The short answer
A simple business website in South Africa costs somewhere between R3 000 and R12 000 once off, or R350 to R500 a month on a plan that includes hosting and maintenance.
That is a wide range, and the reason is simple: “a website” describes anything from a single page with your number on it to a store handling five hundred products. Here is what the market actually charges.
| What you are buying | Typical price |
|---|---|
| One-page website | ± R3 800 |
| Five-page business website | ± R6 600 |
| Basic online store | ± R8 400 |
| Larger custom store | R20 000+ |
| Monthly plan, hosting and maintenance included | ± R400 / month |
| Hourly rate for changes | ± R500 / hour |
Averages from published pricing across 56 South African web design companies. Individual quotes vary widely around these figures.
Location moves these numbers. Pretoria and Durban generally sit at the lower end, while Johannesburg and Cape Town run noticeably higher for comparable work. If you are in Pretoria, you are buying in the cheaper half of the country — which is good news, and worth knowing before you accept a Sandton quote.
What actually changes the price
How many pages
The single biggest factor. A one-page site tells people who you are and how to reach you. A five-page site gives each service its own page — which matters, because a page about roof repairs can rank on Google for roof repairs, and a single mixed page usually cannot.
What it has to do
A page that displays information is straightforward. A page that takes bookings, processes card payments, calculates delivery or logs customers in is a different job. Every one of those adds cost, so only buy the ones that will earn their keep.
Who writes it
Most quotes assume you supply the words and pictures. If you want the agency to write your service pages and source images, expect that to be a line item. It is usually worth paying for — badly written pages are the most common reason a good-looking site brings in nothing.
Who is building it
A freelancer, a small local agency and a large firm will quote very differently for the same brief. Higher is not automatically better, and cheapest is rarely cheapest in the end. What matters more is whether they will still answer the phone in eight months.
The costs nobody mentions
The build price is the part everyone discusses. These are the ones that surprise people in month two.
| Item | What it is for | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Domain | Your address, like yourbusiness.co.za. Renewed yearly. | R120–R200 / year |
| Hosting | Server space that keeps the site online. Every site has it. | ± R107 / month |
| Maintenance | Updates, backups, security. Optional but sensible. | R350–R1 500 / month |
| Changes | New prices, new services, new photos. | ± R500 / hour |
Ask this early: is hosting included in what I am paying, or billed separately? Both are normal. Not knowing which is how people end up with an unexpected debit order — or a site that goes offline because nobody was paying for it.
Monthly or once off?
This is the decision that matters most, and it is less about price than about what you end up owning.
Paying monthly
You pay one fee, usually R350 to R500, and it covers the build, the hosting, the security and the maintenance. Nothing large to find upfront, and the technical side stops being your problem.
The trade-off is real: you are buying a service, not an asset. Stop paying and the site comes down. Over five years at R450 a month you will have spent R27 000 and you will not own the website at the end.
Paying once off
You pay for the build and the website belongs to your business. Hosting is then billed separately each month. It costs more upfront, but there is an asset at the end of it that you can move to any host you like.
Which one is right?
If cash flow is tight and you mainly need to exist online with a professional presence, monthly is the sensible choice, and there is nothing second-rate about it.
If your website is a serious part of how you get customers, or you want custom functionality, buy it outright. Owning the thing your business depends on is worth the extra upfront.
Why the cheapest quote is often the expensive one
A R1 500 website is not automatically bad. But it usually means one of these:
- A template with your logo dropped in. Fine for some businesses. Just know that is what you bought.
- No content work. You write everything, and if you do not, it launches with placeholder text still on it.
- No support afterwards. The price assumed one delivery and no conversations.
- Costs moved into monthly fees. Cheap to build, expensive to keep.
The expensive version of cheap looks like this: you pay R1 500, it does not bring in enquiries, nobody answers when you ask for changes, and eighteen months later you pay someone properly to rebuild it. You have now paid twice and lost a year and a half of enquiries.
Six questions to ask before you pay anyone
Print these. Ask them of every quote you receive, including mine.
- Is this price fixed, or can it move? If it can move, ask what triggers that.
- Who owns the website when it is done? Any hesitation here is your answer.
- Is the domain registered in my name? A domain held by someone else is the most common way businesses get trapped with a provider they want to leave.
- Is hosting included, or extra? And how much is it.
- What happens if I want to move it later? Ask whether there is a fee, and whether you get the files.
- How do I change the text next year? Either you can do it, or you are paying them each time. Both are fine. Not knowing is not.
Any provider worth using will answer all six without going quiet. If a question gets a vague answer, that is the one to press on.
See how my own pricing works →
Website packages for Pretoria businesses →
Want a written price for your business?
Pretoria based, working with small businesses across South Africa. You will get a written price before anything starts — or an honest no if I am not the right fit.