Investing in a website vs. buying a car: breaking down the costs

Thinking about a new website? Like buying a car, the price swings wildly with what you actually need — and the first honest thing to say is that if you're shopping purely on price, we're probably not your studio. Here's the breakdown, car-lot style, so you can work out what you're really buying.

The make and model: what type of site

• The economy car (basic brochure site): a few pages, the essentials, gets you from A to B. £500–£5,000.
• The sedan (small business site): custom design, a contact form, maybe light ecommerce. £5,000–£20,000.
• The SUV (ecommerce site): built to haul — product catalogs, payments, real functionality. £10,000–£50,000.
• The luxury sports car (bespoke web app): high-performance, fully custom, one of a kind. £50,000–£250,000+. This is what a $90k website looks like: huly.io.

The optional extras: features

Like leather seats and a sunroof, every feature adds to the bill: ecommerce, a CMS to update content yourself, SEO, custom design and illustration, database integrations, and flawless mobile responsiveness.

Fuel and maintenance: the ongoing costs

A car needs fuel and servicing; a website needs hosting, a domain, regular maintenance and security, and fresh content. Budget for the running, not just the purchase.

Choosing a dealership: who builds it

A freelancer is often cheaper but harder to vet. A traditional agency gives full service at a higher price. Offshore teams can look cost-effective until communication and quality bite. Pick for value and fit, not the sticker price.

Hidden costs to watch

Three quietly wreck budgets: scope creep (piling on features mid-build), poor planning (fuzzy goals up front), and cheap solutions (the lowest bidder you rebuild in a year).

Here's the thing most people miss at the dealership: the cheapest option is rarely the cheapest in the end. A bargain build you replace in a year costs more than doing it right once. We migrated McLean Financial Services to a build that lifted traffic 300%, and built The Merging Path a site that sold out a $90k course — those clients treated their site as an asset, not a line item to trim. If that's how you think about it, here's our custom Webflow website design work.