TL;DR: $5,000 is the median ticket for a small-studio website. It buys a five-page custom site (typically home, services, work, about, contact), live in roughly three weeks, designed and developed by a studio with a process. One design system pass with type, color, spacing, and component states. Two rounds of design revisions (one macro, one polish). Mobile and desktop on every page. One hero concept with motion. Real on-page SEO and AEO setup. Basic CMS for editable copy. What you do not get at $5k: enterprise features, 6+ pages, custom 3D, a writing or case study system with individual pages, or extensive content production.
"How much is a website" is the question most founders ask. "What does $X actually buy" is the one they should ask. $5,000 is the median ticket for a small-studio website project. Here is the full line-item breakdown: what is in, what is out, where the money goes.
The one-line version
At $5,000 you get a five-page custom site, not a template, live in roughly three weeks, designed and developed by a studio with a process. You do not get enterprise features, a CMS beyond basics, or custom 3D.
What is in scope
Design
- Five distinct page layouts — typically home, services, work, about, contact. Each gets a dedicated design pass, not a reused template.
- One design system pass — type scale, color tokens, spacing, component states. Enough structure that future pages can be added without a rebuild.
- Two rounds of design revisions — structured as one macro round (overall direction) and one micro round (polish). Beyond that, revisions are billable.
- Mobile and desktop — every page designed at both breakpoints. Tablet derives from those.
- One hero concept — a single considered hero treatment with motion or visual work. Not a full scene, but not a stock photo either.
Development
- Next.js or Astro, TypeScript, Tailwind. Modern, fast, accessible. Deployed on Vercel.
- All five pages coded to match the design pixel-accurately at the stated breakpoints.
- A working contact form — submissions to your inbox, spam protection, a thank-you state.
- Accessibility foundation — keyboard navigation, ARIA where needed, color contrast checked.
- Performance budget — Lighthouse 95+ on desktop, 90+ on mobile, green Core Web Vitals.
- Responsive down to 320px — no horizontal scroll on any phone we can buy.
SEO and analytics
- Meta tags, OG image, favicon set across all pages.
- Automatic sitemap and robots configured correctly.
- Structured data for Organization and WebSite schema.
- One analytics tool wired up — Vercel Analytics, Plausible, or Fathom, your choice.
- One form of event tracking on the primary CTA.
Launch
- Domain pointed, SSL active, redirects mapped from your old site.
- A launch checklist — 30 items we run before going live, and you get the document.
- One post-launch tuning window — a week where we fix the small stuff that only shows up in production.
Handoff
- The full source code in a GitHub repo you own.
- A written README — how to edit content, how to deploy, what every env var does.
- A loom walkthrough — fifteen minutes of us showing you how to change things.
What is explicitly out of scope at $5k
These are the things that sound like they should be included and are not. When a studio's $5k quote implies them, it is overpromising.
- A full CMS. Sanity or Contentful setup with editorial flows is a $1,500–$2,500 add-on. At $5k, content either lives in code files or in a lightweight flat-file system.
- Blog with more than three starter posts. We can ship the blog infrastructure. Writing the posts is separate.
- E-commerce or Stripe checkout. Add $1,500–$3,000.
- Authentication or any gated content. Not a marketing-site scope.
- Custom illustration or 3D assets. Licensed imagery is fine. Bespoke illustration starts at $500 per illustration.
- Video production. We can embed video you provide. We do not shoot it.
- Copywriting from scratch. Copy polish and restructuring yes. Writing your positioning from zero, no — that is a separate engagement.
- Localization. Multi-language sites are a different project.
- A/B testing setup beyond basic event tracking.
- Ongoing maintenance. You get the post-launch tuning week, then you own it. Retainers are separate.
Where the $5,000 actually goes
Roughly, by hours:
- Discovery and brief (4 hours, $500): intake call, notes, a written brief we both sign off on.
- Design (24 hours, $2,400): five layouts, two revision rounds, motion direction.
- Development (20 hours, $1,600): five pages, the design system, integrations, the form.
- QA and launch (5 hours, $400): cross-device test, Lighthouse tuning, deploy checklist.
- Post-launch (included, ~2 hours over the tuning week).
A studio that quotes $5k and spends 120 hours on your project is losing money and will cut corners somewhere. A studio that quotes $5k and spends 30 hours is phoning it in. The 50–55 hour range is the honest fit.
Hidden costs you pay outside the $5k
Running a website has recurring costs independent of the build. Budget these separately.
- Domain — $12–$40/yr.
- Vercel hosting — $0 on Hobby, $20/mo on Pro. Most $5k sites fit Hobby.
- Email — $6/mo per mailbox on Google Workspace.
- Form backend — $0 on FormSubmit, $12/mo on Basin if you want dashboards.
- Analytics — $0 on Vercel Analytics, $9/mo on Plausible.
- Stock imagery — $0 if you have your own, $15–$30 per image on Unsplash+ or Darkroom.
Typical annual run cost: $200 to $500, most of it optional.
When $5k is the wrong number
Too high: you have a one-page launch page, you are pre-revenue, and your site needs to exist more than it needs to sell. A $1,500 one-pager is the right call.
Too low: you are hiring salespeople off the site, you have a visible brand, and you need motion or 3D that sells. $7k to $10k is where that project lives honestly. Anyone quoting $5k for it is cutting corners you will notice in month two.
How we price a $5k project
We send a written scope before signing. If a studio will not put the line items above in writing, that is a red flag. The scope is how you protect yourself from both directions: we deliver what we promised, you do not ask for things outside of it, and nobody is unhappy at week three.
If you want a scoped quote for a site, tell us what it needs to do, how many pages, and when you want it live. We send a tiered proposal (a $3k version, a $5k version, a $7.5k version) so you can see what each dollar buys.