How do web designers charge for a website?
What a web designer charges depends on the pricing model and the scope. Our own indicative packages start at THB 10,000 for a Starter site of up to five pages, THB 30,000 for a bilingual Business site and THB 50,000 for an online store, and your written quote sets the final price.
Other designers in Bangkok price a website in one of four ways: a fixed package, an hourly or day rate, a fee based on the value of the project to your business, or a monthly retainer.
The number you are quoted depends less on the designer's talent than on which model they use and how much risk they are willing to carry for you. A fixed package puts the risk of overruns on the designer. An hourly rate puts it on you. Value-based pricing ties the fee to what the site is expected to earn. A retainer spreads the cost over months. If you want the full buyer's view of the total budget, including domain, hosting and content, our guide on how much to make a website in Thailand covers it. This article looks at the seller's side: how the number gets built.
- Package: a set scope for a set price. Easy to compare, less flexible.
- Hourly or day rate: you pay for time spent. Flexible, harder to budget.
- Value-based: the fee reflects the business outcome. Often higher, sometimes worth it.
- Retainer: a monthly fee for ongoing work after launch.
What goes into a web design estimate?
Whatever the pricing model, a careful designer builds the estimate from the same parts. Knowing them helps you see where a quote is thin and where it is padded.
- Discovery. Calls, a questionnaire, a look at competitors and a sitemap. On a small site this is a few hours; on a bilingual site for a clinic group it can be days.
- Design. Layouts for the key page types, usually home, a service page, a contact page, and a blog or product page. Each round of revisions adds time.
- Build. Turning the design into a working site: templates, forms, booking or enquiry flows, a second language, payment and shipping setup for a store.
- Content. Often underestimated. Writing, translating English to Thai, sourcing photos and loading products all take hours that someone has to do.
- Testing. Phones first, because many Thai visitors arrive on mobile, then desktop, forms, speed and the cookie consent banner a PDPA-ready site needs.
- Project management. Messages, meetings, feedback rounds. A client who replies in one consolidated list costs less than one who sends thirty LINE messages.
- Contingency. A buffer for the unknowns, commonly hidden inside the other lines rather than shown.
Two designers can agree on every line and still quote differently because they judge the risk differently. The one who has built a WooCommerce store with PromptPay and Thai couriers before knows where the surprises are; the one who has not either pads the number or learns on your budget.
Package pricing
A package bundles a defined scope into one price. It is the easiest model to compare because you can put two packages side by side and check the page count, the platform and what is left out. The downside is that anything outside the package becomes an extra, so the value depends on how well the scope matches your business.
We use packages ourselves as a starting point. Our current website design cost is shown as indicative, one-time "from" prices:
- Starter, from THB 10,000: up to 5 pages with custom design, WordPress built mobile-first, contact, WhatsApp and LINE buttons, on-page SEO and PDPA cookie consent.
- Business, from THB 30,000: up to 15 pages in English and Thai with two revision rounds, a custom WordPress theme with no page builder, blog, forms, booking or enquiry flows, keyword mapping and schema markup.
- E-commerce, from THB 50,000: Shopify or WooCommerce, PromptPay, cards, COD and Thai couriers, product import and e-Tax invoice setup, staff training and a launch checklist.
The package tells you where a project begins. The final price is set in a written quote once we know your pages, languages and content. When you compare packages from different designers, check whether content loading, translation and revision rounds are in or out, because that is where most extras come from. The same logic applies to platforms: a store's running cost is only part of the picture, which is why we explain separately how much Shopify costs for a Thai store and how WordPress pricing splits into one-time and recurring costs.
Hourly and day rates
Time-based pricing means you pay for the hours or days the designer actually works. Rates vary widely in Bangkok depending on experience, language skills and whether you hire a freelancer or a studio, so treat any single "going rate" you read online with caution.
When hourly makes sense
- Small, open-ended jobs: fixing a broken form, adding a page, updating a plugin.
- Work where the scope genuinely cannot be known in advance, such as untangling an old site built by someone else.
- Ongoing tweaks where you want to pay only for what gets done.
When it does not
For a full new website, hourly billing leaves you with an open budget. Every extra feedback round, every late photo, every change of mind adds hours. If you do agree to hourly work, ask for an estimate range and a cap, and ask to be told before the cap is reached. The trade-off between the two contract types is laid out in more detail in our comparison of fixed-price vs hourly web projects.
Value-based pricing
Some designers price on what the site is worth to you rather than on the hours it takes. A booking site for a hotel that takes direct reservations instead of paying commission, or a store that will carry most of a shop's sales, is worth more to its owner than a five-page brochure site, even if the build effort is similar.
This is the main reason quotes for the same brief can differ several times over. One designer counts hours. Another counts the enquiries your site will bring in and prices a share of that. Neither is dishonest, but you should know which one you are talking to.
How to handle it as a buyer:
- Ask what the price is based on. A clear answer is a good sign.
- Ask what you get for the higher figure that the lower quote does not include: strategy work, copywriting, more design rounds, better testing.
- Compare scope line by line before comparing totals. Our guide on how to read a web design quote shows what to look for.
Platform builders sit at the other end of the scale: you pay a monthly subscription and do the work yourself. If you are weighing that route, see how much a website costs on Squarespace or Wix against a designed build.
Retainers and work after launch
A retainer is a fixed monthly fee for ongoing work. In the web world it usually covers updates, security patches, backups, small content changes and a set number of support hours. Some agencies also sell marketing retainers for SEO, ads or social media; those are a separate service with their own logic, and not something we offer.
What we do offer is website maintenance after launch, priced per site on request, because a two-page Starter site and a WooCommerce store with hundreds of products need very different care. If a designer quotes a low build price and a high compulsory monthly fee, add up twelve months before you compare.
Freelancer vs agency cost structure
A freelancer has low overheads and can often quote less, but one person covers design, build, testing and support, so availability is the risk. A studio or agency carries more costs: an office, several people, project management. That shows in the price, and you are paying for cover when someone is ill or busy. Neither is right for everyone; match the structure to how critical the site is to your business, and our guide on how to choose a web design partner helps with that decision.
If you are a designer: pricing your own work
If you are a freelancer working out how much to charge for web design, the most common mistake is pricing only the hours you spend designing and building. The hidden hours, meetings, revisions, chasing content, testing on phones, answering questions after launch, often add a large share on top.
- Track your time on two or three projects honestly, including messages and calls, before setting a package price.
- Write down what is included and what is not, especially revision rounds, translation and content loading.
- Price the risk: a new platform, a tight deadline or an unclear brief deserves a buffer.
- Put payment terms in writing before you start.
Underpricing does not win good clients. It wins rushed projects that you cannot afford to do well.
What should you ask about any price?
Before you accept a quote from anyone, us included, ask:
- Which pricing model is this, and what happens if the scope grows?
- How many pages, languages and revision rounds are included?
- Who writes and translates the content, and who loads it?
- Which platform, and who owns the hosting and domain accounts?
- What is left out: PDPA consent, forms, payment and courier setup, training?
- How is work after launch priced?
- What are the payment terms? Ours are set out in each written quote.
If you have a brief ready, you can ask for a price for your project and we will answer with a written quote you can compare against these questions.
