A small business website in South Africa generally costs between R2 000 and R25 000 to build, plus a monthly fee for hosting and upkeep. At Mountain Studios a home page is R2 000, every additional page is R1 000, and R400 a month covers hosting, the SSL certificate, updates, backups and small changes. The domain name is billed separately at roughly R100 a year. Those are guide figures — the final number moves with what the site actually needs.
What you pay once, and what you pay every month
Two different things get called "the price of a website", and mixing them up is how quotes end up impossible to compare. There is the build, which you pay once, and there is keeping it running, which you pay monthly.
| Home pageOnce off | R2 000 |
|---|---|
| Each additional pageOnce off | R1 000 |
| Hosting and maintenanceHosting, SSL certificate, updates, backups, small changes | R400 / month |
| Domain nameBilled separately. Some domains cost more than others | ~R100 / year |
There are no packages or tiers. You pay for the pages you actually want.
A worked example: what a five-page site costs
Say you want a home page, an about page, a services page, a gallery and a contact page. That is one home page at R2 000 and four more at R1 000 each, so about R6 000 to build.
After that it is R400 a month to keep it live and looked after, and about R100 a year for the domain. So the first year comes to roughly R10 900, and every year after that about R4 900.
What is included in the R400 a month
- Hosting — the site being online and staying online.
- The SSL certificate, which is what puts the padlock in the address bar instead of a "not secure" warning.
- Updates and backups.
- Small changes — new opening hours, a price that moved, a photo swapped out.
Bigger additions get quoted before anyone touches anything. Nothing appears on an invoice that you have not already agreed to.
What moves the number
Page count is the main thing, which is why it is priced per page. Beyond that: whether you need online bookings, whether you are selling from the site, and how much of the content already exists.
The words and images for each page come from you. If you have them, the site gets built around them. If they need to be worked out from scratch, that takes longer.
Why quotes vary so much between studios
You will see R500 sites and R150 000 sites advertised in South Africa and both are real prices for real work. The cheap end is usually a template with your logo dropped into it. The expensive end is usually an agency with account managers, a design team and offices to pay for.
Ask any studio two things before comparing their number to anyone else’s: what happens after the site goes live, and who owns it. Those two answers explain most of the gap.
Related questions
Is there a cheaper option than R2 000 for a website in South Africa?
Yes, and it is usually a template with your logo dropped into it. That can be the right call for some businesses. What you generally give up is a layout built around what you actually do, and somebody to call when something breaks.
Do I have to pay the monthly fee?
Something has to cover hosting and the SSL certificate, or the site is not online and browsers flag it as not secure. At Mountain Studios that is R400 a month and it also covers updates, backups and small changes.
What happens to the price if I add pages later?
Additional pages are R1 000 each, the same as they are at the start. Bigger additions get quoted before any work begins.