Skyward Digital
Skyward Digital What a website costs
For anybody working out a budget Every figure on this page includes GST

Two quotes. Four thousand apart. Neither one is lying.

As best anyone can tell from what is quoted openly, a small business website in New Zealand is usually sold somewhere between about $2,500 and $6,000. Ours are $2,450, $3,450 and $5,950, GST included. That band is wide because a quote is not really a price — it is a list of decisions somebody has already made on your behalf, and mostly has not written down. This page is those decisions.

What moves the number Skip to our prices
Our range$2,450 to $5,950
Smallest thing we sell$395, no website
Payable before you see itNothing
Ask us anything022 584 0585
01 / WHAT MOVES IT

Ten decisions, and
every quote you get
has already made them.

None of these are tricks. They are the real forks in the job, and each one is worth real money in either direction. The problem is that a quote arrives as a single figure with the reasoning stripped out, so two studios who made opposite calls on six of these look like they are pricing the same thing. They are not.

01
The biggest one

How many pages, and whether each service gets its own

One page listing six services, or six pages that each answer one. The second costs more to build and is usually what makes the difference to being found at all, because people search for the job, not for the business.

What it does to the numberMost of the spread between a cheap quote and a mid-range one is here. Pages are the unit nearly everybody prices in. If it is left outYou get a tidy brochure that nobody finds, and adding the pages later costs more than including them would have.
02
The hidden one

Who writes the words

Writing is the part that quietly decides whether a site works, and it is also the part most often handed back to the customer with a blank document and a deadline. A cheaper quote very often means you are writing it.

What it does to the numberHundreds either way, and more on a bigger site. It is the single most common reason one quote undercuts another. If it is left outThe build stalls for three months on your desk, which is the most common way a paid-for website never goes live.
03
Ask outright

Where the photographs come from

Your own work, a paid photographer, or stock. Stock is free or nearly free and it is obvious to the person looking at it, particularly in a trade where the photograph is the evidence.

What it does to the numberNothing, if you take them yourself on a phone in good light. A photographer is a separate invoice, usually a few hundred. If it is left outA site that looks like everyone else's, built out of the same eleven pictures that are on everyone else's.
04
Where quotes really split

Whether anything has to be booked, paid or looked up

A form that emails you is one thing. A real booking calendar, a deposit taken online, a stock list, a member login or anything that talks to software you already run is a different job with a different risk attached to it.

What it does to the numberThis is the difference between a website and a small piece of software, and it can double a build on its own. If it is left outYou keep doing the booking by text at nine at night. Sometimes that is the right answer and nobody will tell you so.
05
Not a dirty word

A template, a theme, or something built for you

Most sites at the lower end are a bought theme with your logo dropped in, and for plenty of businesses that is a perfectly sound way to spend less. What you are paying for above that is the layout being decided by your jobs rather than by a demo about a yoga studio.

What it does to the numberA large part of the gap between the $1,500 end and the $3,500 end, and the part least visible in a screenshot. If it is left outNothing, for a while. Then the business changes shape and the template will not bend, and you are buying it again.
06
Read the clause

How many rounds of changes are included

Almost every quote includes some, and almost none say what happens on the round after. This is the clause that turns a fixed price into an hourly one, usually about a week before launch when you are least able to argue about it.

What it does to the numberNothing visible. It moves what you actually end up paying, which is not the same figure. If it is left outAn invoice you did not plan for, at an hourly rate you were never quoted, for changes you assumed were part of it.
07
Sold two ways

Whether search work is in the build or beside it

Some of it is structural and belongs in any competent build: how the pages are organised, what each one is called, how fast it loads, whether the headings make sense. The ongoing part — writing more, chasing reviews, keeping the listing current — is a monthly service and should be priced as one.

What it does to the numberBundling the ongoing part into a build price is how a quote gets large without anything extra being built. If it is left outA fast, tidy site that no search engine has been given any reason to show anyone.
08
Fifteen per cent

Whether the figure includes GST

Quotes in this country are written both ways and plenty do not say. At fifteen per cent it is not a rounding difference, and two quotes cannot be compared at all until you know which is which. Ask, and get the answer in writing.

What it does to the number$3,000 and $3,000 plus GST are $450 apart. It is the cheapest question on this page to ask. If it is left outYou pick the wrong quote for a reason that was never about the work.
09
The month after

What happens to it once it is live

A website is not a purchase, it is a thing that needs looking after. Some quotes include a year of hosting and small changes, some include nothing, and a few include a monthly fee that never ends. All three are legitimate. They are not comparable.

