How to compare website build and repair quotes

The short answer

Compare the work before comparing the number. A build from approved agency designs, a Shopify storefront and an inspection of a broken application are different purchases. Wilde Digital’s published USD rates below illustrate those boundaries; your quote should identify which job is included before you judge its price.

Those are one studio's published rates for a described scope — they are not an industry average, a survey result, or a claim about what anyone else charges. Quotes elsewhere will differ, sometimes enormously, and the rest of this guide is about how to tell why.

If a quote you are holding is far cheaper or far more expensive than another for the same brief, the useful question is never "who is right". It is "what is each of them actually agreeing to do".

What you are actually paying for

A website quote bundles six separable things. Suppliers differ in which ones they include silently, which they exclude silently, and which they never mention.

1. Decisions. What pages exist, what each one has to achieve, what the inquiry path is. This is the part that determines whether the site works, and the part most often skipped.
2. Words. Someone has to write every page. The quote should state who supplies the copy, when it is due and how revisions are handled.
3. Design. Type, color, spacing, imagery — applied as a system rather than page by page.
4. Build. Turning that into working, responsive, accessible pages that survive a real phone and a keyboard.
5. Plumbing. Forms that reliably deliver, analytics that record something true, search foundations, redirects for URLs that change.
6. Handover. Access, documentation, and the ability to leave. Its absence costs nothing today and a great deal later.

Compare the included work rather than assuming that a lower or higher price tells you what will be delivered. An exclusion is manageable when both sides know about it before agreeing to the project.

The six things that actually move the price

• Page count and page types. Ten pages of the same type is a small job. Four page types — home, service, case study, guide — is a bigger one, because each needs its own design and rules.
• Who writes the copy. Writing from a scoping call and your review costs more than styling text you supply, and it is normally what makes the site work.
• Transactions. Anything taking money, booking time or holding stock adds integration, edge cases and testing.
• Migration. Moving 200 existing pages with their URLs and redirects is a project in itself, separate from designing anything.
• Integrations. CRM, quoting tools, calendars, payment providers, accounting. Each is another system that can change under you.
• Approval process. One decision-maker is fast. A committee with three rounds of comments is a different, longer project — and honest suppliers price it.

Rebuild or repair? A test you can run today

Separate content problems from functional failures and maintenance risks before agreeing to a rebuild. Work through these checks to identify what actually needs attention.

1. Open your home page. Can a buyer identify what you sell, who it is for and the next step? If not, review the content before assuming the entire site needs replacement.
2. Find your own price information. If there is none, that is content, not code.
3. Submit your own inquiry form. Did anything arrive? Did you get a confirmation? Is there a record anywhere other than an inbox? If it silently failed, that is a plumbing repair.
4. Load the site on your phone on mobile data. Note slow pages, overlapping controls or sideways scrolling. Inspect the cause before choosing a repair or replacement.
5. Try to edit a phone number yourself. If you cannot get in, or nobody has the access, that is an ownership problem and often the real reason to rebuild.
6. Check the platform and its supported versions. Unpatched dependencies or abandoned software need a maintenance and security assessment, not an automatic cosmetic rebuild.

Use the findings to define the smallest workable scope. A content correction and a broken form are different jobs from replacing an unsupported platform. For a stalled application, an AI project rescue inspection ($1,500 USD per agreed inspection) establishes the problem before separately agreed repairs from $3,500 USD. It is not a generic form-repair package.

Platform choice, and what it does to cost

Choose the platform around the editing and transaction requirements, not around a supplier’s favorite stack. An agency’s content site, a Shopify store and an application with persistent user data need different handover and verification plans. The quote should describe those requirements before naming a framework or assuming a replacement.

The implementation example is useful evidence of the work involved, not a claim that every project should use the same platform.

Reading a quote: eleven questions

Ask every supplier the same eleven questions. The differences in the answers explain the differences in the numbers.

1. Exactly how many pages, and which ones?
2. Who writes the copy — and how many revisions are included?
3. What is explicitly excluded?
4. What happens to my existing URLs, and who writes the redirects?
5. How is the inquiry form delivered, and how would I know if it silently stopped working?
6. What do I own at the end — code, content, domain, hosting, analytics?
7. What are the ongoing costs, and are any of them mandatory?
8. What is the payment schedule, and what happens if the project stalls on my side?
9. Who does the work, and what happens if they are unavailable?
10. What is the timeline, and what is the most likely cause of delay?
11. If I leave in a year, what do I take with me and what breaks?

Include the inquiry path in the acceptance check. A form can appear to submit while failing to save or deliver the request. Test the stored record and visible confirmation rather than relying on the button changing state.

Where the money most often gets wasted

• A rebuild that was really a copy problem. New paint, same silence.
• Design with no words yet. Approving a layout full of placeholder text guarantees a second round once the real content does not fit.
• Paying for near-duplicate pages. Pages that repeat one offer with a different place name do not establish a distinct buyer purpose. Consolidate around the service, buyer and problem instead.
• Unmeasured everything. No baseline before the project means no honest way to tell afterwards whether it worked. Agree what will be counted first.
• Silently broken forms. Months of inquiries that never arrived, discovered by accident. Test yours today.
• Rented ownership. Discovering at renewal that you cannot take the site, the domain or the content with you.