An agency website costs anywhere from a few hundred dollars for a template to well into five figures for a fully custom, hand-coded build, and the price gap tracks almost exactly with how much of the site is actually built for that specific agency versus assembled from something generic. Scale 1128's own agency-site rebuilds start at $8,000 for a full rebuild.
What Actually Drives the Price
Three things move the number more than anything else: whether the site is a template with your logo swapped in or built from scratch around your actual positioning, whether the copy is written specifically for your agency or lightly edited boilerplate, and whether it's hand-coded or built on a page builder that adds its own performance and flexibility tax. Custom copy and a from-scratch structure cost more upfront and are the two things that most directly affect whether a visitor actually books a call.
The Cheap Option's Real Cost
A templated site is cheap to buy and expensive to run, not in dollars but in missed calls. Generic templates come with generic copy patterns baked into their layout, hero, logo wall, generic services list, in an order that wasn't designed around how a founder actually decides to trust an agency. The site technically exists, gets indexed, looks fine in a screenshot. It just doesn't convert as well as one built around the actual decision sequence a visitor runs before booking a call.
The Expensive Option's Real Risk
On the other end, a large agency-of-agencies building your site can produce something genuinely excellent, or something over-engineered for a business that doesn't need a 40-page site with a custom CMS. The risk at the high end isn't quality, it's scope, paying for infrastructure and complexity a small agency doesn't actually need yet. Match the build to the size of the business, not the size of the budget available.
The right question isn't "what's the cheapest site that technically works" or "what's the most impressive site money can buy." It's "what's the smallest build that actually gets a founder to book a call."
What's Usually Worth Paying For
Custom copy in the agency's actual voice, a homepage sequenced around the four questions a founder asks (fit, proof, speed, next step), and a mobile experience that was designed, not just responsive by default. Those three things move conversion more than almost anything else on the price list, and they're exactly the things a cheap template skips.
Wondering what your specific project would cost?
Agency site rebuilds start at $8,000. I'll scope it honestly on a call, not push you toward the most expensive option.
What's Usually Not Worth Paying For, Yet
A custom CMS, a blog infrastructure built for a hundred posts when you'll publish four, or a design system built to support pages you don't have yet. Build for the site you need now, with room to add the next piece when it's actually needed, not a rebuild every 18 months because the last one was over-scoped.
How to Compare Two Quotes That Look Nothing Alike
The hardest part of pricing an agency website is that two quotes for "a new website" can describe completely different scopes. Before comparing numbers, get each quote to answer the same questions: is the copy custom-written for this agency or lightly edited from a template, is the design built from scratch or assembled from a pre-built kit, and does the price include a genuine mobile-specific pass or just responsive resizing.
- Custom copy vs. edited boilerplate. Ask directly whether the writer will interview you about your actual work, or work from a brief and a template's existing structure.
- From-scratch design vs. a theme. A theme isn't automatically bad, but it should be priced like one, not like a custom build.
- What happens after launch. Some quotes include a revision round or two; others end the moment the site goes live. That difference matters more than it looks on a line-item list.
A lower number that skips custom copy and a real mobile pass usually isn't actually cheaper, it's the same cost deferred to the redesign you'll need in a year once the templated version stops converting.