Web design quotes in South Africa range from about R1 200 to well past R60 000, and almost nobody explains why. Here is the honest breakdown of what changes as the number goes up.
R1 400 — the one-page site
A single page with clear sections: what you do, why you are credible, how to reach you. You get a domain, hosting for a year, an SSL certificate and a business email address. It is enough for a sole trader, a tradesman or a new venture that needs to look real when someone Googles the business name. What it will not do is compete for multiple service keywords, because you only have one page to work with.
R3 500 — five pages
Now each service gets its own page, which matters more for search than most people realise: Google ranks pages, not businesses. This is the level where a plumber can rank separately for geyser repairs and drain clearing rather than lumping everything into one paragraph. You also get a Google Business Profile set up properly, which for local service businesses often produces more calls than the website itself.
R7 500 — ten to fifteen pages
Service pages plus location pages, structured data, a blog and a deeper internal linking structure. This is the first tier where you can genuinely compete in a competitive metro market like Johannesburg, because you have enough surface area to answer the long tail of what people search. It is also where a proper content plan starts to matter more than the design.
R9 500 and up — online stores
WooCommerce, payment gateway, delivery rates, order emails and product loading. The variable that drives store pricing is not design, it is catalogue size and integrations: 20 simple products is a different job to 500 products with variants and a stock system to sync.
What actually inflates a quote
Copywriting is the big hidden one. Supplying your own text can cut a quote significantly; asking an agency to research and write it adds real hours. Custom functionality is the other: booking engines, member areas, quote calculators and CRM integrations are development projects, not design work. Beware monthly “no upfront fee” offers too — R1 999 a month for three years is R71 964, which buys a great deal of website.
Questions to ask before you sign
Is the domain in my name? Do I get admin access? What happens at month 13 and what does it cost? How many revisions before extra fees? Can I take the site with me if I leave? If any answer is vague, that is the answer.
Our full pricing, including what is excluded, is published on the pricing page, and you can request a fixed quote in a day.