Why quotes differ so much

Two suppliers looking at the same brief can price very differently because they are assuming different answers to unstated questions. Understanding the variables lets you compare quotes properly and move the number deliberately.

It is worth saying plainly that a large gap between quotes is usually information rather than a bargain. The cheaper number generally means less was assumed — fewer templates, no migration, content supplied by you, performance treated as best-effort — and those assumptions surface later as variations or as a site that disappoints.

1. How many genuinely different page types

Not how many pages — how many distinct layouts. Twenty pages using four templates is a fraction of the work of twelve pages each designed individually, and it is the single biggest lever you control.

Before briefing, list your pages and group them by what they need to do. Most sites collapse to a homepage, a service template, an article template, a listing page and a contact page. Anything that survives as a genuine one-off should be there because it earns it, not because nobody grouped it.

2. Whether the content exists

Copy is the most common cause of delay on otherwise healthy projects, and design around placeholder text breaks when real words arrive. Who writes what, by when, belongs in the spec that gets quoted.

This is also where the cheapest quote often hides its assumption. “Content provided by client” is a substantial transfer of work, and if you cannot actually do it, you will end up paying for it later at a worse moment.

The cheapest way to reduce a website quote is to reduce the number of unique layouts, not the number of pages.

3. Integrations

A booking system, a CRM, a payment provider, a stock feed. Each is a dependency on someone else’s API and permissions, and unnamed ones are the change requests with a date on them.

Two integrations of the same nominal complexity can differ enormously depending on whether the other system has a documented API, whether anyone at your company can grant access, and whether a third party has to cooperate. Name them all, including the ones you assume are trivial.

4. Who needs to edit it afterwards

A site non-technical staff can safely update costs more to build than one only developers touch — and costs far less over its life, because a site you can’t update is already out of date.

5. Migration from what exists

Old URLs, old content, and old data all need mapping and redirecting. Skipping it is how a redesign loses the visibility it had, and doing it properly is real work.

The cost scales with how much you have and how disorganised it is. A hundred pages with sensible URLs is a morning; two thousand accumulated over a decade with several past migrations behind them is a project in its own right.

6. Whether performance and accessibility are requirements

Treated as constraints from the start they cost little; retrofitted at the end they cost a great deal. Both are cheaper as design decisions than as clean-up.

State them as requirements in the brief rather than as hopes. A supplier who knows a performance budget applies makes different decisions about fonts, images and scripts from the first day, and those decisions are nearly free at that point.

What doesn’t drive the cost much

The number of pages, once templates are settled. The choice of framework. Whether the design is bold or conservative — a distinctive look and a generic one take similar effort, which is worth knowing before anyone trades away the thing that makes you memorable hoping to save money.

How to use this in a conversation

Ask each supplier which of the six their number assumes, and get the answers in writing. The ones who can answer precisely are the ones whose quote will survive contact with the project; the ones who cannot are pricing a project neither of you has defined yet.

If the number comes back higher than you hoped, move a variable rather than negotiating the total. Fewer templates, fewer integrations in phase one, or a narrower migration all reduce cost honestly. A discount with the same scope just moves the pressure somewhere it will resurface.