What Does a Company Website Cost?
Most company websites do not fail because they look wrong. They fail because nobody looks after them afterwards: plugins six months out of date, a certificate expiring into a browser warning, a feature request the platform will not allow. When the same person builds it and keeps it running, those seams never become the part nobody owns.
What can actually be built
There are two routes. A content-led site you intend to update yourself is less work in WordPress. Anything needing accounts, payments, back-office workflow, or a connection to a system you already run gets written as a custom application in Django. Neither is tied to a hosting platform; the server environment is built from the operating system up.
Check yourself
- Brochure and content sites: layout design, front-end build, responsive behaviour, basic SEO setup and a page-by-page proofread before launch.
- Custom systems: accounts and permissions, admin back office, reporting, payment and shipping integrations, external interfaces.
- Chat bots and notification flows: bookings, lookups and push messages, the features that actually get used in day-to-day operations.
- Taking over an existing site: inventory what is there first and confirm the source code and database are obtainable, then talk about a rebuild or a migration.
- Server environment: operating system, web server, database, certificates, scheduled jobs and firewall rules, all configured directly.
The practical difference of not being on a platform is this: what you install, what background services you run, how you schedule work, none of it needs the platform's permission first. The cost is that somebody has to look after that machine, which is exactly why the managed service exists.
How projects are quoted
There is no price list for web development, because two things both called a company website can differ tenfold. Scope gets settled first, then you get a written quote listing pages, features, deliverables and timeline. Nothing is estimated verbally.
Check yourself
- What moves the price: page count, whether there are custom features, whether external systems need integrating, and whether the design starts from nothing or adapts a template.
- A 50 percent deposit on agreement, the balance on acceptance. Instalments can be discussed.
- The quote lists what is not included, for instance copywriting, photography, font and stock image licensing, and payment gateway applications.
- Revision rounds and their scope are agreed at quoting time, so the work does not turn into an open-ended loop.
- Work is invoiced as individual professional-practice income under Taiwanese tax rules. Your company handles withholding and receives a signed service-fee record as its expense document. If you are billing from outside Taiwan, this is worth raising early so the paperwork suits your side.
What managed hosting delivers
Launch is not the finish line. Managed hosting bundles the work that has to keep happening but that nobody remembers to do, billed monthly, with the scope and response times written into the contract.
Check yourself
- Managed WordPress: core, theme and plugin updates with compatibility tested first, twice-monthly off-site backups, uptime monitoring and alerting, performance tuning and certificate upkeep. From NT$3,000 a month.
- Managed server: system updates, security patching, uptime monitoring and twice-monthly off-site backups at the whole-machine level. Fully managed including the host, or operations only on a host you own. From NT$5,000 a month.
- Finding and patching the way in after an incident is in scope. Incident response while it is happening is not: that needs people on call, and this is a studio.
- Ownership of the host and the domain stays with you, and so does the billing. The operator gets a dedicated account, never the master one.
Handover and exit
Every arrangement ends eventually, and that is worth settling at the start rather than at the end. On termination you get every site file, the database, the backups and the configuration documentation, in formats you can use anywhere, not something that only opens on my side.
Check yourself
- What you get: a file archive, a database export, configuration documentation, and an asset inventory.
- The inventory covers host specification and provider, domain registrar and expiry, certificate source, plugin licences, and what the scheduled jobs do. You should hold a copy of that document at all times, not only at the end.
- What you do on the final day comes as a checklist: disable the dedicated account, change the master password, revoke keys, and confirm the contact address is a company mailbox.
How the interface design works
Design and implementation are done by the same person, which removes one handover. What derails most projects is not that the design looks bad. It is that the design can be drawn but not built, or that what gets built differs noticeably from the file. Designing with the build in mind from the wireframe onwards means that problem does not arise.
Check yourself
- Settle what each page is for, who reads it and what they should do next, before any layout gets drawn.
- Confirm the information order and the flow in wireframes, where changes are cheapest. Visual design starts only after that.
- Layout, type scale, colour and the light and dark themes are decided once, so later pages follow rules instead of drifting.
- Mobile first. Small-business sites usually see more traffic on phones than on desktops, so the small screen gets made right first.
- Basic accessibility along the way: text contrast, keyboard operation, alternative text on images.
