A Bargain Buy Feels Like the Safe Decision
If you’ve ever shopped around for a service website, you know that you often make the decision based on the price of the proposal.
This should be a familiar scenario. You have three website proposal prices: $10k, $20k, and $35k. It’s easy to look at the first one and think: Why would I spend thousands more if they’re all building me a website?
But you have to remember, you’re not just buying a website. You’re buying the research, strategy, messaging, design, technology and expertise that determine whether that website helps your business increase sales and/or lead generation.
83% of small businesses now have a website.1 That makes the ticket to play higher because virtually everyone you’re competing with already has a website. Now, you have to make yours the one they want to visit.
The Price You Pay Isn’t the Real Cost
“If you spend $10,000 on a website that does nothing, you didn’t save money. You spent $10,000 and lost a year.” — Conrad Strabone, Founder & Chief Happiness Officer | e9digital
There’s an important difference between price and cost.
- A $10,000 website that generates business can be inexpensive.
- A $5,000 website that produces nothing can be very expensive.
Its true cost isn’t $5,000. The true cost can also include lost leads, poor conversion, wasted advertising and employee time, and missed sales.
Cheap isn’t necessarily what costs less, because it often equals the opportunities that you missed by offering your potential customers an ineffective website.
Free Can Get Expensive Fast
One of our clients at e9digital learned this the hard way (although it wasn’t their fault). “Mary” worked with e9digital back when she was at XYZ Construction—fake name to protect the parties involved. She knew firsthand what it was like to have a team that listened, researched, and built a website that delivered measurable results.
A year later, she moved into a senior role at ABC Contractors and introduced us to Tom, the company’s new marketing director. His assignment sounded straightforward: build a website that attracts qualified traffic and converts leads into revenue.
But ABC chose another agency after that firm offered to perform discovery for free. According to the guide, one year later:
- 12 months were lost.
- $90,000 was wasted.
- More than $1 million in sales opportunities were missed.
The website didn’t connect with prospects. The marketing generated zero qualified leads. The sales team was even embarrassed to share the website. The supposedly free discovery ended up becoming one of the company’s most expensive business decisions.
They learned a hard lesson: Sometimes the most expensive line item on a proposal is the one marked $0.
A Cheap Website Can Make Expensive Marketing Less Effective
Two agencies can both promise website design, development, SEO, copywriting, or strategy. But that doesn’t mean you’re buying the same product.
The difference is often in the thinking behind those deliverables. A more expensive website is often so because the team puts more time into:
- Research and competitive analysis
- Positioning that improves audience understanding
- User experience and SEO
- Conversion strategy and testing
This is important because you can spend thousands of dollars getting someone to your website, but lose them once they arrive. Even a one-second delay in mobile load time can impact conversions by up to 20%.2
Your advertising doesn’t end when someone clicks on your website. If you’ve paid to acquire the visitor and the website doesn’t perform, you’re potentially wasting part of the investment that got them there.
Bottom line: Saving money on the destination can undermine the money you’re spending to send people there.
The Cost Nobody Puts on the Proposal: Lost Time
Money isn’t the only thing at risk. Time may be more expensive.
If it takes a year to realize you hired the wrong agency, you don’t get that year back when you finally hire the right one.
During those 12 months:
- Your competitors keep marketing.
- Prospects keep searching.
- Your salespeople keep sending people to the site.
- Potential customers keep making decisions.
“The partner you choose and the process you follow will either buy you a year or cost you one.” — Conrad Strabone, Founder & Chief Happiness Officer | e9digital
And the worst part? You have to pay to do it again. The cheap website doesn’t necessarily eliminate the expensive website. Sometimes it delays it.
- You spend $10,000. It doesn’t work.
- You spend $5k more trying to improve it. It still doesn’t work.
- Then you spend $20,000 rebuilding it.
You didn’t save $15,000. You spent $35,000 plus whatever opportunities you lost in between.
And a website redesign can range from about $15,000 to more than $75,000, depending on complexity.3
Doing it twice can get expensive very quickly.
But Expensive Doesn’t Automatically Mean Better
It’s important to clarify that we aren’t telling you to just spend more money.
Going too far in the opposite direction creates the Goldilocks Problem. Large agencies can mean paying for overhead, infrastructure and senior talent you may never actually work with. Smaller clients can wind up paying premium prices while junior staff handle their accounts.
So: Cheap doesn’t automatically mean bad.
And: Expensive doesn’t automatically mean good.
The real question is value.
Stop Asking “How Much Does It Cost?”
Cost is not the best question to ask. Instead, start asking questions like:
- What business problem are we trying to solve?
- Who will actually work on our account?
- What’s included in the strategy?
- How will success be measured?
- What results have you produced for other businesses?
- And perhaps most importantly: What could it cost us if this doesn’t work?
That will help you better decide the price you need to pay for your website.
Find Your “Just Right” With e9digital
Cheap is often the most expensive option on the table. That doesn’t mean you choose the highest proposal, but rather, you should consider the proposal that will help you achieve the objectives needed to best run your business.
At e9digital, we offer website design, marketing, SEO, and other services tailored to our clients’ needs. We have no “one-size-fits-all” package, because no two businesses are the same. We take the time to understand your business, study your competitors, and come up with a strategy to differentiate you in the market.
Cheap Website Design FAQs
Is a cheap website always a bad idea?
No. Price alone doesn’t determine quality. The important question is whether the strategy, expertise and execution behind the website are capable of achieving the business’s goals.
Why can a cheap website cost more in the long run?
A poorly performing site can create costs beyond its original price, including lost leads, wasted advertising, repairs, internal time and ultimately another redesign.
How often do businesses redesign their websites?
Most businesses redesign their websites every three to five years, although the right timeline depends on changes in technology, branding, services, and customer expectations. In fact, 81% of small businesses have redesigned their websites at least once.⁴ Regular updates between redesigns can also help keep a website secure, accurate, and effective.
What should I consider besides price when choosing a web design agency?
Look at strategy, experience, portfolio, measurable results, reviews, communication, who’s actually doing the work and whether the agency demonstrates success with the same approaches it’s recommending to you.
Resources
- https://clutch.co/resources/state-of-small-business-websites-2025
- https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/_qs/documents/5796/1199-State-of-Mobile-Ecosystem-Download.pdf
- https://clutch.co/resources/website-redesign-vs-refresh-what-your-business-really-needs
- https://clutch.co/resources/state-of-small-business-websites-2025
