"How much for a website?" is the question you'll hear most, and the hardest to answer on the spot. A website can be one page or fifty. It can show a menu, or take orders, send emails and give the owner a private dashboard. If you invent a number each time, you'll undercharge the clients who need the most work, overcharge the ones who need little, and spend hours on custom quotes for people who disappear.
This guide gives you example price ranges, the thinking behind them, and the mistakes to avoid. It won't give you "the right price", because there isn't one. Prices depend on your city, your clients, your experience and what you include.
01Example price ranges
Our course uses three kinds of small-business website. These example ranges show how they relate to each other. They are not market research, and they are not a promise of what you'll earn:
- Starter, "look professional online": a small site showing who they are, what they sell and how to reach them. GHS 1,500 to 3,000, or US$400 to 900 abroad.
- Business, "take orders or bookings online": a site that saves orders or bookings, emails the owner and the customer, and has a private dashboard. GHS 4,000 to 8,000, or US$1,200 to 2,500.
- Premium, "the full system, looked after": more pages, extra features and a few months of care included. GHS 8,000 to 15,000, or US$2,500 to 5,000.
Notice the gap between Starter and Business. A site that takes orders solves a real problem for the owner, and it's worth much more than its page count suggests.
02Sell packages, not custom quotes
A package is a fixed set of work at a fixed price. You decide, once and calmly, what you'll offer at three levels. When someone asks "how much?", you send the same clear sheet, and they choose.
Most people find it easier to choose between three options than to judge one number on its own. Packages also protect you: when a client says "can you just add…", you have a friendly answer, because the sheet already says what's included and what's extra.
Only sell what you can deliver. If you haven't built online payments or a shop with stock levels yet, leave them out until you have.
03Price from your own time, not someone else's number
Don't copy a friend's price. Your price should come from the honest hours a site takes you, what an hour of your skilled work should earn, and a margin for the things that always come up. Beginners usually underestimate the hours by about half.
Our free website price calculator turns your hours and rate into three package prices and three monthly care plans. Then check the result against what designers near you charge, and against what the site is worth to the client.
Price from your own hours and rate, then check it against the market. Never start from a number someone else guessed.
04The mistakes that cost new designers most
- Inventing a number on the spot. Say you'll send your packages in writing, and do it the same day.
- Starting without a deposit. A client who won't pay a fair deposit is telling you something, before it costs you anything.
- Cutting the price for the same work. "Too expensive" rarely means "never". The course teaches how to find out what it does mean, and what to offer instead.
- Putting the client's domain on your card. Their web address is their property, on their own account, paid by them every year.
- Working for free "for exposure". A free client rarely values the work, and you never learn to sell. A lower price for your first two or three projects, in exchange for a testimonial, is fair if you say so openly.
- Forgetting the monthly fee. A one-off project pays you once. A maintenance plan pays every month, and it's what the client's site needs anyway.
Our guide What a website really costs a small business in Ghana explains every part a client pays for, in plain English.
05Learn the full pricing system
Module 14 of the course, Price, Close & Deliver, is the part this guide leaves out: how to build your three packages and add-ons, the one-page package sheet you can send within minutes, a proposal that wins, a plain-language agreement, the deposit and payment process, three monthly care plans and a professional handover. Nothing in it promises you a particular income: it gives you a fair, clear way to price and get paid. Module 0 is free, so you can see how the course teaches first.
This guide comes from Module 14 of the course. The full course is GHS 399 ($40), paid once and yours to keep. Module 0 is free.