What does a website
cost in Louisville?
The honest answer is that the price follows the method. A template assembly, a customized platform, and a custom-engineered system are three different products wearing one word. Here is how to tell them apart, and how I charge.
Ownership
Yours, in full
- The three products
One word,
three machines.
Template assembly is the fastest and cheapest: a pre-built theme with your name and photos placed into it. It is a real product. Its limits arrive the day you need the site to do something the template never planned for.
Platform customization - WordPress, Squarespace, Wix - is the middle path and the one most Louisville studios sell. You rent the machinery, the studio configures it, and the monthly platform and plugin bills are part of the true price.
Custom engineering means the code is written for your business and belongs to you. It costs more up front, carries no plugin treadmill, and is the only path when the site must run real systems - bookings, payments, content, reporting - as one machine.
I do the third kind. Everything goes home with you when it ships.
- Asked plainly
The cost questions,
answered.
What does a website cost in Louisville?
Across Louisville the spread is wide: a few hundred dollars on a template, four and five figures once the site has to run real systems. Custom engineering sits at the top of that spread, because the code is written for your business and belongs to you. The price follows the method, not the page count.
Why do quotes vary so much between studios?
Because the word website covers three different products. Some studios assemble a template, some customize a platform like WordPress or Squarespace, and a few write the code itself. Each is a legitimate product with a different cost, lifespan, and owner. A quote only makes sense once you know which of the three you are buying.
What makes the price go up?
Systems, not pages. A brochure site and a site that takes bookings, processes payments, manages its own content, or feeds a CRM are different machines. Page count barely moves cost; every working system the site must run moves it a lot.
What are the ongoing costs after launch?
A domain runs ten to twenty dollars a year. Hosting for a small business site typically runs zero to twenty-five dollars a month on modern platforms. Platform subscriptions, plugin licenses, and maintenance plans are where recurring costs hide - ask any studio to list every recurring line before you sign.
Do I own the site when it is done?
Here, yes. When the work ships, everything goes home with you: the site, the files, the accounts. Elsewhere, ask. Sites built inside a proprietary CMS or an agency-held account can be expensive to leave, and the design license sometimes ends with the subscription.
The fastest way to a real number for your business is a short conversation.
Request an audit · matthewdscott7@gmail.com · Who actually builds custom? · What it costs to keep running · Rebuild or repair? · What it costs to leave
- Live pulse audit, free.
Any URL. Five checks.
The same module behind the full audit, run against your URL.
- On contact. Taking work now.
Bring the brief.
I'll bring the receipts.
Have a site? Send the URL and I come back with what I see. No site yet? Tell me what the business does and what it needs, and the reply starts with questions, not a pitch.