With no existing brand identity, this can start from choosing colour and type. With one, it extends what you have rather than rebuilding it for the sake of it.
Interface design is priced per layout, from NT$4,000 each. A layout means one page structure, not one page. A home page, an interior page, a listing page and an article page are four layouts; further pages reusing a structure with different content are not charged again. A small-business site usually lands somewhere between four and six layouts, and the count is itemised in the quote.
So how does a site with many pages get charged? Applying a layout to each page, placing the content, and checking every page for line breaks and mobile behaviour is build work, covered by the project quote for development rather than given away. A twenty-page site built on five layouts therefore carries a design fee for five layouts, while the build fee reflects twenty pages of work. The two appear as separate lines on the quote.
What to settle before outsourcing
The range for a company website is enormous, because a website can mean a one-page brochure or a system with accounts and payments. Both development tracks are quoted per project: scope first, then a written quote with pages, features, deliverables and timeline. Managed hosting is the part with a fixed monthly figure you can see up front.
Rebuilding an existing site is priced differently from starting fresh. If the source code and the database are obtainable, the content moves and the cost sits in redoing the layout and the features. If they are not, it is a rewrite, and that has to be said plainly. So the first step in evaluating a rebuild is finding out what you actually hold.
Check yourself
- What drives a custom development quote: page count, how many custom features, whether external systems need integrating, and whether design starts from nothing or adapts a template.
- The quote states what is excluded. Copywriting, photography, font and stock licensing and payment gateway applications are the usual omissions.
- Ask how revision rounds and their scope are agreed. Without that written down, back and forth consumes both sides' time.
- Ask who owns what afterwards. Source code, database, domain and hosting accounts should all be in your name.
- The most common way a custom project goes wrong is requirements that never converge. Before commissioning, separate must-have from nice-to-have in writing.
- Hiring an engineer directly rather than an agency changes the point of contact and the scale. On a project that is not large, talking to the person doing the work usually costs less in communication.
Pricing
| Item | From |
|---|---|
WordPress Sites Responsive design that adapts to desktop, tablet and phone | Project quote |
Custom Systems Membership, database and admin back office | Project quote |
UI / UX Design Wireframe through to build, designed and coded by the same person | NT$4,000from / layout |
Managed Server Full-host care for small businesses with no IT staff | NT$5,000from / mo |
Managed WordPress Core, theme and plugin updates, tested for compatibility first | NT$3,000from / mo |
Real quotes move with scope and complexity, and the basis is written out on the quote itself.
What this service does not cover
Settling the scope now beats discovering it does not fit after the work is commissioned.
- No design-file-only projects. A design is worth something when it can ship, and handing over a Figma file for someone else to interpret leaves both sides unhappy.
- No template setup on hosted commerce platforms. If you are opening a store on a platform of that kind, the vendor or one of its partners is better value.
- No advertising, social media management or video production.
- No projects without a decision-maker. Somebody has to be able to settle a question, or the back and forth eats both sides' time.
- Capacity is limited. Ask about the schedule for anything urgent, and if it does not fit I will say so directly.
Common questions
- What does a company website cost?
- The range is wide, and depends on page count, whether there are custom features, and whether the design starts from nothing or adapts a template. A purely informational brochure site and a system with accounts and payments can differ by a factor of ten. In practice scope gets discussed first, then you get a written quote listing pages, features, deliverables and timeline. Nothing is estimated verbally.
- We already have a site. Can you take over maintaining it?
- Usually, but what you hold has to be confirmed first. Taking over starts with an inventory: whether the source code and database are obtainable, whose name the host and domain are in, whether backups exist, which plugins and licences are in play. If the original provider will not release the material, what can be done is limited, and I will say so before either of us commits.
- WordPress or a custom system?
- For a content-led site you intend to update yourself, WordPress is less work. For accounts, permissions, reporting, payment workflows or integration with a system you already run, a custom build is easier to maintain, because it does not depend on a stack of plugins holding each other up. The recommendation follows the workflow you actually need to run, not the size of the project.
- Do we have to buy managed hosting after the build?
- No. If you have someone who will keep things updated, backed up and monitored, doing it yourself is entirely reasonable, and the tasks get written up as a checklist for you. Managed hosting solves the problem of work everyone knows is needed but nobody remembers to do, which mainly affects companies with no dedicated IT staff.
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