Insights / Websites

How much a corporate website really costs

Budgets run from roughly $15,000 to well over $100,000. The spread comes from a handful of decisions, and most of them are made before anyone writes code.

4 min read · KYH Systems

Ask three agencies what a corporate website costs and you can get three answers that are tens of thousands of dollars apart. Realistic budgets run from roughly $15,000 to well over $100,000, and the gap is not padding. It comes from a small number of decisions about how the site is designed, what it connects to, how it is secured and how it is looked after once it is live.

The four things that move the number

Architecture and design: a ready-made template, or a design built around your users.
Integrations: whether the site talks to your CRM, ERP or payment systems.
Security and compliance: the data-protection obligations the site has to meet.
Migration and ownership: what happens to your existing content, and who runs the site afterwards.

Architecture and design

Pre-built CMS templates cost less but give you little room to move. A custom design adds wireframing, testing of the journeys your visitors actually take, and bespoke front-end work. A site that serves several departments, each with its own pages and audiences, adds design hours on top of that.

Integrations and security

A brochure site stands alone. A corporate one usually does not: it feeds a CRM, reads from an ERP or takes payments. Each connection is engineering work that has to be built and tested. Data-protection rules such as CCPA and GDPR then add requirements of their own, including encryption, role-based authentication and regular vulnerability audits.

Migration, and the cost of ownership

Launch is only part of the bill. If you already have a site, its pages and media need to be mapped carefully to the new one, or you end up with broken links and lost search visibility. After launch there is hosting, security patching and content updates. Budget for these over a five-year life, not just the build.

Three typical tiers

Tier	What you get	Indicative range
Standard template build	Pre-configured CMS theme, stock imagery, limited plugins, around four pages	$5,000 – $15,000
Custom corporate portal	Bespoke UI/UX, CRM integrations, responsive layouts across devices	$20,000 – $60,000
Enterprise web platform	Advanced API middleware, rigorous GDPR compliance, high-availability architecture	$75,000 – $150,000+

These ranges are indicative. A fixed quote needs a scoped brief, and the fastest way to get one is to describe the problem the site has to solve rather than the pages you think it needs.

Questions people ask

What is the main factor in the price?

How much of the site is custom: the design and architecture, and the number of systems it has to integrate with.

Why do custom builds cost more than templates?

Because the time goes into design and engineering rather than configuration: wireframes, journey testing and bespoke front-end work.

Is maintenance included in the first quote?

Usually not. Hosting, patching and content updates are normally a separate retainer, so ask for them to be priced alongside the build.

How does security compliance affect cost?

Encryption, role-based authentication and regular audits all add engineering and testing time, and the stricter the regime, the more of it there is.

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