Ask five agencies what a website costs in Pakistan and you will get five answers between Rs 15,000 and Rs 500,000. That spread is not dishonesty — it is that "a website" describes everything from a one-page profile to a full booking system. Here is what each part actually costs, so you can tell which conversation you are in.
The costs that never change
Whatever you build, two things are always true. You need a domain name, paid yearly, and you need hosting, paid monthly or yearly. Together these are the cheapest part of the whole exercise — usually a few thousand rupees a year — and they are the part people wrongly try to save on.
- Domain. An annual fee. A .pk or .com.pk suits a business trading locally; a .com travels further. See current domain pricing.
- Hosting. From Rs 699 a month on our plans, including SSL, email and backups.
Option 1: build it yourself — Rs 10,000 to 25,000 in year one
Domain plus hosting plus your own time. WordPress is free, and a good free or low-cost theme will carry an ordinary business site perfectly well. This is the honest choice if you have some patience and your site is mainly a credibility page: who you are, what you sell, how to reach you.
The hidden cost is time. Expect a weekend to get something respectable, and accept that it will look like a template, because it is one.
Option 2: a freelancer — Rs 25,000 to 80,000
The most common route for small businesses. At the lower end you are buying theme installation and content entry. Toward the top you get custom layout work, proper mobile behaviour and basic SEO setup.
What separates a good outcome from a bad one is rarely the price. It is whether the scope was written down. "A website" is not a scope. "Five pages, contact form, WhatsApp button, Google Maps, mobile tested, delivered in three weeks" is.
Option 3: an agency — Rs 80,000 to 300,000+
Worth it when the website has a job beyond looking credible: taking bookings, selling products, integrating with your stock or accounting system. You are paying for design, project management, testing and someone accountable after launch.
If an agency quotes this range for a five-page brochure site, ask what the extra is buying. Sometimes the answer is good — research, copywriting, photography. Sometimes it is just overhead.
E-commerce costs more, and mostly not where you expect
An online store adds product photography, payment gateway setup, delivery integration and — the part that surprises people — ongoing operational work. Budget from Rs 150,000 to build, but plan for the running effort of stock, orders and returns. The build is the cheap half.
The running costs nobody mentions
- Domain renewal, yearly and non-negotiable. Let it lapse and your site and email both stop.
- Hosting, monthly or yearly.
- Maintenance. WordPress, themes and plugins need updating. Skipping this is the single most common reason Pakistani small-business sites get hacked.
- Changes. Prices, staff, services — someone has to edit them. Agree in advance whether that is you or the developer, and what it costs.
Where people waste money
- Cheap hosting on an overloaded server. Saving Rs 300 a month on a slow, oversold plan costs you customers who leave before the page loads.
- Paying for a custom design nobody needed. Most small businesses need clarity, not originality.
- Buying a package with hosting locked to the developer. If you cannot access your own hosting account, you do not really own your website. Always register the domain and hosting in your own name.
- Rebuilding instead of fixing. Slow sites are often fixable — our guide on speeding up a WordPress site covers the usual causes.
A realistic first-year budget
For a typical small business wanting a credible five-page site with its own email: a domain, a hosting plan from Rs 699 a month, and either your own weekend or Rs 25,000–60,000 for a freelancer. That is a working, professional presence for well under Rs 100,000 in year one, and a few thousand rupees a year to keep afterwards.
Start with the foundation you own: register your domain and pick a hosting plan. If you would rather we built it, our web development team works to a written scope and a fixed price.
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