Generic website pricing guides rarely account for the fact that different industries carry very different real requirements — compliance rules, integrations, and content complexity all shift the actual cost, even for sites that look similar on the surface.
Service businesses (consultants, agencies, local services)
Usually the least expensive category: $1,500–$6,000 covers a professional site with booking or contact forms, service pages, and testimonials.
Retail and e-commerce
Costs climb with catalog size and payment complexity: $3,000–$30,000+, depending on the number of products, shipping logic, and integrations with inventory or fulfillment systems.
Healthcare and finance
Compliance requirements — data privacy, accessibility, secure forms — add real cost on top of a standard build: typically $5,000–$25,000+, depending on the specific regulatory needs involved.
Education and membership platforms
User accounts, content gating, and progress tracking (as with an LMS) push costs to $5,000–$40,000+, depending on how much of that functionality is custom versus handled by existing platforms like Moodle.
How to benchmark a fair price for yours
- Identify the specific requirements unique to your industry, not just "a website"
- Ask for quotes from developers who've built for your industry before
- Compare quotes against the scope, not just the final number
Putting it together
Your industry's specific requirements, more than its category, determine what a fair website price actually looks like. If you'd like an estimate grounded in your industry's real needs, feel free to get in touch.