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Anatomy of a $2,000 website
What actually goes into a small-business site at our starting price.
SIMRAN APRIL 7, 2026 8 MIN
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- A $1,490 site is ~40 hours of focused work, not "fast and cheap".
- The way we keep the price down is ruthless scoping — not cutting corners.
- Revisions, CMS handover, and ownership of the code are all included.
- We don’t charge monthly on the site itself. You own it on day one.
"How do you do a site for $1,490?" is the most common email we get. The short answer: we scope tight, we don’t re-invent, we don’t do revisions forever.
The long answer is below.
The 40-hour build
A $1,490 site at our rate is about 40 hours of work across 2–3 weeks. Here’s roughly where the hours go on a typical four-page build (Home, Services, About, Contact):
| Phase | Hours | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery call + brief | 2 | A one-page scoping doc, signed. |
| Copy (we write, you approve) | 6 | All four pages, written in your voice. |
| Design — home + one inner | 10 | Figma file, two rounds of review. |
| Design polish | 3 | Component library, tokens, responsive states. |
| Build in Astro / Next.js | 12 | Deployed staging link, password-protected. |
| CMS wiring | 4 | Sanity or Webflow, admin account, training video. |
| QA, Lighthouse tuning, launch | 3 | 95+ scores, DNS cutover, launch checklist. |
That’s 40 hours at our standard hourly rate, which is what $1,490 works out to once overheads and the free post-launch tweaks window are accounted for.
What we don’t do
- Five rounds of design revisions. You get two. After that it’s billable.
- "Wait, can we also have a members area and a booking system." Those are scoped as separate upgrades.
- Custom iconography from scratch. We use Lucide or Phosphor as a baseline.
- Recreating stock photography. We license where needed.
- Framer Motion on every element. Motion where it earns attention, not everywhere.
What the money does not pay for
A few things get confused with "website" that actually aren’t:
- Brand / logo design. If you don’t have one, we’ll refer or quote separately.
- Photography. We can direct a shoot or sign off on yours. Photographer cost is on you.
- Copy research. We interview you for 90 minutes and work from that — if you need external research, that’s another project.
- Ongoing updates. You can edit in the CMS, or bill us hourly.
Why it actually works
The secret to a fast build is not speed. It’s knowing exactly what you are going to make before you start.
Most site projects go over budget because the scope keeps moving. We spend a disproportionate amount of time on the brief precisely so that by the time we start designing, there’s almost nothing left to decide. Fewer decisions during build = fewer hours during build.
What you actually get
- A live site on your domain, on Vercel at cost (~$25/mo hosting, paid by you direct).
- A GitHub repo under your account. You own the code.
- A Figma file, not flattened. You can keep designing if you want.
- A CMS login, a loom walkthrough of how to edit things.
- Analytics set up, goals configured, a one-page dashboard pinned.
- Two weeks of unlimited small tweaks after launch. No meter.
COMPANION · NOTION · SINGLE PAGE
The four-page scoping doc template
The one-page brief we sign before any site project. Goals, scope boundaries, sample pages, content responsibilities. Copy it, edit it, send it to your developer.
YOU MIGHT BE THINKING…
Common pushbacks, answered
Real objections we hear when we share this with clients. Often the disagreement is the most interesting part.
IF "$1,490 feels suspiciously cheap."
THEN
It's the entry point for a 4-page informational site with no custom integrations. Larger sites scope up honestly. The reason we can hit that number is ruthless scoping, not corner-cutting.
IF "Two rounds of revisions doesn't seem like enough."
THEN
It is, if you brief properly. We spend the first 6 hours making sure there's almost nothing left to decide before the design starts. Most projects use one round; some use two; almost no project actually needs three.
IF "WordPress would be cheaper to maintain."
THEN
Cheaper at sticker price, more expensive over time (plugin patching, security, performance regression). Astro + Sanity has lower 5-year TCO for any site that doesn't need a marketplace of plugins.
COMMON QUESTIONS
TOOLS MENTIONED IN THIS POST
The kit referenced above
01
Astro
The default frontend stack for the four-page builds — fast, MDX-friendly, easy to hand off.
02
Sanity
Headless CMS we wire in for content editing. Quicker to spin up than WordPress.
03
Figma
Where the design lives. We hand over the working file, not a flattened export.
04
Vercel
Hosting. Client owns the account. We just deploy.
05
Lucide
Default icon library. Replaces hand-drawn iconography on every project.
No affiliate links. We name what we use, you decide.
FURTHER READING
Other people, smarter than us
Sources we leaned on, plus a couple we just like. None of these paid to be here.
- 01How a 4-page website is actually builtA List ApartClosest thing to our scoping doc in long-form essay form.
- 02Performance budgets that workSmashing MagazineThe Lighthouse-95-or-bust philosophy, articulated.
- 03Why fixed-scope winsBasecamp's Shape UpInfluenced how we write proposals more than any agency book.
UPDATES LOG
What's changed since publication
- Apr 7, 2026Original publication.
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