What is the Cost of Creating a Website in South Africa [2024]?

Quick Overview:

Website maintenance costs south africa

How much does it cost to build a website for a small business?

Typically you can expect to pay anywhere from R500 to R50000 for a website, the cost of a website depends on many factors. Small businesses tend to ask for a simple 5 Page website design, typically including home, about, services or products, and contact pages. The average price depends on the payment method agreed to by you and the website design company. Other website design companies sell monthly website packages which average from R499 per month to R799 per month.

What is a 5-page website price?

The average price for a 5-page website design such as this is R3500 - R7000 paid in once-off fees.

What is the hourly rate for a web developer in South Africa?

The average hourly wage (pay per hour) in South Africa is 170 ZAR. This means that the average Web Developer in South Africa earns approximately 170 ZAR for every worked hour.

What is the average web design price list?

When you look at website design pricelists across South Africa most website design companies offer on average 4 packages adding additional website functionality to each tier. Lower tier websites cost on average R3500 - R7000 while the higher tier websites cost and custom designed website can range from on average R12000 upwards.   

Affordable Website Design Packages.

Let's take a quick look and compare instead of comparing packages directly we chose to compare packages by the package closest to R3000.

Direct Factors That Affect Website Design Prices South Africa

Direct Factors That Affect Website Prices

When clients ask about web design prices it's very often that we get one of the following questions about Website Design Prices in South Africa. A request for a web design price list pdf... What is the cost of a 5-page website? What are our web developer's hourly rates? How much does it cost to build a website for a small business? and of course, can we see your affordable website design packages?  Some clients will also enjoy the use of a website design price calculator. If you are uncertain if your business actually needs a website you can find out here why it does. 

Website design prices in South Africa vary from R1,000 – R50,000+: You can’t figure it out with just a simple question of “How much does it cost to design a website?”  

Ok, let’s get down to business. When building a website (regardless of who is building it) 5 main factors affect the cost:

• Functionality
• Programming Language ( The website Type such as a static HTML Website or a dynamic website.  )
• Design & Content
• Size
• Website Developer Experience 
• Web Developer Type

At New Perspective Design, this is the order of importance. But other designers might think size is more important than design for example.

Functionality

What do you want your website to do? Do you need a simple information website, or do you need to sell products safely & securely online?

The more features and functions you want to add, the more you will pay. Here are some examples of functionalities that are often charged for additionally:

• eCommerce (online shops)
• Event calendars
• Memberships
• Custom calculators (pricing, estimates, quotes)
• Product catalogs
• 3rd Party Software Integrations (like CRM & Email Software)

Developing custom functionalities is costly, and that is why this is the most influential factor when it comes to website prices.

Design & Content

The design and content of your website are essential. We compare it to how you dress and speak.

Would you hire a salesman who speaks poorly or dresses unprofessionally?   

To simplify a complex topic in itself, when it comes to website design you have two options.

Template Website Design

Website templates are pre-styled website designs that are available for purchase for a few dollars (some templates are even free). Other descriptions for this type of website are “off the shelf” or “out of the box”.

Custom Website Designs

A custom website design, as the name suggests is a bespoke design created specifically for your business and brand by a graphic designer or web designer.

You must know which of these options your web designer will be using. Because template websites, compared to custom websites, are much easier and faster to build, therefore you should be getting a lower price.

Website Size

The more pages, categories, or products you have the more your website will cost. Most web developers will include a certain amount of pages in their base website package and anything over that pushes the price up.

You must find out how many pages are included in your web designer’s base package

Knowing what you need, or want, on your website goes a long way when it comes to an accurate quote. If you were to just give us 10 different websites as examples, and say “I like these websites and I would like my own to be similar” it would cost much more than taking a little bit of time writing down what functionality you’d like on your website.

It would be a higher quote because we would have to assume you wanted everything, from every website you gave as an example, on your website. This means you will have a lot of features you weren’t even thinking about, on your website, and you may not have wanted them.

1. Roughly How Many Pages Do You Think You’ll Need to be Designed?

Every web design company can give you a rough price estimate based on how many pages you need to be done.

If the quote is simply based on how many pages you need to be done, it won’t be very accurate. In fact, it will likely be much higher than what you expected since the variables from #1 and #2 weren’t figured out.

