Ask five people in Lucknow what a website for a property business costs and you will get five different answers. A nephew will do it for free. A freelancer will quote a modest amount. An agency will send a proposal with a figure that looks like a down payment.
All of them might be quoting honestly. They are just quoting for different things. So the useful question is not "what is the right number" but "what am I getting, and what will it cost to keep".
The first invoice is the smallest part
A website is not a one-off purchase like a printer. It has running costs, and most of them do not appear in the first quote.
Over three years, what you really pay for is some mix of these:
- Building the site in the first place
- Hosting, which is the rented computer space where your site lives
- The domain name, renewed every year
- Security updates, and fixes when something breaks
- Changes: new listings, new photos, a new phone number
- Your own time, or a staff member's, spent updating it
- GST on all of the above, where it applies
The one people forget most is changes. If every new listing means a WhatsApp message to a developer and a three-day wait, either you pay for each change or the site goes stale. Both are costs.
What actually drives the price
When two quotes differ a lot, it is usually because of a few specific things.
Whether it is designed from scratch or built on a ready design. A custom design costs more and takes longer. A good ready design, set up properly with your logo and colours, is often all a small office needs.
Whether you can add listings yourself. A site with a proper listings system, where each property has its own page with price, area and photos, is more work to build than a five-page brochure. It is also far more useful.
Whether it is built to be found. A site that loads quickly on a 4G phone, gives every listing its own address, and publishes the details in a form Google can read takes more care than one that just looks nice. It is the difference between a website and an online visiting card. Speed alone matters more than most people expect, as we explain in why your site's speed on a 4G phone decides who calls you.
Where the enquiries go. A form whose alerts reliably reach your inbox, and which keeps a record of every enquiry, is worth paying for. A form that quietly drops messages costs you deals you never hear about.
Cheap sites that turn out expensive
Here is a made-up story that many owners will recognise. A PG operator in Coimbatore gets a site built by a relative for next to nothing. It looks fine. A year later the relative has moved to Pune, nobody has the login, the hosting is in the relative's name, and the site still shows last year's rents. Tenants call about rooms that are not available.
That site was cheap to build and expensive to own. When you compare quotes, look out for these:
- The domain or hosting is registered in the developer's name
- There is no way for you to make simple changes yourself
- Nobody can tell you who fixes it when it breaks
- The quote says nothing about anything after launch day
One payment or monthly
Some providers charge once to build and then bill separately for hosting and changes. Others charge a monthly subscription that covers everything. Neither model is a trick, and each suits a different kind of business. We have laid out the trade-offs in one-time build or monthly subscription.
For what it is worth, our own plans are a single monthly subscription with no separate build fee, and the figures are on our pricing page. Whatever you choose, compare like with like.
How to compare quotes fairly
Put every quote on one sheet of paper with the same columns: cost in year one, cost in years two and three, what is included, what costs extra, whose name the domain is in, and who you call when something breaks.
A quote that looks cheap in year one often looks different by year three. So does one that looks expensive. If you are registered for GST, also check that you will get a proper tax invoice, so you can claim the input credit where it applies.
What to do this week
- Write down, in one paragraph, what you need the site to do.
- Ask every provider for a three-year total in writing, with GST shown separately.
- Ask each one what a single change costs, and how long it takes.
- If you already have a site, check whose name the domain and hosting are in.
If you want a fuller list of what to ask, we have put it together in ten questions to ask any website provider. The cheapest website is the one that is still accurate, and still yours, three years from now.
