Free tool

Website cost calculator: hand-coded vs the rest.

Pick who would build it otherwise, put in the quote you were given, and see what it actually costs once the years after launch are counted. Your figures, not ours. If yours wins, the tool will say so.

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Webstallion tier (matches your site size)
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What is the alternative you are weighing this against?

$5,500
$500$10,000

Drag it to the quote you have been given, or to what you expect to pay.

$1,200
$0$6,000

Hosting, the platform or licence fee, the domain, and any maintenance retainer. Published Australian ranges: hosting $120 to $1,200 a year, platform $0 to $600+, domain $20 to $100, outsourced maintenance $600 to $3,600.

Building it yourself has no invoice, so the only honest way to price it is your own time. Australian DIY builders (Wix, Squarespace) report spending $200 to $1,500 a year on the platform before a single hour is counted.

$75/hr
$0$300

Your billable rate, or what an hour of running your business is worth. Only you can set this, so nothing is assumed for you. Set it to $0 and the tool will treat your time as free.

A template site is commonly a 20 to 40 hour job the first time.

Edits, plugin and platform updates, fixing what breaks.

Squarespace Business is about $46 a month and Wix Business about $40, both verified May 2026, plus $20 for the domain.

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Your 3-year difference

$0

against the route you picked, on the numbers you entered.

Full breakdown

Route Build Every year after Total over 3 years

Where your number sits in the market

These are the bands Australian web businesses publish on their own websites, captured from Google Australia in July 2026. The row matching your route is highlighted.

Who builds itPublished range
How we calculate this (assumptions)
  • Webstallion (4 tiers, all one-off fixed price):
    • Lean · $799 - 5 content pages, brochure-style, about 2 weeks. Hand-coded HTML/CSS/JS, mobile-first, 90+ PageSpeed guaranteed, on-site SEO, backend essentials included, 6 months free maintenance, you own the code at launch. Not included: copywriting, off-site SEO, the Google Setup Pack ($350 add-on).
    • Starter · $1,500 - 15 essential pages, 2 to 3 weeks. Everything in Lean + service breakdown pages, contact form + lead routing, local SEO foundations. Add-ons: the Google Setup Pack ($350: GBP + Search Console + basic GA4).
    • Growth · $2,500 (the step up) - 35 pages, 3 to 4 weeks. Everything in Starter + individual service / treatment pages, copywriting included, Google Setup Pack included free, full schema + structured data.
    • Scale · $4,500 - up to 100 pages, 4 to 5 weeks. Everything in Growth + multi-location / multi-team support, suburb-level landing pages, 6 months free maintenance like every build.
    Hosting on Cloudflare Pages, $0/mo. Site stays yours forever; no ongoing platform fees on hand-coded builds.
  • Every figure on the other side of the comparison is yours, not ours. The build cost, the yearly cost, your hourly rate and your hours all come off the sliders and fields you set. Nothing is averaged for you and no competitor is priced on your behalf. The starting positions below are the midpoints of published Australian ranges, put there so the sliders open somewhere sensible, and they are meant to be moved to your actual quote.
  • Where the market bands come from. Prices Australian web design businesses publish on their own websites, captured from Google Australia in July 2026: a DIY builder on Wix or Squarespace runs $200 to $1,500 a year, a freelance designer $1,000 to $10,000, and a web design agency $5,000 to $50,000 and up. Published starter packages sit around $899 to $990. They are what the market says it charges, not measured project outcomes.
  • Offshore and marketplace work opens at $1,500, the midpoint of the $500 to $3,000 band our Shopify cost research found that segment working in. It is the one band here drawn from our Shopify market analysis rather than a website-specific capture, so treat it as indicative and move the slider to your real quote.
  • The slider stops at $10,000, and the agency market does not. Published agency prices run to $50,000 and beyond, so for a high-end city studio the top of this slider is a floor rather than a ceiling. The comparison understates that route on purpose rather than inventing a number for it.
  • Yearly costs use the same published ranges: domain $20 to $100, hosting $120 to $1,200, platform or licence $0 to $600 and up, outsourced maintenance $600 to $3,600. Platform pricing was verified in May 2026 from the vendors' own pricing pages, and Squarespace Business at about $46 a month and Wix Business at about $40 are where the DIY default comes from.
  • Your time is priced only if you price it. The hourly rate defaults to a starting position, not a claim about what your time is worth, and setting it to $0 removes time from the maths entirely. The 20 to 40 hour range quoted for a first template build is the same figure this site has published since May 2026.
  • Webstallion's side is the one-off tier price plus about $20 a year for the domain, which is registered in your name. Hosting is $0 on Cloudflare Pages, there is no platform fee because there is no platform, and maintenance is free for six months and then quoted per task with no retainer. If that changes, this calculator changes with it.

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