What a tradie website actually costs in New Zealand

If you ring three people about a website you will get three numbers that look nothing like each other. That is not because one of them is ripping you off. It is because "a website" describes at least four different products.

The four things people mean

A freelancer building something custom is selling their time. Expect four figures and several weeks, because somebody is designing your site from a blank page, and that is genuinely what it takes.

An agency is selling their time plus a process - discovery, wireframes, revisions, a project manager. That is where five figures comes from. It is not padding; it is what a team costs. Whether you need a team is a different question.

A do-it-yourself builder is selling you software and leaving the work with you. The subscription looks cheap and often is. What it costs you is your weekends, and the number of half-finished tradie websites on the internet suggests that price is higher than it looks.

A finished design you fill in is selling neither time nor software. The design work is already done and paid for, once, across everybody who uses it. You put your own words and photos into it.

What actually drives the number

Almost none of it is the pages. It is whether a human is designing something new for you, and how many hours that takes.

Everything else - hosting, the certificate, the web address - costs about the same regardless, and it is not much. If a quote is mostly made of those, ask what the rest is for.

What to ask before you sign anything

Ask what happens in month two. Some quotes are for building it and stop there, which leaves you paying somebody else to change a phone number.

Ask who owns the domain. It should be you, in your name, transferable if you leave. If the answer is complicated, that is the answer.

Ask what it costs to change something small. If the reply involves a form and a five-day turnaround, factor that in, because you will want to change something small in the first fortnight. Everybody does.