What it does to the numberA bundled first year makes a build look dearer than an identical one that quietly does not include it. If it is left outSection 03 is about exactly this, and it is the part that decides whether the money was worth spending.
10
The one that cannot be undone

Who owns it at the end

The domain, the files, the content, the logins, the analytics. A site can be built beautifully and still be rented, and the month you stop paying is the month it stops existing. This is the only decision on the list that money cannot reverse later.

What it does to the numberRented sites usually cost less up front and more in total. That is the whole trade and it is a real one. If it is left outThree years of paying for something you cannot take with you, and a rebuild from nothing if you leave.

If you want the other half of this — not what moves the price, but who should be doing the work — the homepage sets out the four routes, including the two where the answer is not us.

02 / NOT IN THE PRICE

The bills that arrive
whoever builds it.

These are not hidden charges and nobody is hiding them. They are just not part of building a website, in the same way that petrol is not part of buying a van. They are small. They are also permanent, and a budget that has not allowed for them is short every year rather than once.

Every year, always

The domain name

A .co.nz usually runs somewhere between about $25 and $45 a year depending on where it is registered, and a .nz or a .com is in the same neighbourhood. The only thing that matters more than the price is whose name is on the registration. It should be yours.

Monthly, or bundled

Hosting

Where the site actually lives. A small business site is light enough that this is one of the cheaper things you will ever pay for, and at this size some hosts charge nothing at all. If a quote bundles the first year, ask what the second year costs.

Per person, monthly

Email on your own domain

An address that ends in your business name rather than someone else's is a separate subscription, charged per mailbox per month, and it is almost never inside a website quote. Worth having, worth budgeting for, and easy to be surprised by.

Should be nothing

The padlock

The certificate that puts https at the front of the address. It has been free and automatic for years on any competent host. If it appears on a quote as a line item with a price against it, that tells you something about the quote.

The real one

Keeping it current

Prices change, people leave, hours move at Christmas, a form quietly stops sending. Somebody has to notice and fix it. That somebody is either you, for free, or somebody you pay. Section 03 is about which.

Optional, and separate

Anything you advertise with

Paid search, social advertising, a listing on a directory. None of it is part of a build and all of it is easy to confuse with one, because both get described as marketing. Decide on the website first and the spend afterwards.

What we charge for the looking-after part is $169 a month, or $1,690 a year, and you can say no to it and still own everything. The figures above are the market's rather than ours, and they are ranges on purpose — anybody quoting you an exact number for a domain in twelve months' time is guessing.

03 / AFTERWARDS

Nobody's website
goes wrong loudly.

A site does not break. It drifts — a price from two years ago, a mobile number that changed, a closed sign on a day you were open, a form that has been failing silently since a plugin updated in March. None of it announces itself, and all of it is being read by people deciding whether to ring you. Here is what actually goes, and what it takes to hold it.

What drifts

The numbers on the page

Prices, callout fees, hours, the size of the team, the areas you cover. Every one of them was true the week the site went live. A customer who rings about a price you stopped charging last winter is a conversation that starts with you saying no.

Doing it yourself: genuinely easy on a site that was built to be edited, and worth half an hour every few months. Ours: text it through and it is done inside two working days, on the care plan.

What breaks quietly

The enquiry form

The worst failure on any small business site, because it looks exactly like nobody being interested. A form that stopped delivering in April is indistinguishable from a bad quarter, and most owners find out months later by accident.

Doing it yourself: send yourself one every month from your own phone. That is the whole trick and it costs nothing. Ours: checked as part of the monthly work, along with the backups.

What ages

The software underneath

Most sites are built on a platform with add-ons bolted to it, and both need updating. Left alone for a year or two they become the reason a site gets defaced, or simply stops loading on a Tuesday for no reason anybody can explain.

Doing it yourself: possible, and the main reason we build in a way that has very little underneath it to go stale. Ours: updates, backups and monitoring are the dull part of the $169.

What goes cold

The reason to come back

A site that has not changed in two years is a site nobody has any reason to return to, and search engines treat a business that has gone quiet the way a customer does. This is the part that is genuinely optional, and it is also the part that compounds.

Doing it yourself: one honest page a month about a job you actually did beats anything anybody can write for you. Ours: priced separately, from $249 a month, and we will tell you when it is not worth it yet.

