Guides for business owners

Price ranges by website type

Simple one-page business site (bio link)

PKR 25,000 – 40,000. Covers a small business or personal brand that needs one link for their Instagram bio: a short about section, services list, contact buttons, and WhatsApp CTA. Mobile-first, custom design, domain setup included in guidance.

Restaurant or food business website

Custom quote. Full menu with categories and photos, opening hours, Google Maps, WhatsApp ordering button, and optional pre-order section. Price depends on menu size and number of food photos to optimise.

Salon or beauty brand website

Custom quote. Services list with prices, portfolio gallery, booking CTAs, hours, and location. Bridal package pages and before-and-after galleries add scope.

Landing page (campaign or product launch)

PKR 25,000 – 45,000. Single focused page for a specific offer, campaign, or event. Price depends on number of sections and whether form or WhatsApp flow integration is required.

E-commerce with WhatsApp ordering

PKR 45,000 – 80,000. Product catalogue with categories, photos, pricing, and WhatsApp order buttons. Suitable for businesses with up to 100–200 products and moderate order volume.

Full cart-and-checkout e-commerce store

PKR 80,000 – 180,000+. Full store with cart, checkout, payment gateway (JazzCash, EasyPaisa, Stripe), order management, and admin panel. Price depends heavily on product count, payment requirements, and custom features.

Custom web application or software

PKR 120,000 – 500,000+. Applications with user accounts, databases, dashboards, APIs, or complex business logic. Quoted individually after detailed requirements discussion.

What affects the price

The main factors are: number of distinct pages or sections, whether custom photography or illustration is needed, the number of features (booking, ordering, payment, login), the complexity of the design brief, and the developer’s experience and support quality. A cheap website that needs rebuilding in a year costs more than a proper one built once. Cheap Pakistani web development often means a WordPress template with your name swapped in — not a custom site designed for your brand and audience.

Domain and hosting costs

A .com domain costs PKR 2,000 – 3,500 per year depending on the registrar. A .pk domain is PKR 1,500 – 2,500 per year. Hosting costs vary: static sites on Netlify or Cloudflare Pages can be free; shared hosting (cPanel) runs PKR 3,000 – 8,000/year; cloud hosting for dynamic sites runs PKR 6,000 – 20,000/year. I help you choose the right tier for your actual needs and traffic expectations.

Cost drivers

Roles/permissions, mobile use, reporting, migrations, and automation. Start with MVP stages, then expand.

Step one: check live work, not screenshots

Screenshots and mockups are easy to fabricate. A live website is not. Ask for links to recent projects and open each one on your phone. Does it load quickly on mobile data? Is the design clearly custom or an obvious template? Does it look like something a real business uses, or a demo that was never maintained? If a developer cannot point to at least three or four live sites from the past year, they either have limited experience or the sites are not actually their work.

While reviewing their work, look for: mobile layout quality (most Pakistani customers browse on phones), page load speed, content quality, and whether the contact and ordering flows actually work. A beautiful design that has a broken WhatsApp button is not a finished site.

Red flags to watch for

• No live portfolio — only screenshots, Canva mockups, or templates shown as their own work
• Vague pricing — “it depends” without being able to give a price range after hearing your requirements
• Keeping the domain or code — any developer who wants to retain ownership of your domain or code after delivery is a major red flag; you must own your domain and your files
• Extremely low quotes — PKR 3,000 to 10,000 for a “custom website” usually means a template with your logo; expect to rebuild within a year
• No response protocol — no clarity on how long revisions take, how many revisions are included, or what happens if you need changes after launch
• Overpromising timelines — “ready in two days” for a proper multi-section site is almost certainly a template, not a custom build

Questions to ask before you hire

Before committing to any developer, ask: What is included in the price and what costs extra? Who buys and owns the domain? Who controls the hosting account? How many rounds of revisions are included? What is your process for collecting my content? What is the exact delivery timeline? How do you handle changes needed after launch? What does the site look like on an iPhone SE versus a desktop browser? What happens if I need to update my menu or prices later?

A good developer gives confident, specific answers to all of these. A developer who is vague about ownership, pricing, or process is not ready to be hired. See my client guide for how I answer these questions for my own projects — use it as a baseline for evaluating anyone.

Defining the difference clearly

A website is a public-facing destination: it shows who you are, what you offer, where you are located, and how to contact or buy from you. It is primarily read-only from the customer’s perspective, with interaction limited to filling a form or tapping a WhatsApp button. Most businesses — restaurants, salons, tutors, shops, clinics — need exactly this.

Custom software (or a web application) is an interactive system that stores, processes, and manages data. It has user accounts, databases, business logic, and workflows. Examples include: an order management dashboard where your team marks orders as fulfilled; a booking system with a live calendar and staff allocation; a multi-vendor marketplace where sellers manage their own inventory; a patient records system for a clinic; or a custom CRM for tracking customer relationships. These systems require significantly more engineering and cost accordingly.

When a website is enough

A website is the right tool when your business needs: an online presence customers can find and share; a menu, service list, or portfolio that answers common questions; contact and booking CTAs via WhatsApp and Instagram; and basic SEO so you appear in Google for your local service category. This covers the overwhelming majority of small and medium businesses in Pakistan — food, beauty, fitness, education, healthcare, and retail with simple stock.

If your operations can be managed by one person checking a WhatsApp inbox and a shared spreadsheet, you do not yet need software. The most common mistake I see is businesses building expensive custom software before they have validated their model and built consistent demand. Build the website, get customers, then let operational pain tell you where software is actually needed.

When custom software is the right next step

Consider custom software when: your operations involve multiple users who need to access and update shared data simultaneously; you have an Excel sheet that a team uses to manage orders, inventory, or appointments and it has become a bottleneck; you are building a platform where other businesses or users create accounts and manage their own content; your transaction volume makes manual processing unsustainable; or you are building a product (SaaS, marketplace) rather than a service business. In each case, the trigger is a real operational problem — not an idea that sounds technically exciting.

I build both websites and custom software. For clients who are unsure which they need, I give an honest recommendation. Often the right answer is “website now, software in six months when you reach X volume.” See the custom software service page for what types of applications I build and what they typically cost.

Choose WordPress when

You need many editors, a huge plugin ecosystem, or your team already runs WordPress well.

Choose custom when

You want a fast, branded site, fewer security/plugin headaches, and a developer who owns the stack — ideal for most SMB brochure and booking sites I ship.