them are based on your particular needs (and budget). While some of the costs are optional (for example, plugins and email), others are not (you have to pay for hosting in some form, and most people prefer to buy their own domain name).

Website Builder vs Web Designer

Here are the main factors to weigh up and decide upon when you’re building your own website or hiring a designer:

When it comes to your time, you’ve got to consider if you’re willing to put in about 5-20 hours setting up your DIY website with a website builder. From then on, you’re looking at 2-30 hours per month for content and usability updates.

A web designer will usually take care of all of that work, so you’ll only spend time checking in over calls and emails.

When it comes to your interest, you’ll need at least some enthusiasm for design, writing, and marketing your business with a website if you’re going to build your own. If you don’t care to spend your talents here, a web designer takes all that creative load off your plate.

Thinking about budget, the cheapest option of all is to build your own website with a free website builder (we’d recommend Wix).

Or, if you’re looking to seriously invest in a custom site that’s more than an online business card, you can expect to pay $3,000-$10,000 to hire a developer to build a small to medium-sized website.

How Long Does It Take to Build a Website?

It should come as no surprise that the answer will again depend on the size and complexity of your desired site as well as the agency you’re working with.

Website builders are likely to be the quickest option – you could build yourself a basic website in just a few hours. Working with a web designer may take anything from a couple of weeks to a few months.

To get a clearer idea of how your project will progress, it helps to have an idea of the steps involved. Check out our guide on how to build a website or watch this video to learn more:

Kieron Woodhouse, head of UX for a major UK tech company, breaks down the web design process.

Questions to Ask Your Web Designer

Communication is the key to making the web design process as streamlined as possible. You need to know exactly what you’re getting from your web designer, and they, in turn, should know exactly what you expect of them. With this in mind, we’ve put together a few questions to ask your designer:

1. Do you arrange buying the domain name and hosting for the site, and is this included in your quote?
2. How easy will it be for me to report on and update my website? If it requires specialist knowledge, will you provide training for myself and my staff?
3. Will there be any ongoing costs for general site maintenance?
4. Will you optimise the website for search engines?
5. Will the site be mobile responsive?
6. If I am unhappy with the finished design of my site, can it be amended and is there a cost associated with this?
7. Will you provide content and imagery for the site, or must I provide it?
8. What is the scope for future development of the website? Is it built to grow quickly?
9. How much will future amendments to the site cost?
10. How is my website protected if something goes wrong?

What to Know When Hiring a Web Developer

The last thing we want is for you to go into a consultation with a web developer without some key advice under your belt. Here are the main points you need to know:

Web development is a service, not a product

You’ll have ongoing costs because a website always needs updating. When first hiring a web developer – and paying for upkeep and maintenance – you’re buying the use of someone’s time and skills. It’s possible you could negotiate to transfer ownership of the website over to you when it’s done being built. However, it makes sense to keep the same web expert on your books to install security patches, and so on.

Support levels vary

You could be quoted $3,000 and $10,000 for the same project. This is because an agency will give you an account manager, and connect you with graphic designers, marketing professionals, and possibly social media services as well. A freelancer will generally work alone to deliver what you need. You need to work out how you will best communicate a website project, and if having a range of marketing professionals at hand is preferable over just one point of contact.

Standards vary from agency to agency

As with any industry, the quality of work will vary from one agency to another. It’s a good idea to have a look at customer reviews and examples of previous work when deciding which agency to go with. Remember, the cheapest option isn’t always the best one – your website is an investment in the growth of your business. It goes beyond a good-looking business card, and can be central to the facilitation of your services.