This is why we ask people about the purpose and functionality of their new website designs before we ask how many pages they think they’ll need to be done.

Think of it this way, you will need pages such as your home/index, about us, products, contact us, privacy policy, terms of service, blog, etc. Each of these is considered 1 page and each blog post would not be added to the total unless you need someone to write up the content for you in order to add it to your blog.

A lot of websites work well with under 10 pages, but if you aren’t sure how many pages you need, your quote won’t be spot on since there is a variable missing.

Don’t get worried, not knowing how many pages you need is a common problem that we deal with all the time and it’s not the end of the world.

The Content management system or framework that was used in development such as WordPress, Laravel, or Symphony to name a few. 

You see website types can be so diverse.

When you’re thinking of getting a website design done for yourself or your company, you will likely be looking for the best pricing from a reputable website design company or a qualified freelancer.

Programming language costs per hour

The programming language will affect the cost of your website greatly. As a simple example, a static HTML website may be cheaper to purchase as opposed to say a dynamic website written in PHP with a content management system. Hower updates on an HTML website would be more time-consuming and cost more than you may expect.

Below you can see a list of the hourly rates web designers charge for websites based on programming language:

• C++ programmers = R891,99 per Hour
• SQL database developers = R 339 per hour
• Python developers = R 3 354 per hour
• Javascript developers = R 517 per hour
• Php Developers = R 308 per hour

Web Developer Type & location

Where you buy your website from can also affect the price, not only do prices differ from country to country but they also differ from freelancers to web design. You can often find much cheaper website prices abroad however this comes with a risk to the quality and reliability of the website. The same can be said for freelancers, they are cheaper but less accountable than a web design agency. Web design agency websites on average cost more but are on average more reliable of better quality and have a guarantee and backing to them. That's not to say that freelancers or foreign web developers don't do this either. It is however less common.

Payment Options for websites

There are 4 main methods of payment for the website. 

Once off-website payments.

One is a once-off fee usually preceded by a 50% deposit until the website is complete. The advantage of this is you pay once and that's it and in the long run, you will always pay less than say a monthly fee. However, website support is often not given with this type of payment.

Monthly fee of website packages. 

The monthly fee is usually a much lower price, in many cases, you will also always have support for your website and the updates that it requires. However, you will be paying this fee for as many years as your website runs. Web developers and designers can increase the cost which may fall out of your budget and in some cases, updates are not included with these fees but are charged as extras. ( watch out for this one. )

Anual website payments. 

This is a yearly fee and will in most cases include hosting costs for your website. Paying for your website annually upfront also allows for some discounted rates from the web designer. This option is mostly used for websites with hosting and constant update or development work is required.

Hourly rates. 

This is where a web developer or design agency will charge an hourly rate. So if their hourly rate is R150 and they spend 20 hours on your website you would pay R3000. Due to the fact, that's so hard to determine how long a website will take this option is more reserved for additional development work that is out of scope.

A guide to the quote process 

What's the best way to get a quote from a website design company?

Meet with them.

It is important to remember as a business a website is an extension of your business and therefore your purchase of one is an investment in your business. Cheaper websites are not always the best quality and the most expensive websites are not always fairly priced. So how do you know what the cost of a website should be?  

 Whilst we cannot produce an exact quote offhand. A meeting with a website design company or web developer to outline important details ( which we will list in full below ) such as the goal of the website and the functionality it requires should lead to the design company creating a scope for the website design project which will result in a quote. 

Have an Idea of What You Want your website to do and look like. 

It wouldn’t surprise you how often a client comes across our desk asking for a website design, but they aren’t exactly sure what they want or more importantly what the best tools and practices are for achieving certain business goals online via a website. It's always best to develop a wireframe of the website you require.

This will help you & everyone you speak to in the process to understand what your website's main purpose is and subsequently the design and functionality that needs to go with it. Which CMS systems would be best suited etc. Having a website wireframe before you get a web developer or web design company, is likely to get you a more accurate quote or cost for your website design. You can get these designed locally but you will also find that most design companies will also assist you in creating a wireframe.

Questions that help yourself and web design companies establish the cost of a website.  

1. What’s the realistic budget for your website?

Building a website that you can’t afford will be a disaster. Double-check your budget before you spend on premium themes or plugins. We always recommend you keep the costs as low as possible when you’re starting out.

