Every figure below comes from the same price list the rest of the site reads, so a change to my prices changes this tool in the same commit. Nothing is sent anywhere.
An estimate, not a quote. The quote is fixed, in writing, and usually comes back the next day. If I have misjudged the job, that is on me and the price holds.
Turn this into a real quoteBecause the first question every business owner has is what it costs, and making somebody fill in a form to find out is a poor way to begin. It also filters the wrong way round: a gated price attracts everybody and qualifies nobody, whereas a published one means the enquiries that arrive are from people the numbers already suit. That is worth more to me than a longer list of addresses.
There is a cost to this and it is worth naming. Publishing prices means anybody quoting against me knows exactly what to undercut, and I lose the ability to price a job by how much the client appears able to pay. I think that second one is a feature. Either way the full list is on pricing and there is nothing on it this tool does not use.
Useful whoever you end up hiring. These are the six things that separate a quote at the bottom of a range from one at the top, and most of them are decisions rather than discoveries.
Two firms with eight service pages each can be a fortnight apart in effort, depending on how much of the structure has to be worked out from scratch. A slider cannot see that. A twenty-minute conversation can.
Good photography, a written service list and a clear idea of who you are talking to can take real days out of a build. Having none of those adds them back. The estimate assumes somewhere in the middle.
The estimator will happily price a bespoke site for somebody who would be better served by a builder for a few pounds a month. It has no opinion. I do, and I will say so in the first reply if that is what I think.
The estimate is not a quote and the page says so, but the gap between the two is smaller here than it usually is. The launch tier, the audit and discovery are fixed. Bespoke becomes fixed once we have agreed the page list, which takes one call. Commerce and apps are genuinely scoped, so those get quoted after discovery rather than guessed at now.
If I misjudge a project, that is mine and the price holds. If the scope grows because you want more, I tell you the cost before doing the work rather than after. Terms are 50% to book, 50% on launch, and written terms go out with every quote before you commit to anything. Payment over three or six months is sometimes possible for the build fee, and it is better agreed up front than negotiated later.
To sanity-check the number against the whole market rather than against one developer, I have written up what a website actually costs in the UK and what one costs to run each year, which is the figure most quotes leave out. The full price list with every tier and care plan is on pricing, what the build week by week involves is on website design and build, and the other free tools are listed together.
No, and the gap is smaller than it usually is. Launch, the audit and discovery are fixed prices. Bespoke becomes fixed once we have agreed the page list, which takes one call. Commerce and apps are genuinely scoped, so those get quoted after discovery rather than guessed at by a slider. If I misjudge a project the price holds; if the scope grows because you want more, you hear the cost before I do the work.
Because gating a price attracts everybody and qualifies nobody. Publishing it means the enquiries that arrive are from people the numbers already suit, which is worth more to me than a longer list of addresses. There is a real cost: anyone quoting against me knows exactly what to undercut, and I cannot price a job by how much a client looks able to pay. I think the second one is a feature.
No. It is the build only, which is how the rest of the market quotes and is therefore the comparable figure. Hosting, the domain, licences and any maintenance are separate and they go in your name rather than mine. What a site costs to run each year is a genuinely under-answered question and I have written it up separately.
Then the estimator is the wrong tool and a twenty-minute conversation is the right one. It handles the shapes of work I do often enough to price confidently. Anything with logins, integrations or an unusual data model needs paid discovery first, because a number produced before anyone understands the problem is a number that gets revised upwards later.
Because those are a different product and mostly a legitimate one. A configured theme on a template, done quickly, is genuinely worth a few hundred pounds and suits plenty of businesses. What it is not is a design made for your business by one person who will still answer the phone in year two. I do not do sites under about £1,500, and if that is the budget you should take the cheap option rather than a thin version of mine.
I cannot give you a hit rate, because I have not tracked estimate against final invoice systematically enough to publish a number, and inventing one would be exactly the sort of claim this site exists not to make. What I can say is that it is arithmetic on the published tiers rather than a model with judgement baked in, so it is precise about the tiers and blind to how complicated your business is.
Yes, and that is a perfectly reasonable use of it. Take the number and the breakdown, ring three other developers, and ask them which parts they include. If somebody comes in well under it, ask who owns the design, who owns the hosting account and what happens in year two. Those three answers usually explain the difference.
Real numbers from your device and connection, not a screenshot of a score I chose. Nothing is sent anywhere. The measurement happens in your browser and stays there. If one of these ever reads amber on my own site, you will see it, which is rather the point. I audit these for £650.