Ask five studios what a website costs and you will get five versions of it depends. That answer is not wrong, but it is useless to someone trying to work out whether to budget two thousand dollars or twenty. So we will start with our own numbers and then explain what sits behind them.
What we charge
Every website we build is $500 NZD. One page or six, the number does not move. That covers services, menu or project pages, one clear booking or enquiry button, local SEO for your suburb, and Google reviews and Maps wired in.
The price is fixed before anything starts. No hourly billing. If the job is genuinely bigger than that, the new price is agreed in writing before the work happens. Half is invoiced to start, half when the site goes live, in New Zealand dollars with GST included.
Add ons, each at a fixed price
- Online booking connected: $150
- Local SEO set up: $150
- Copywriting: $150
- Menu or gallery build: $100
- Google reviews connected: $50
You add only what you need. A salon that already has a booking tool pays for none of it. You will notice there is no photography line: we work remotely, so the photos are always yours to take, and our phone photo guides show you how to get ones that work.
Why we will not quote you a national average
You will find articles giving a confident average price for a website in New Zealand. Be careful with them. The range being averaged runs from a template someone set up in a weekend to a six figure build for a national retailer, and the mean of that range describes nothing you could actually buy.
We are not going to invent a number to sound authoritative. What we can do is publish ours, which almost nobody in this industry does. If a studio will not tell you their starting price before a meeting, that is itself information.
What changes the number, and what does not
- Page count does not. One page or six, the price is the same $500. That boundary covers what a small business site actually needs.
- Add ons do. Booking, local SEO set up, copywriting, a menu build and Google reviews each have the fixed price above, and you only pay for the ones you add.
- Genuinely bigger jobs do. Online ordering that prices itself as the customer taps, or one site for several locations, is not a $500 job. We say so up front and agree the number in writing before anything starts.
What your content changes is the timeline, not the price. A business with current photos and written service descriptions launches in weeks. One starting from nothing waits on itself, and that gap is where projects stall for months.
The ongoing costs that are not in the quote
The build price is a one off. Running the site is not, and this is the part people are surprised by twelve months later.
- Hosting and business email. Ours are $29 a month. Your domain stays registered in your own name, so it never sits inside anyone's bundle, including ours.
- Your domain renewal, paid straight to the registrar. It is small but it is annual, and it is the one people forget until the site goes dark.
- Booking software, if you use one. Timely, Fresha and the rest are paid to them, not to whoever builds your site. Check the plan before you commit to a flow built around it.
- Changes. Ask how much a text or price change costs after launch, because that is the cost you will actually meet most often.
Five questions before you compare two quotes
- Is this a fixed price or an estimate, and what happens if the job grows?
- Who owns the domain, the content and the site when we are finished?
- What exactly does the monthly cost cover, and what happens if I stop paying it?
- How many rounds of changes are included before it costs extra?
- Will I be able to change my own prices and hours, or do I have to ask you?
You should own your domain and your site regardless of who builds it. If a studio will not put that in writing, you have your answer about them without needing to compare anything else.
Why one flat number
The honest question is why our number sits so far under the quotes you will collect in New Zealand, where a custom build usually starts well past a thousand dollars. The answer is boring: we are a remote studio without an Auckland office to pay for, and we keep the scope tight instead of padding the quote. You should still ask us the five questions above and judge the work in our portfolio, not the price tag.
Flat pricing also changes the conversation. When one page and six pages cost the same, nobody is upsold into pages they do not need. A nail bar with a service list and a booking button still fits on one page, and giving it six would make it slower to use rather than better. A restaurant where the menu, the bookings and the room can each win their own search gets the six. The right size is now purely about your business, and our advice on it has no price attached.