Website costs break down into three categories: initial build, hosting infrastructure, and ongoing maintenance. A basic 5-10 page brochure site with a template theme runs $2,500–$5,000. A custom-designed business site with 15–30 pages, contact forms, and basic SEO costs $5,000–$10,000. E-commerce sites start around $8,000 and can easily reach $15,000–$25,000 for 100+ products with payment processing, inventory management, and shipping integrations. Web applications or platforms with user accounts, databases, and custom functionality often exceed $25,000. Hosting varies widely. Shared hosting costs $10–$30 monthly but often creates performance issues. Managed WordPress hosting runs $30–$100 monthly and handles security patches and backups. VPS or cloud hosting for higher-traffic sites costs $50–$300 monthly. At Ottawa SEO, we typically spec $75–$150 monthly for hosting plus CDN for most business sites. Maintenance is where many clients get surprised. WordPress core, theme, and plugin updates require $100–$300 monthly if you want someone monitoring security, fixing breaks, and keeping backups current. Content updates depend on volume—if you need new pages, product additions, or blog posts managed, budget another $200–$800 monthly depending on frequency. The real cost drivers are custom functionality, content volume, and design revision rounds. A site with Stripe integration, member portals, or API connections to your CRM will double development time. Client-supplied content versus copywriting services changes the budget by $2,000–$5,000. Expecting five design revision rounds instead of two adds 15–20 hours. DIY builders like Wix or Squarespace cost $200–$600 yearly but limit SEO control, page speed optimization, and scalability. They work for very small businesses but create migration headaches later. For businesses serious about organic search, the $5,000–$10,000 range for a custom WordPress build with proper technical SEO foundation pays for itself within 12–18 months through reduced ad spend and better conversion rates. Think in total cost of ownership over three years, not just the build quote. A $6,000 build with $150/month hosting and maintenance is roughly $11,400 over three years; a "cheap" $1,500 build that needs a $5,000 rebuild in year two because it can't rank or convert costs more. When comparing quotes, normalize them to a three-year figure including hosting, maintenance, licenses, and expected content work, and the real differences become obvious. Who you hire changes the number as much as what you build. Freelancers typically run 30-50% below agency pricing for comparable brochure sites, at the cost of bus-factor risk and slower turnaround when they're busy. Agencies cost more but bring process, design and development specialization, and continuity. Offshore builds can be dramatically cheaper up front but frequently arrive with performance and SEO problems that cost more to fix than the savings. DIY builders make sense only when the website is genuinely peripheral to how you get customers. Red flags when reviewing quotes: a price with no itemization, no mention of who owns the site and its content afterward, "SEO included" with no specifics (usually meaning meta tags only), mandatory proprietary hosting you can't leave, and a quote dramatically below the others, which usually signals a template with your logo swapped in. Timeline correlates with cost: a template site takes 2-4 weeks, a custom business site 6-10 weeks, and e-commerce or web applications 3-6 months. If a vendor promises a custom site in one week at a custom price, one of those two words is inaccurate. Finally, ask every vendor what happens after launch: who handles security updates, how content edits are billed, and whether analytics and search tracking are configured as part of the build. Sites launched without measurement in place waste their first six months of data.