What does a business website cost in Pakistan?

Why does the same request get quotes that differ so much?

Because 'a website' is not one thing. Two developers quoting the same sentence can be imagining completely different work. One pictures a five-page site with your services and a contact form. The other pictures customer accounts, online payments and an admin panel. Both are honest. They are answering different questions.

The gap is almost never about who is cheaper. It is about who understood the job. Before comparing two numbers, make sure both are pricing the same scope.

What actually drives the cost of a website?

• How many genuinely different screens exist. Twelve pages sharing one layout cost far less than four pages that each work differently.
• Whether anything has to be built rather than displayed. A contact form is cheap. Bookings, payments, logins and stock are software, and software costs more than pages.
• Whether your content is ready. Waiting on text and photographs is one of the most common reasons a project runs long.
• Whether it must connect to something you already use, such as an accounting system or a POS.
• Whether the design is made for your business or applied from a template.

Is a cheap website worth it?

Sometimes. A cheap site is a real option for a business that needs to exist online this month and can replace it later. The problem is not the price, it is what is usually traded away to reach it: speed on a mobile connection, ownership of the code, and whether search engines can read the site at all.

The expensive version of cheap is a site built on a platform you cannot leave. When you want to change developers, you find that the work does not transfer and you are paying to start again.

Ask one question of any quote: do I own the code and the domain when this is finished? If the answer is anything other than a plain yes, that is the real price.

How should I compare two quotes?

• Ask both to write down the scope, not just the price. The one that cannot is the risk.
• Ask what happens when you want a change after launch, and what that costs.
• Ask whether the price is fixed or an estimate that can move.
• Ask who owns the source code and the domain at the end.
• Ask to see something they built that is live, then open it on your phone on mobile data.

What does Solanics do about pricing?

Solanics quotes a fixed price against a written scope after a short conversation, so the number does not move once work has started. If the scope changes later, that is discussed and priced before anything is built. There is no charge for the first conversation.