For businesses that need to look like the best in their category — not just rank in it. Two tiers — Premium at $8,000–$12,000 and Luxury from $20,000 — and a plain account of what separates them.
If your market is won on speed and search visibility, our standard build is the honest answer and costs less. Design-led work earns its money when the buyer is comparing you on how you look before they compare you on anything else.
Worth it when
- Your buyer judges credibility visually before they call — medical, legal, hospitality, high-end trades
- Your average ticket is large enough that a few extra jobs cover the build
- You're the most expensive option in your market and the site has to justify that
- You're running multiple locations and need one system, not five sites
- The site is the sales channel, not a brochure supporting one
Not worth it when
- You mainly need to show up in the map pack — that's SEO and GBP work, not design
- Your ticket is small and volume-driven; put the difference into ad spend
- You need to launch in under three weeks
- You have no photography and no budget to produce any
- Nobody internally can give feedback and approve rounds on schedule
Every tier is Next.js on edge infrastructure, sub-second loads, schema, and a migration that keeps your rankings. What scales is the design and content depth — and at the top, production.
Premium
The tier most businesses should buy: a full custom site with real design depth and copy written from scratch.
- Fully custom design — no template, no theme reskinned
- 10–25 pages — a page per service and per city
- Copywriting written from scratch, not rewritten
- Motion and interaction designed section by section
- Art direction for photography — what to shoot and why
- 3 revision rounds + a 30-day post-launch window
Luxury
For when original production, custom functionality, or multi-location architecture is genuinely in scope.
- Everything in Premium, plus:
- Original photo and video production — shoot days and edit
- Custom functionality — portals, calculators, integrations
- Multi-location or franchise architecture, 25+ pages
- WCAG AA audit and a dedicated project manager
- 90-day post-launch support
Premium is a range because the number lands on page count and how much copy has to be written from nothing. Luxury has no upper figure printed because it would be dishonest to invent one — it starts at $20,000 and where it lands depends on how many shoot days and how much custom functionality are in scope. Either way you get an itemised quote after the strategy call, before you commit to anything.
Any agency can say "premium." Ask what it buys in hours. Here's what actually moves our number — and what doesn't.
Original production
A shoot day plus editing is real cost before anyone touches code. It's the biggest legitimate line item in a five-figure build — and the one most agencies charge for while quietly using stock.
Copy written from nothing
Twenty pages of original copy is weeks, not an afternoon. Rewriting what you already have is a fraction of that — which is why it sits in the lower tier.
Custom functionality
Portals, calculators, booking logic, CRM and EMR integrations. That's software development, and it's priced like software, not like pages.
Scale and architecture
Multi-location and franchise systems, 25+ pages, migrating a hundred URLs without losing a ranking. Page count alone is weak justification; architecture at scale isn't.
What doesn't justify it
A flashier hero, a better type pairing, more Figma polish. Generously that's a few thousand dollars of work. If a five-figure quote rests on those, you're funding a brand, not a build.
The reason design-led builds cost more is that two full phases happen before a line of code is written. Skip them and you get a template with your logo on it.
Discovery
Your market, your competitors, your buyer, and what they compare you against. We come back with what the site has to accomplish and where the budget should sit — including telling you if a cheaper tier is the right call.
Design
Art direction, then full-fidelity designs of every unique page before build. You approve what it looks like while changes are still cheap — three rounds on Premium, and as many as Luxury needs.
Content
Copy and, at Luxury, the shoot. Written to convert and structured so Google and AI search can read, trust, and cite it — answer-first, with schema underneath.
Build
Next.js on edge infrastructure. Sub-second loads, green Core Web Vitals, accessible from the ground up, booking and call tracking wired in from day one.
Launch & support
Every old URL mapped 1:1 and script-verified so nothing orphans. Then a support window — 30 days on Premium, 90 on Luxury — to fix, tune, and hand over cleanly.
The motion on this page, the load time, the type, the way sections resolve as you scroll — that's the work, on our own site, in your browser right now. Everything below is live and clickable.
