Web Design Pricing: How Much to Charge in 2026
As a web designer, your prices come down to what your time, energy, and expertise are worth. For Circle partners, project pricing varies with the lowest projects averaging $2,160 and the highest averaging $8,179.
Pricing isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach, and finding the right balance that reflects your value while remaining competitive can be a challenge. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to reevaluate your pricing strategy, understanding the factors that influence pricing and establishing a pricing model is essential for the success and sustainability of your web design business.
Choose your web design pricing model
A quick search will reveal that there’s a ton of variation in what designers charge for a website and any related services. Depending on a designer’s experience and the client’s needs, web design projects can look quite different when compared side by side. The following can help you decide where your service offering falls on the pricing spectrum.
Hourly vs. flat-rate pricing
There are two approaches to charging for web design services: hourly and flat-rate pricing. Charging by the hour offers more flexibility, ensuring you get paid for the time you put into the project. It’s an ideal pricing model for projects with evolving scopes or frequent changes. If you go this route, incorporate other elements of your work into the rate, like the cost of your workspace, stock photos, and even electricity.
Charging a flat rate can be more predictable, as the price is agreed upon upfront. Flat-rate pricing is a great way to set your clients’ expectations ahead of time. It’s ideal for well-defined projects with a clear scope, minimizing the risk of unanticipated expenses. Ninety percent of Circle partners price at least some of their work on a per-project basis.
Some designers and agencies package their services for a flat rate, including a certain number of pages, limited period of support, and a specific number of revisions in the cost. The benefit here is avoiding scope creep, or the progressive addition of work that wasn’t originally part of the project brief. Anything beyond the initially agreed-upon scope of work can earn you an additional fee.
Regardless of whether you choose to charge by the hour or by the project, you’ll want to have a sense of how long it takes you to do your work and what your time is worth.
Check what competitors charge
While it shouldn’t be the only factor you consider when defining your pricing, it’s helpful to know what other web professionals charge for similar work. Potential clients are likely to shop around, so you should do your own research to understand where your offering falls in their set of considerations. If your prices are a little higher, be confident when explaining why your work is more expensive. If you’re charging less, it may be time to reevaluate your pricing strategy.
Account for your skill level
Assessing your own skill level can be tricky, but perceived skill level significantly impacts how much you charge for your work. Consider how many years of direct experience you have in web design, as well as the depth of your design, technical, and content management skills. Take a critical look at the websites you’ve already built and ask yourself how they stack up to what your competitors are creating.
If you’re open to constructive feedback, share your work with fellow designers, such as in the Circle Forum, to get input from peers. You can even send a survey at the end of each project to gauge your clients’ opinions about the quality of your work. Gather information from every source you can and use it to identify areas for improvement.
Know your costs
You can’t identify your profits until you know what it costs to do your work and run your business. Understanding your expenses is key to setting up an effective and profitable strategy. Consider where you work and if you use third-party services for stock photography or project management. Keep a record of every work-related cost, so you can account for all expenses when deciding how much to charge.
Factor in outsourcing costs
If your client expects logos and copywriting for their website, you may find yourself leaning on other specialists to support the project. If you outsource any part of the website-building process, factor those costs into what you charge. As your business grows, you may consider hiring full-time employees, increasing your capacity but also adding salary and benefits costs—all of which should be reflected in your pricing.
Budget for your workspace
Whether you work at home, in a shared workspace, or a private office, your workspace has a cost. Estimate the number of projects you’ll do over the year, and factor any workspace costs into your price estimates.
Plan for equipment and software costs
The cost of laptops, monitors, printers, and any other equipment you use all comes out of your own pocket. Consider the costs of maintaining (and eventually replacing) these items in your prices. Plan to save enough to replace your equipment regularly so you can stay as productive as possible.
Other software or service costs to consider include:
Design tools
Project management software
Invoicing software or services
Antivirus software
Time-tracking software
A desk
A chair
External hard drive for backups
Cell phone
Market your services
Marketing your web design business takes time and resources, so budget for both when setting your rates. Whether that’s running paid ads, creating content, or spending time on outreach, factor those costs into your pricing the same way you would software or workspace expenses.
Know when to adjust your rate
Part of knowing your costs is also understanding what the minimum fee you’re willing to accept is for your services. You can think of this as the wholesale price. In cost-plus pricing, this is where you’d add a profit margin to decide on the final retail price for your products or services. Once you’ve defined these baselines, you can decide when and how far to stray from your standard pricing to win a project.
Charge more for add-ons
As your skills and knowledge broaden, you can add to your service offering and charge more for advanced features or optional add-ons. Here are some common add-ons for Squarespace web designers:
Custom domain setup
Acuity Scheduling setup
Handoff training for clients
Email Campaigns setup
Put your pricing in writing
Get a contract
Regardless of how and what you charge, get your terms in writing. A contract can help you set clear expectations and ensure that no surprises come up in the process. Include topics like price, timeline, revision terms, and payment process (both for your services and the Squarespace subscription).
Invest in yourself
A business is only as good as the people running it. You should continually reinvest in yourself and your growth. The stronger you are in skills like design, communication, and marketing, the more value you’ll add for your clients. Attend in-person or online events to continue honing your craft.
Revisit your pricing over time
Your pricing should evolve as your costs, skills, and service offerings do. Revisit your rates whenever your expenses change, you take on more advanced work, or you start offering add-ons you haven’t priced before. The price that works for your business next year should look different from the one you started with.
Related resources:
Dear Designer: How Much Should I Charge for a Squarespace Website?
Dear Designer: Can I Really Make a Living Building Squarespace Websites?
Why You Should Raise Your Prices with Every Web Design Project
This article was originally published on May 26, 2023. It has since been updated.
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