What a website quote should include (and what's usually missing)

What a website quote should include is the full cost of running the site, not only the cost of building it. If you're comparing quotes, ask each supplier to put hosting, domain ownership, ongoing care and out-of-hours support in writing. The cheapest build figure often leaves those out.

Why two website quotes rarely compare

One quote gives a single figure for a five-page site. Another gives a monthly figure. A third lists design, build and launch, and then stops. They look like rival prices for the same thing. They aren't.

A build price covers the work up to launch day. But a website keeps costing money and attention after that, and someone has to carry it. If the quote doesn't say who, the answer is usually you, and you find out when something breaks.

Hosting and who renews it

Ask where the site will be hosted, who pays for it, and whose account it sits in. Hosting bundled into a care plan is fine. Hosting in the developer's personal account, renewed on their card, is a risk you're accepting without being told.

Check SSL certificates and backups in the same breath. Somebody has to keep certificates renewed, and a backup is only useful if you know who can restore it and how quickly.

Domain ownership is not the same as domain registration

A quote that says "domain included" tells you who pays. It doesn't tell you who owns it. Those are separate questions, and the second matters more.

You want your business named as the registrant, and you want to know who holds the registrar login. I won't repeat the whole process here, because who actually owns your business domain name covers how to check both and move them into company hands. The quote should simply state the answer.

The same goes for the site itself. Who holds the admin logins, the content and the hosting account if you part ways? If that's vague now, it'll be painful later. Plenty of firms only learn this when the agency that built their website disappears.

Care and maintenance after launch

Websites need security patches, framework updates and the odd content change. None of that happens by itself. So ask what's covered each month, what counts as a content change, and what gets quoted separately.

A care plan isn't a luxury add-on. It's the part of the job that keeps a working site working. If a quote has no line for it, budget for it elsewhere or expect the site to drift out of date. That trade-off is the subject of website care plan vs rebuild.

Who fixes it at 2am

This is the question most quotes skip, and it's the one buyers care about when the booking page dies on a Saturday night.

Split it into three parts. Detection is knowing the site is down. Response is a named person picking it up. Restoration is getting the site working again. That needs the right access and may involve restoring a backup. Monitoring only gives you the first. An alert at 2am that nobody is contracted to act on just tells you sooner. Uptime monitoring for a small business website goes into why the response path matters more than the checker.

So ask directly. What hours does support cover? Is out-of-hours cover included, and if so, where is it written down? What response time is promised, if any? A supplier who answers "we're always around" hasn't given you an agreement.

What's usually missing from the quote

The gaps tend to sit in the same places. The domain is "included" but not in the client's name. Hosting appears for year one only. Updates aren't mentioned. And support is described as friendly rather than defined. Ask what a website quote should include on each of those points, and get the answers on paper before you sign.

How Eight Mile quotes websites

Our website service is one monthly figure covering the build and the services that keep the site running. That includes domain registration, cloud hosting, SSL certificate maintenance, backups, branded email on your domain, scheduled content changes, security patches and framework updates. You approve the design before the build and sign off the site before it goes live, and there's a twelve-month warranty with direct contact with the engineers who built it.

Ordinary enquiries are handled during London business hours, Monday to Friday. Out-of-hours cover and response times are set out in a support retainer, in writing, rather than assumed. My view is that any supplier should be that explicit.

If you've got quotes on the table and want a second pair of eyes on what's missing, or you'd like one from us, Talk to an engineer. Send over what you've been quoted and what the site needs to do.