There is no lock-in on any of it and no minimum term. The site, the domain, the content and the logins are yours from day one, so the month you decide the care plan is not earning its keep, you stop and keep everything. What the care plan actually covers.

04 / WHAT TO ASK

Eight questions.
Ask every studio,
including this one.

None of them are aggressive and none of them need any technical knowledge to ask. What they do is turn a single figure back into the list of decisions it came from. Get the answers by email rather than on a call, because an answer somebody has written down is an answer they have thought about.

  1. Question 1

    Is that including GST?

    Fifteen per cent, on a four-figure number, decided by a word that is often missing. A good answer is one word long. An answer that arrives as a paragraph about how everybody quotes differently is an answer.

  2. Question 2

    Who will the domain be registered to?

    Your name and your email address, or theirs. This is the single most common way a business ends up unable to leave, and it is invisible until the day it matters. The right answer is that it is yours, and that you get the login.

  3. Question 3

    If I stop paying you, what happens to the site?

    Either it keeps working and you keep it, or it goes off. Both are real business models and neither is dishonest, but you need to know which one you are buying before you sign rather than in year three.

  4. Question 4

    Who writes the words, and what happens if I do not?

    If the answer is that you do, the project has a second cost that is not money: it stalls until you find a weekend. Ask what happens to the timeline if your copy is late, because the honest answer is that nothing happens at all.

  5. Question 5

    How many rounds of changes, and what is the rate after that?

    Both halves of the question matter and the second half is the one that gets skipped. A studio that cannot tell you its hourly rate for changes has not decided what it is, which means you will find out when the invoice does.

  6. Question 6

    What is the monthly, and what is in it?

    Hosting, updates and backups are not the same as edits, and edits are not the same as writing new pages. Three quotes with the same monthly figure can cover three different sets of work.

  7. Question 7

    Can I see something you have built that is still live?

    Not a screenshot in a deck. An address you can type into a phone. Then open it on that phone, on mobile data, and count the seconds. Anybody who has built something is glad to be asked this.

  8. Question 8

    What will you not do?

    A studio that has never turned anything down has never had an opinion about anything. The answer tells you more than the portfolio does, and it is the question that most reliably produces an honest pause.

  9. Nobody asks

    When it is finished, what exactly do I get handed?

    The files, the domain, the content, the logins to everything, and the analytics. Written down, in a list, before any money moves. Every other question on this page can be fixed afterwards by spending more. This one cannot — and the only wrong time to ask it is after the invoice has been paid.

05 / OURS

Since you have read
this far: here is
every number we have.

Put them against the ten decisions in section 01 and you can see exactly which calls we have made. Pages are the thing that moves between tiers. The writing is included in all of them, because a build that waits on your homework is not a build. Nothing is payable until you have seen your own homepage on your own screen.

Google Business Profile setup

No website at all. The listing people actually see when they search for someone nearby, claimed, verified, filled in and handed over in a day. The cheapest useful thing we sell and often the only thing a business needs this year.

$395one-off

Essential — up to four pages

Home, what you do, who you are, how to reach you. The right size when the website only has to be somewhere credible for a name to land at nine at night.

$2,450founding price $1,950

Standard — up to eight pages

A page for each service, which is decision 01 answered in your favour, and the tier most businesses should take.

$3,450founding price $2,950

Lead Engine — services and suburbs

Everything in Standard, plus a page for each area worth having, a local search campaign at launch, the after-hours enquiry assistant for twelve months and three months of the care plan.

$5,950founding price $5,450

Care plan

The section 03 work, done for you: hosting, updates, backups, security, the small changes you text through, and a monthly tune-up of the Google profile. No lock-in, and you still own everything.

$169per month, or $1,690 a year

The two that are not websites

The missed-enquiry assistant, added to a site we have built, at $890 and then $129 a month. And automation work, which starts with a paid discovery at $1,200, credited in full against whatever gets built. Writing and search work runs from $249 a month.

Scopedafter a conversation

Every figure on this page includes GST and nothing is added at the end. The founding price is $500 off, for the first ten clients, in exchange for three things written into the job: an honest Google review, a testimonial we can use, and permission to publish the build as a case study. It is a trade rather than a discount, and there is nothing below it — if the budget does not stretch we will move you down a tier or start you on the $395 profile, but we do not discount off-menu. Full pricing and what is in each tier.

06 / STRAIGHT UP

The awkward
questions about
our own price.