Designed and built in-house on the same stack every tier above uses. Green Core Web Vitals, accessible without an overlay widget, no page builder anywhere in it.
Real client sites, real domains — plumbing, roofing, contracting, detailing, insurance, and our own SaaS product. See the portfolio →
A full rebuild off a departing agency's WordPress with every URL preserved — then 18 new jobs from Google calls in 21 days. Case study →
Brand-new domain for a contractor with zero web presence — page 1 of Google in 30 days, map-pack #2 within 60. Case study →
Straight with you: these are engineering-led builds — the tier system on this page is newer than the case studies behind it, and we're not going to dress them up as something they weren't. What they prove is that the build quality and the migration safety are real. The design depth is what this page is selling on top of that, and this site is where you can judge it.
Luxury web design — common questions
How much does a premium or luxury website cost?
Ours run $8,000 and up, in two tiers. Premium is $8,000–$12,000: a full custom site, 10 to 25 pages, copy written from scratch, and motion designed section by section. Luxury starts at $20,000 and is quoted per project — that tier exists for original photo and video production, custom functionality like portals and calculators, and multi-location architecture. Industry-wide, boutique studios run $6K–$15K and high-end shops quote $50K+; most of that spread is process depth and production cost, not page count.
How is this different from your standard web design service?
The engineering is identical — same Next.js build, same sub-second loads, same schema and city-page architecture you'll read about on our web design page. What you're buying here is design and content hours on top of that. Our standard build runs $3,500–$10,000 and puts its hours into structure and ranking; Premium starts at $8,000 and puts them into custom design, original copy, and motion. The overlap at the top of that range is real, and the difference there is where the hours go, not how many. If you mainly need to rank and book work, the standard build is the honest recommendation and we'll tell you so on the call.
What actually justifies a five-figure website?
Hours you can count, not adjectives. At a blended senior rate, $10,000 is roughly 65 hours of work and $20,000 is roughly 130 — a full month of one person's time, or a small team for a couple of weeks. The things that actually consume that many hours are original photo and video production, copywriting written from nothing across 20-plus pages, custom functionality like portals and calculators, and multi-location architecture. That list is exactly what separates Luxury from Premium, and it is why the jump is a real jump rather than a markup. Design-forwardness on its own doesn't get there: a nicer hero and a better type pairing is a few thousand dollars of work, not fifteen. If a quote can't be traced to specific deliverables, you're paying for the agency's brand — so ask any agency to break their number into hours and line items. Including us.
Why would I not buy the most expensive tier?
Because for most local businesses Luxury wouldn't pay for itself. It is defensible when the website is the sales channel, when your average ticket is large enough that a handful of extra jobs covers the build, or when you're running multiple locations. A single-location business with a modest average ticket gets more return from Premium plus ad spend than from Luxury. We'd rather size the build to the math than sell you the top of the menu — and on the call we will tell you which of the two you actually need.
How long does a build take?
Premium is 5–8 weeks and Luxury is 10–16. Design-led builds take longer than our standard 2–4 week engineering builds because discovery, art direction, and revision rounds are real calendar time — and production, if it's in scope, depends on weather and schedules. If you have a hard launch date, say so on the call and we'll tell you honestly whether it's reachable.
Will I lose my Google rankings if I rebuild?
Not if the migration is done right, and this is where most rebuilds go wrong. We archive the old site, map every URL 1:1 or 301 it precisely, and verify with a script that not a single old URL is orphaned. Our last major migration moved ~40 pages with zero lost rankings.
Do you build on WordPress?
No. Next.js on edge infrastructure — the stack the fastest sites on the internet use. It's why our builds load in under a second and score green on Core Web Vitals without a plugin stack that breaks every update. Accessibility is built in from the start too: semantic structure, keyboard navigation, contrast and focus states, and never an overlay widget.
Do I own the site when it's done?
Yes — the code, the content, and the domain. No proprietary builder you're locked into and no hostage situation if you leave. Hosting and ongoing management are separate and optional.
Tell us the market and we'll tell you which tier you actually need.
A free strategy call, an itemised quote, and an honest answer — including when the cheaper build is the right one.