When a business first gets in touch, one of the early questions is often whether we have packages. It's a fair thing to ask. Most people have bought a website before, and the last studio may well have handed over three tiers with a price beside each and let them pick (the middle one, nearly always). Our proposals start somewhere else, with a conversation about what the site needs to earn for the business, and the plan gets built to the budget you're working with.
Why tiers misprice most businesses
A tier sheet is quick to quote and easy to sell, and it keeps the first call short, all of which helps the studio far more than the business paying for the site. Take an eight-person consultancy that wins most of its work through referrals. Its site has to hold up when a prospect goes looking after an introduction. A sixty-person firm pitching for government tenders needs its site to do a fair amount of pre-qualification before anyone picks up the phone. Put both on the same tier and one overpays for features it will never use, while the other finds out halfway through the build that the tier never covered what it needed.
Tiers also price the wrong things. A package is built from countable units such as pages, revisions and "up to five CMS items", because units are easy to put in a table. The cost of a website sits elsewhere: in how many distinct templates the content needs, how the CMS is structured for the people who will edit it, how the site connects to the systems behind it and how much thinking happens before anything is designed. Two ten-page sites can differ in cost by a factor of three, and a package that charges for both by the page has to overcharge one of them to cover the other.
Starting from commercial goals
So the first conversation is about commercial goals. Over the next two or three years, what does the site need to do: bring in enquiries, take pressure off a stretched sales team, carry online revenue or justify a price that sits above the rest of the category? The answer decides where the budget goes first, and it shapes the build far more than page count does.
We also look at who the site has to convince and what they need to see before they act. A procurement officer comparing three suppliers wants capability statements, case studies by sector and evidence of process. A homeowner spending serious money on a considered purchase wants to feel the quality of the thing before they ever see a price. Those are different sites, even when the page count is identical, and the plan follows the buyer.
Why we ask about budget early
We ask what you're planning to spend in the first or second conversation, and some people are wary of answering. The worry is understandable: name a number and the quote will rise to meet it. In practice, the budget is the most useful constraint in the whole project. It tells us how much of the commercial plan can arrive at launch and how much should be sequenced for later, and it lets us say early whether the site you need fits the money available.
A budget range is enough. If you don't have one yet, the conversation about what the site needs to do tends to produce one, and our guide to what a website costs in NZ sets out the market ranges for each type of project if you want a reference point first.
What the budget changes
From there, the budget sets the shape of the plan. At $15,000 (all our figures are ex GST) we'd build a smaller site that does one or two jobs properly, with the CMS set up so a case study library or a careers section can be added later without rebuilding anything. At $60,000 there's room for more page templates, a longer strategy phase at the front and more integration work for us to scope and manage. Both sites get built to the same standard (we only work to one), and the budget decides how much of the plan arrives at launch and how much is sequenced for later. If a budget is too tight for the site a business needs, we'll say that before anything is signed.
Sequencing instead of cutting
When the plan is larger than the budget, we split it into phases rather than thinning everything out. Phase one is the part of the site that does the most commercial work, built properly, with the structure underneath designed to take what comes next. Phase two might be a resource library, a second audience, a trade portal or an integration with your CRM, scoped and priced as its own piece of work once the first phase is live and producing data. A business gets a finished, working site at launch and a clear plan for what follows, and it can fund the second phase from what the first one earns.
What a proposal looks like
What comes back to you is a proposal built around your business: the strategy and positioning we've worked out, an itemised scope, a fixed price and our ongoing support rates for after launch. Larger or less defined projects, multi-phase commerce builds especially, get a rate guide with ranges for each stage instead of a single number. Putting a fixed figure on work that hasn't been scoped yet would only move the risk onto you. There's more on how fixed pricing works once scope is agreed if you want the mechanics.
Every proposal follows the same order. It opens with our read of your business and what the site has to do for it, so you can check we've understood the brief before you look at a number. Then comes the scope, item by item, with templates, CMS collections, integrations and content responsibilities listed out. The investment follows, then the support rates that apply after launch, a timeline broken into phases and the next steps to get started. The scope is specific enough that you could hand it to another studio and ask them to quote the same work. Our piece on how Skyrocket scopes a website project covers how we get from the first conversation to that document.
What happens after launch
The proposal includes our support rates because a website keeps needing decisions after it goes live. Some clients take a monthly support plan, while others call on us for specific pieces of work and run the site day to day themselves. Either way, the team that will edit the site is trained properly before handover, so the business can run it without us. Third-party costs such as platform subscriptions, apps and stock imagery are passed through at cost, so the running costs of the site are visible from day one.
Heritage Saunas, built around one goal
Heritage Saunas is the clearest example I have of a site planned around a single commercial goal. The brief was to win enquiries from architects and high-end homeowners before a single sauna had been built, and every part of the site was planned around reaching that audience. Within three months of launch, with no paid advertising, it was bringing in two to three qualified leads a week, and it converts enquiries at 4.6% against a 2.7% industry benchmark.
A package would have priced that site by its page count. The work that produced those numbers sat in deciding what an architect needed to feel and read before recommending an unknown brand to a client, and that work only gets done when the project is priced around the goal. If you're planning a site and want to know what yours should cost, get in touch and we'll start with what it needs to earn.
Common questions
Does Skyrocket offer website packages or fixed price tiers?
Skyrocket doesn't sell packages. Every project is scoped against the business's commercial goals and budget, then priced from that scope. Standard projects receive an itemised scope and a fixed price, and larger or multi-phase projects receive a rate guide with ranges for each stage. All Skyrocket pricing is ex GST, and the proposal also states the support rates that apply after launch.
Why do web agencies ask for my budget before quoting?
A budget tells the studio how much of your plan can be delivered at launch and how much should be sequenced into later phases. Without it, a studio has to guess, and you end up with a quote built for a project you didn't intend to buy. Giving a range early also means you hear quickly if the budget won't cover what the site needs.
What should a website proposal include instead of a package?
A useful proposal sets out the studio's understanding of your business and what the site has to achieve, an itemised scope listing templates, CMS collections, integrations and content responsibilities, a fixed price or rate guide, post-launch support rates and a phased timeline. It should be specific enough that another studio could quote the same scope. Anything vaguer than that makes change requests likely later.
Can a website be built in phases to fit a smaller budget?
Phasing works well when the budget is smaller than the plan. The first phase covers the part of the site that does the most commercial work, built to a full standard with the structure designed to take later additions. Later phases, such as a resource library, a trade portal or a CRM integration, are scoped and priced separately once the first phase is live. The business gets a working site at launch and can fund the next phase from its results.
Is a custom-scoped website more expensive than a package?
It costs what the scope requires, which can be more or less than a package price for the same page count. A business with simple needs can end up paying less, because it isn't funding features bundled into a tier. A business with complex needs pays more upfront, and avoids the change requests that follow when a package turns out not to cover what the site has to do.