2. Do you need a custom-built website?

Installing a pre-built WordPress theme is the easiest way to roll out a new website. It also helps you save on costs, so you don’t have to hire a Website developer in many cases.

However, if you want to give a unique look and feel to your website, custom functionality, and the very best user experience and conversion ratios then you’ll have to build a custom WordPress theme, either by hiring a web developer or a website design company. Rates charged by website developers in South Africa vary but the median charge per hour for website development is R170 Per hour. 

The average hourly wage (pay per hour) in South Africa is 170 ZAR. This means that the average Web Developer in South Africa earns approximately 170 ZAR for every worked hour.

3. What features will your website need?

When starting, you won’t need all the bells and whistles that you see on other cool websites. Even if you start small, it’s essential to write down the list of features you’ll need down the line to create your website design process. This helps you streamline the entire development process and focus on features that are of high priority. It also helps you minimize the cost as your website grows.

Will you need any of these?

• Service pages
• Product pages
• Online payments
• A Registration and login page
• A Blog on your website
• Newsletter signup
• Social media integration
• Search engine optimization services
• Online marketing services
• Responsive web design, etc.

Know Your Design and Programming Budget

If you know how much you want to spend, don’t be scared to tell a designer when they ask what your budget is. They’re not trying to get the most money out of you as they can, they’re just trying to figure out a plan that will work best within your budget.

For example, if you had R10,000 to spend on a design and wanted something just like Facebook, it probably wouldn’t be the easiest thing to do since there is a mountain of programming that would need to be done. Since the designer knows your budget and has an idea of what you want, they can put together a package that will work for you, but it might not have everything included since you want a clone of Facebook and that would cost much more than R10,000.

They can, however, put together a design and get some custom scripting done for you that would get you on your way to having a unique social network, which would get you on your way to having a finished product down the road.

We regularly ask people what their budgets are because we, just like the example above, are trying to figure out exactly how we can get as much done for you within your budget so you’re as happy as possible.

Some Extras That You Might Need

We all want a website designed for a reasonable price, and that’s exactly what we do! But there are some additional add-ons that you might want to think about before you spend all your money on the design.

If your budget for everything is R3,000 and you spend all of that on your design, you will be upset when you can’t get the hosting you want or the fact you can’t spend any money on marketing to bring in traffic and sales.

This is why we always let people know about the additional charges, that are usually required if you want to start running a website. These extras are:

• Domains and Hosting

Every single website out there runs on a domain, which means you’ll need one as well. You can purchase these through big domain registrars and most of the time you can purchase them when you set up a hosting plan for your website. You’ll need to pay to renew your domain name each year and your hosting can be paid every month or on an annual basis, that’s up to you.

If you don’t know how to do any of this, that’s not a problem at all since we can walk you through the entire process.

• Online Marketing

You can have the best product in service in the world alongside a website design that looks amazing, but without effective advertising, no one will know about it. Unfortunately going live with your website on the Internet doesn’t mean that you can sit back and users will come flocking in. In fact, nobody will know it exists if you do not get out there and promote and market it. There are several marketing strategies available to help you get the word out there, but they cost money. However, there are several ways to get the word out for free. While we at New Perspective Design advise leaving marketing to the professionals there are a few marketing strategies that can be employed by novice business owners and skilled online marketers alike. Below we have compiled a basic list.

Once a website is launched, it needs to be marketed and promoted to attract visitors. This can be done through online advertising, social media marketing, and other tactics and can also present ongoing website costs. It's always important to understand what you are spending with a website design company and your return on investment for that spend. 

Online marketing comes in many forms, such as:

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Search engine optimization: SEO is the process of optimizing a website to rank higher in search engine results. This can be done by optimizing content, building links, and other tactics. SEO can be a significant ongoing cost for a website.

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
• SMM (Social Media Marketing/Management)
• PPC Management (Pay Per Click Marketing/Management)

Each has its own strengths and takes a long time to learn, so we highly recommend working with a credible SEO company if you want to start doing any sort of online marketing.

• Website Content

If you’re writing up all your own content, and even your own blog posts, this isn’t going to cut into your overall budget at all.

