How much does a website cost in South Africa?
In South Africa a template-based small business website typically costs R8,000 to R25,000, a custom-designed brochure site R35,000 to R90,000, and a site with e-commerce, bookings or custom functionality R90,000 upward. Ongoing hosting, domain and maintenance usually add R300 to R2,500 per month.
What drives the price
Almost all of the variation comes from three things: how much of the design is custom, how many pages need original copywriting, and whether the site needs to do anything beyond presenting information.
A five-page site with your own photography and a contact form is a fundamentally different job to a site that takes bookings, processes payments and syncs to your accounting package. Quotes that ignore that distinction are quoting the wrong job.
Rough bands, 2026
- R8,000 – R25,000: a purchased theme, lightly customised. Fine for a first site; usually slow, and hard to extend.
- R35,000 – R90,000: custom design, hand-built, original copy, technical SEO. The band most established small businesses should be in.
- R90,000 – R250,000: e-commerce, bookings, member areas, integrations with existing systems.
- R250,000+: custom applications, multi-location, or anything with a real database behind it.
The costs most quotes leave out
Domain registration (roughly R150 to R400 a year), hosting (R100 to R1,500 a month depending on traffic and stack), SSL (usually free now, but confirm), and maintenance.
Maintenance is the one that catches people. A WordPress site with fifteen plugins needs patching, or it gets compromised. Budget for it, or build on something that does not need it.
How to compare two quotes fairly
Ask both parties the same four questions: is the design custom or a purchased theme; who writes the copy; who owns the code and hosting account at the end; and what happens in month two if something breaks.
The cheaper quote is often cheaper because the answer to one of those is not what you assumed.