What a website actually costs, from idea to launch

The short answer: what we charge

We bill in prepaid credits, bought one-off — no automatic charging, no auto-renewal. The currency follows the payment channel: US dollars through Stripe or PayPal, CNY through Alipay or WeChat Pay.

• Pro: ¥100 / $15, including 10,000 credits
• Business: ¥300 / $45, including 30,000 credits
• Starter: free, with 5,000 credits granted once at sign-up
• Credits are valid for 30 days from purchase; buy again any time, credits stack, and each purchase keeps its own expiry

But a website is six costs, not one

A site that actually goes live spends money in the places below. For each one I only cover how it is billed and what to ask — and I deliberately avoid inventing numbers, because domain and hosting prices vary enormously by region and provider.

• Domain: renewed yearly. Ask whether the first-year price and the renewal price match (plenty of cheap first years double afterwards), and whether privacy protection costs extra
• Hosting or server: monthly or yearly. Ask how much bandwidth is included, what overage costs, whether SSL is included and whether backups are extra
• The builder itself (our category): either prepaid credits or a monthly subscription. Ask whether it auto-renews and whether credits expire
• Assets: images, fonts, icons. Either shoot or license them yourself, or use assets that are explicitly free for commercial use. Ask what the licence covers — commercial use, modification
• Payment channel: a fee per transaction, and Stripe, PayPal and Alipay all differ. Ask about the rate, the settlement period, and whether the fee is returned on a refund
• Upkeep: changing copy, adding pages, running a campaign. Either do it yourself (spending credits) or pay someone per job or per year

The three costs people forget

Budgets usually blow up not because one line is expensive but because these get missed:

• Asset licensing: grabbing an image or font off the internet and using it commercially can come back at you — the money saved here is usually the most expensive
• Payment fees and FX: cross-border settlement costs a spread as well as a fee, so build it into your margin when pricing
• Rework: generating before the copy and product data are settled, then rewriting everything after launch, burns far more credits than thinking it through first

When to build it yourself, when to hire a team

Honestly, the answer differs by requirement — there is no point forcing one route:

• Do it yourself when: the requirement is clear, the site is mostly presentation and lead generation, you want to validate quickly, and budget is limited
• Hire a team when: the logic is complex (multi-role permissions, intricate billing, integrations with internal systems), a strict brand system already exists, and launch can wait a few weeks
• The middle path: build a working prototype on the platform first, use it to validate or to show investors, then decide whether to invest in custom development

The whole thing as a checklist

Before you discuss price, ask these six questions — they are what stops the cheap up-front price from becoming an expensive one later:

• What do the domain's first year and renewal cost? Is privacy extra?
• How much bandwidth, SSL and backup does hosting include, and what does overage cost?
• Does the builder auto-renew, and do credits expire?
• What does the licence on those images and fonts actually allow — commercial use?
• What is the payment rate and settlement period, and is the fee refunded on refunds?
• What does changing content after launch cost, and at what point does it become a new job?

FAQ

The three questions we hear most:

• One-off or subscription? — Ours is one-off with no auto-renewal. Both models exist; with a subscription, check whether it renews automatically and whether cancelling needs notice.
• What happens when credits run out? — Buy another batch. Credits stack and each purchase keeps its own 30-day window; nothing overwrites what you have left.
• Does changing content later cost anything? — It spends credits. So the cheapest approach is to settle your copy and product data first, then generate and iterate.

Next step

If you want to see how pricing and credits work, or start with the free tier, any of these will do.