Website design cost in Melbourne runs from a few thousand dollars for a template-based site to $15,000 or more for custom design with booking or e-commerce. Page count, integrations and whether your copy and photos exist set the price. Bigfoot Web Solutions, a Melbourne web design agency, quotes each build as a flat fee after scoping it.
Two quotes for what sounds like the same website can be thousands of dollars apart. The gap nearly always comes down to scope: how many pages, whether the design is drawn for your business or bought as a theme, who writes the words, and what the site has to connect to. The ranges below are our read of the Melbourne market in 2026, from the quotes we see, not one agency’s price list. They exclude GST.
What each kind of website costs
Most of what you pay for is time: design, writing and development that someone has to do. Each kind of build below includes more of it than the one before.
Do-it-yourself builders cost a monthly plan and your own time. Squarespace’s plans run from A$24 to A$149 a month, or A$17 to A$109 on a yearly plan. WordPress.com’s paid plans run from US$9 to US$70 a month before tax, less on a yearly plan (both checked 1 October 2026). The plan is the small cost. Writing the pages, choosing photos and working through the settings takes evenings away from the business, and the layout is the template’s, shared with every other site that picked it.
A template site built for you typically costs $2,500 to $5,000. A freelancer or small studio installs a bought theme, adds your logo, colours, words and photos, and sets up the contact form. It’s a sound choice for a business that needs a few pages and a phone number done properly.
Custom design typically costs $5,000 to $15,000. The layout is drawn for your business and the people who buy from you. The price usually covers page design for phone and desktop, the build, the page titles and setup Google reads, and launch. Where a quote lands in that range depends mostly on page count and who writes the copy.
Custom functionality typically starts around $15,000. Online booking, e-commerce, learning platforms, quoting calculators, member logins or a connection to your customer relationship management (CRM) system each add design, build and testing time. A physio clinic taking bookings through Cliniko, or a supplier selling hundreds of products online, is a different job from a five-page brochure site, even when the two home pages look alike.
What moves the price of a website build
Page count sets the base of any quote. Each page needs a layout, words and images, so a 25-page site with a page for every service is several times the work of a five-page site.
If your words and photos already exist, the designer places them. If the designer writes the copy, plans the pages around what your customers search for, or books a photographer, the quote grows to match.
Integrations add their own time. Booking systems, payment gateways, CRMs such as HubSpot, practice software and email marketing tools each need setting up and testing, and checking again when the other system changes.
Moving an existing site adds to a quote, because the old pages have to be carried across and each old address pointed at its new page, so you keep whatever already ranks on Google. A second language adds a second set of pages, translated by a person and set up so Google shows each language to the people searching in it.
How much does a WordPress website cost?
WordPress itself costs nothing. The software is free and open source, so what you pay for is the design, the build, the hosting, and the licences for any premium themes and plugins, most of which renew every year.
A WordPress site built for you falls into the same ranges as above, because the scope sets the build price, not the platform. WordPress.com is a different product: a hosted service where the plan includes hosting and you build the site yourself, at the prices in the do-it-yourself row. For how a WordPress build compares with Wix and AI website builders, see our comparison of custom WordPress, Wix and AI builders.
Where WordPress asks for more over time is upkeep. Core, theme and plugin updates arrive often, and many of them are security fixes, so budget for maintenance from the day the site launches, whether you do the updates yourself or pay someone to.
What a website costs after launch
A website keeps costing after the build invoice is paid. The running costs are small next to the build, but they last as long as the site does.
Your domain name is a licence you renew. A com.au name is registered for one to five years at a time and renewed at the end of each term, as long as your business stays eligible. It usually costs $15 to $30 a year. Hosting is a monthly fee: an Australian host lists shared hosting at $11 to $31.50 a month at full price, GST included (checked 1 October 2026). Managed hosting, where the host also handles backups and support, costs more. Premium plugins and themes renew yearly, and maintenance, if you pay someone to keep the site updated, backed up and monitored, is a monthly fee set by what it covers.
SEO and new content are a separate budget again. A site can launch with sound foundations and still need monthly work to climb for competitive searches. That’s a marketing cost rather than a website cost, and pricing it separately lets you see what each one returns.
Where a cheap website ends up costing more
The cheapest quote isn’t always the right one. It costs more later when one of these is missing, and a build that has to be redone in two years has cost you two builds. Each is quick to check before you sign.
Your domain in your business’s name. The rules for com.au names from auDA, which runs the .au domain, say a web developer who registers one for you must list your business as the registrant, not themselves. If your business isn’t on the .au WHOIS record, you aren’t the licence holder, even if you have the passwords, and a domain that lapses takes your website and email down with it.
A site you can take with you. Some low-cost website packages are rented: the design and content stay on the provider’s platform, and when the payments stop, so does the site. Ask whether the site’s files and admin login are yours on final payment, and whether it can move to another host.
Built for phones first. Google uses the mobile version of a site for indexing and ranking, according to its mobile-first indexing documentation. If the site works poorly on a phone, that’s the version Google sees, so it should be designed for the phone first and checked on one before launch.
Tracking from launch day. Without call and form tracking, a website can’t tell you whether it’s working. If yours looks good and the phone still doesn’t ring, why a good-looking website can bring in no leads covers the usual causes.
What the Bureau of Meteorology’s $96.5 million website shows
At the other extreme, the Bureau of Meteorology’s new website cost about $96.5 million. The bureau first gave the cost as $4.1 million. In November 2025 it told ABC News the total was about $96.5 million: $4.1 million for the redesign, $79.8 million for the build, and $12.6 million for launch and security testing.
The bureau said a complete rebuild was needed to meet modern security, usability and accessibility requirements for a site millions of Australians use every day. No small business website comes near that scale, but the split carries over. The redesign was about 4% of the bill, and the build and testing behind it were the rest.
If you just settle for a single figure, you’re buying blind and making it impossible to see which agency is actually giving you the best value.
How to compare two website quotes
Put the quotes side by side and check that they price the same job. A clear quote names the page count, says who writes the copy and supplies the photos, lists each integration, and states what’s included after launch.
Then check the terms. A flat fee tells you the total before work starts, and an hourly rate leaves it open. Ask how changes are priced once the build has started, and whether the domain, hosting account and website admin are in your name on final payment. Every custom website we design in Melbourne is scoped first and quoted once, in writing, with no hourly billing and no variations you haven’t approved.
Website design cost in Melbourne comes down to scope, so the quickest way to price your site is to have it scoped. Book a 30-minute call and Bigfoot Web Solutions will scope the job with you, then send a flat-fee quote in writing.