But, if you’re not the best writer and you need someone to write up your home/index, sales pages, product pages, blog posts, etc. it would be an additional charge because this takes a bit of time and effort to be done right.

If you want images within the content, they will likely have to be purchased from a stock image company to prevent a lawsuit from unlawfully using images you found online.

Check out our list of royalty-free stock Images and Photographs for Your Website or Blog.

• Website Maintenance

We charge a very low rate of R275 p/hour for website design and content updates, and we’ll always give you a quote before the updates are made so that you know exactly how much it will cost.

5 Website Design Package Pricing Examples 

An Example of website package prices including information about their payment terms and what they include.

Starter Plus Website Package - "For SMEs looking for a solid online start"

• R2999* / Once Off
• Up To 6 Page Web Design
• Service or product pages
• Contact / Enquiry / Booking Forms
• Premium EULA Website License
• Professional Business Website
• Whatsapp/Social Media Integration
• Fully Mobile Responsive
• Basic Search Engine Optimisation
• Extra Traffic with Google My Business Setup
• Indexed on Google Search Engine
• Domain Registration + Hosting*
• 5GB SSD HOSTING*
• Full Technical Support & Lifetime Guarantee

BUSINESS WEBSITE PACKAGE - "Full suite business website"

• R4599* /Once
• Up To 20 Page Web Design
• + 12 Product or service showcase pages
• Contact / Enquiry / Booking Forms
• Industry Related Blog
• Premium EULA Website License
• Full Graphic Design & Image Sourcing
• Whatsapp/Social Media Integration
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Extra Traffic with Google My Business Setup
• 2 Custom Functionalities
• Indexed on Google Search Engine
• Domain Registration + Hosting*
• 10GB SSD Hosting*
• Full Technical Support & Lifetime Guarantee*

Enterprise Website Package - "The last website your business will ever need"

• R5999* /Once Off
• Up To 40 Page Web Design
• + 40 Product or service showcase pages
• Contact / Enquiry / Booking Forms
• Industry-related Blog
• Premium EULA Website License
• Full Graphic Design & Image Sourcing
• Whatsapp / Social Media Integration
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Extra Traffic with Google My Business Setup
• 4 Custom Functionalities
• Indexed on Google Search Engine
• Domain Registration + Hosting*
• 15GB SSD Hosting*
• Full Technical Support & Lifetime Guarantee*

Online Store Medium Website Package - "Perfect for SMEs looking to sell online"

• R3999* Once Off
• Premium EULA Website License
• Online Shopping Cart
• Up To 30 Page Web Design
• + 40 Product Loaded (no limit)
• Orders | Invoices Dashboard
• Auto Invoicing Emails
• Multiple Payment Integrations
• Whatsapp/Social Media Integration
• Indexed on Google Search Engine
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Extra Traffic with Google My Business Setup
• Domain Registration*
• 10GB SSD hosting*
• Domain Registration*
• Full Technical Support & Lifetime Guarantee*

Online Store Pro Website Package - "Compete with the biggest online stores"

• R6499* / Once Off
• Premium EULA Website License
• Online Shopping Cart
• Up To 60 Page Web Design
• 60+ Product Loaded (no limit)
• Orders | Invoices Dashboard
• Auto Invoicing Emails
• Multiple Payment Integrations
• Custom Shipping Functionalities
• User Accounts Functionality
• All Custom Functionalities
• Whatsapp/Social Media Integration
• Indexed on Google Search Engine
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Extra Traffic with Google My Business Setup
• Domain Registration*
• 15Gb SSD Hosting*
• Full Technical Support & Lifetime Guarantee*

Calculate Your Website Price With This Checklist

Below is a quick checklist of what you will need to answer before you can get the most accurate quote possible.

• What is your reasonable deadline?
• Is your deadline a hard stop or can it be extended if needed?
• What is your budget for the website to be designed?
• How many pages will you need to be designed and what functions do they need to have within them?
• Do you need any animation done? If so, what exactly is needed?
• Do you have your own domain and hosting set up already?
• Do you need online marketing for your website?
• Do you need content generation for your website?
• Here is an article: how to tell if your prospective website design company is any good. 

You can use our easy-to-use web design quote builder to build a quote by selecting the features you need for your website.  Website design packages, are also a great way to get a very good idea of the budget you need to set for your website.