If AI builds it, why is it not $500? Because the building was never the expensive part. A survey of a few hundred agencies across thirty-odd countries this year found that most of them are now clearing AI-assisted projects under about NZ$2,450, so the cheap end is real and it is not going away. What you are paying us for is the deciding: which pages exist, what each one has to answer, what gets left out, and every line being read by a person who is accountable for it. Tools got faster. Judgement did not, and neither did being on the hook for the result.

Then why not charge less than the studios who do not use it? We thought about it and decided against it. A low price from a studio with no track record does not read as good value, it reads as inexperience, and we would rather be honest about that than pretend the reasoning was nobler. The number is where competent New Zealand work is actually transacted. What the tooling buys you is a week instead of three months, not a discount.

What this price does not buy. Not a ranking — nobody can sell you one. Not a number of enquiries; we have no way of knowing what your phone does next and no honest basis for a figure, so there is not one anywhere on this site. Not an exclusivity arrangement in your trade or your suburb.

And not experience we have not had. Skyward is new and has no clients yet. Everything on this page is about how the work is priced and what is in it, which you can check against any other quote you hold — not a record we do not have. The one thing we can do that a track record cannot is build your homepage first, for nothing, so the thing you are judging is the actual site rather than a claim about one.

07 / QUESTIONS

Six about money,
answered the way
we would answer them
on the phone.

What is the cheapest you can do it for?

$2,450 for a website, and we will not go under it. If that is out of reach this year the honest answer is not a smaller website — it is $395 for the Google profile, which is what most people searching for you will see anyway, and then a website when it is worth having.

We would rather sell you the $395 thing and have you come back than talk you into a build you have to stretch for. What the $395 covers.

How do you take payment?

Nothing before you have seen your homepage built and working. After that, half on going ahead and the balance when the site goes live. The care plan starts the month after launch if you want it, and does not if you do not.

No deposit to get a quote, no fee for the demo, and no charge if you look at what we have built and decide against it.

Is the free homepage really free?

Yes, and it is a real page rather than a mock-up — your business, your services, on a screen. If you do not like it you walk away owing nothing and we have lost a day. That is the trade we are making to get the first ten clients, and it is the only way a studio with no reviews can prove anything.

Can I pay it off monthly?

Not as a finance arrangement, no. What exists is the founding price, which takes $500 off, and the option of starting at a smaller tier and adding pages later at the same rates rather than a penalty.

If cash flow is the real constraint, say so on the phone. There is usually a sensible order to do things in that costs less than borrowing to do them at once.

What does it cost to add pages afterwards?

Quoted per page against the same tiers, and it is not dearer for having waited. The thing that genuinely costs more later is changing the shape of the site rather than adding to it, which is why section 01 puts the page count first.

Why is there a monthly at all if I own the site?

Because owning a thing and looking after it are different. You own a van outright and it still needs servicing. The care plan is the servicing, it is optional, there is no lock-in, and if you cancel it the site keeps working and stays yours.

Plenty of businesses run perfectly well without one and maintain it themselves. What is actually in it.

ALSO WRITTEN

Three places to
go from here.

One if the answer is not a website yet, one if you want to open something we have built and judge it for yourself, and one if you would rather settle who does the work before you settle what it costs.

$395

The cheapest useful thing, and it is not a website.

Around two thirds of these searches end without anybody clicking through to a site at all. What they see instead is the map listing, and for most businesses nobody has ever filled it in properly.

 Open one

Builds you can open on your own phone.

Invented businesses, labelled as such on every page, built to show what the work is rather than to imply a client list we do not have. That is question 7 in section 04, answered before you ask it.

 The other half

Four ways to get a website, and two where it is not us.

This page is about what moves the number. That one is about who should be holding the pen, including the cases where the honest answer is a site builder and a weekend.
08 / START

Tell us what you do.
We will tell you
which number it is.

No meeting and no discovery session to get a figure. Say what the business is, roughly how many things you sell and whether anything has to be booked or paid for online, and you will get one of the numbers above with the reasoning attached — including, where it is the truth, that you should spend $395 and nothing else this year.

Phone or text022 584 0585 Emailjosh@skywarddigital.co.nz The full listPricing, tier by tier

Josh reads these himself. Nothing is passed to a salesperson, because there is not one, and asking what something costs does not put you on a list.

We use these details only to reply to your enquiry and, if you go ahead, to run the job. We don't sell them, we don't add you to a mailing list, and you can ask us to delete them any time by emailing Josh. No spam, no obligation, no sales sequence. The full privacy statement says who else handles them and for how long.