Why two quotes for the same website differ by a factor of five

They differ because they are not quotes for the same website. One prices a template with your logo and text poured in; the other prices pages designed around what you sell, copy written by a person, and someone answering the phone after launch. The gap collapses once both offers sit on one page list, one content owner and one list of exclusions — and when it does not, one of the two is mispriced, and you hold the document that shows which.

What does a website cover in each quote?

A page is not a unit of work. Six pages can mean six pages of text dropped into someone else's theme, or six pages of layout built around your catalogue, each checked on a phone. It can also mean three pages in two languages: six addresses, two sets of text, a second navigation to test.

Ask for the page list by name — the actual titles, and what each page must achieve for the business. Two quotes for the same six titles are comparable. Two quotes for "a site" are not.

Photography belongs here too. A stock subscription is a download; a photographer is a day, a selection, retouching and an argument about which frames sell the product. One appears as a line item; the other is assumed to be your problem.

Who writes the words?

This is the largest hidden line, and the one that decides whether the project finishes. If the words are yours, the cheaper quote stays cheap on paper and the site sits half-empty for six weeks. If the studio writes them, someone interviews you, reads the old brochures and produces drafts. That is work, and it is priced.

Ask how many revision rounds are included, who writes the Arabic if there is Arabic, and what happens to the timeline when text arrives late. A quote that says "content provided by client" is not dishonest. It is a different project.

Is the design a process or a template with your colours?

A template is a set of decisions already made: where the menu sits, how a product card behaves, what a form looks like when it fails. For a five-page brochure site that is often the right purchase. For a shop with variants, delivery zones and a checkout that must survive a weak connection, those decisions fight yours, and the fight is billed hourly.

A designed site arrives with wireframes, a file you can read before anything is built, states for empty lists and errors, and a stated number of review rounds. Ask for a previous project's design file, and what happens on the fourth round.

What is deliberately not in the price?

Almost every gap between a low quote and a high one is an exclusion, not a rate. Hosting, domain, business mail, maintenance, security updates, backups, analytics, training, entering your existing content, a staging copy, and the translation of pages written after the contract. Each is a real cost, and none disappears because a document left it out.

The useful question is what the first year after launch costs. A build whose maintenance is hourly, on a site with a plugin that updates weekly, can exceed the gap between the quotes within three years. Ask each studio to price twelve months: hosting, updates, a realistic number of small changes.

What does a built site buy that a template does not?

Speed, correct Arabic layout, accessibility, and a content model you can extend without a developer. A good theme delivers some of that. Many do not, and the failures appear where buyers do not look: a form that loses its direction in Arabic, an image that shifts the page as it loads, a heading turned into a picture because the font lacked the glyphs.

Then there is the question of who owns the consequences. With a template, usually nobody. With a build, the studio that wrote the quote.

How do you compare the two offers?

Put both against the same page list and the same twelve-month horizon.

Line in the quote	What it tells you
Page list	Whether both are selling the same site
Copy owner	Who fills the pages, and when
Languages	One edition, or two to maintain
Design rounds	How many attempts before extra cost
Exclusions	The bill that arrives after launch
Handover	Whether you can leave with the site

Where one quote carries a line the other omits, ask for a price on it. Where both omit it, you have found the third quote you need.

Which questions make the cheap quote expensive?

• What happens in month two, when a number changes? A price per change turns a small edit into a decision. Ask for the rate now.
• Who fixes a broken form on a Friday? If the answer is "you", the saving is a subscription to your own time.
• Can I add a page myself? If not, every new page is a purchase, and the site stops growing.
• Whose account holds the domain and the hosting? If both are the studio's, leaving is a negotiation. The domain belongs in your name from day one.
• What happens when the host fails? Ask when a restore was last tested.
• What does the second language cost per year? Two editions double the content work permanently.

In what order should you do this?

1. Write one page: what the site must do, the page list, the languages, and who writes.
2. Send that page to both studios, with a date for questions.
3. Ask each to quote against the list, with exclusions written out.
4. Compare line by line and mark every item one includes and the other does not.
5. Ask both for the first twelve months, not only the launch.
6. Decide on the two-year total, and who you would call in a crisis.

Where this goes wrong

• Comparing totals before comparing scope. The number at the bottom is the last thing to read.
• Choosing the cheap quote because the deadline is real. You pay for copy, photographs and fixes anyway, and the launch slips twice.
• Assuming the expensive quote includes maintenance. It usually does not. The large number is the build; the monthly bill starts afterwards.
• Letting the quote become the specification. A quote prices a described job. If nothing describes it, the gap is settled later, in change requests, at the worst moment.

What this advice does not cover

It does not tell you whether you need a new site, what traffic it will get, or what your legal pages must contain. It says nothing about either studio's skill: a five-fold gap can be an honest difference in scope or a warning, and only the documents separate them. It also assumes both quotes followed the same conversation, which is often not the case.

We build websites and write the quote as a page-by-page list, so it can be put beside another offer without a translation.