It is the first question almost everybody asks, and the one most web design firms dodge. Here is an honest version for the Dominican Republic, with the figures we actually work to and an explanation of what moves them.
The ranges, without hedging
- A focused small business site, four to six pages: $600 to $2,500
- An online shop: $1,500 to $6,000, depending on range, delivery rules and stock integration
- A single page that does one job properly: from $119
- Ongoing care, updates and hosting: $40 to $120 a month
- Photography, if you need it shot: budget separately, because it is a variable you can control
All of those figures are what you pay here, in US dollars, with ITBIS at 18% broken out on the invoice so it can go into your accounts without anyone having to reverse-engineer it. Most businesses in this market trade in dollars — the peso moves, the prices do not — so ask for the quotation in the currency your books are kept in.
What actually moves a quote
- How many pages, and how much of the writing has to be done from scratch
- How many languages, and whether anyone can actually write them
- What the site has to connect to — booking, payments, stock, a channel manager for rooms, a property listing feed
- Photography, and how far the existing library is from what it needs to be
- Whether it is a new build, a rebuild, or a rescue of something that has gone wrong
Where spending more genuinely pays
Photography, almost always. A site built around real pictures of your premises, your work and your people outperforms a prettier site with a stock library, at any budget. Then writing — a page that says what you charge, what you cover and what happens next will out-convert a vague one every time. Then speed. Design flourishes are the cheapest thing on the list and the first thing nobody notices is missing.
The costs people forget
A domain, typically $10 to $20 a year. Hosting, often included in a care plan or a few dollars a month on its own. And photography, if nobody in the business has a decent camera and a free afternoon — which for a lot of businesses here is the single largest gap between the site they have and the site they wanted.
Then the ongoing question. $40 to $120 a month covers updates, backups, monitoring and every small change, and a site with nobody looking after it degrades quietly: a certificate expires, a plugin stops being maintained, a form stops sending and nobody tells you for six weeks. Budget for it, or accept the risk deliberately. And budget for the geography: a site nobody can reach during an apagón is a phone that does not get answered either.
On suspiciously cheap quotes
The cheapest quote is rarely the best value, and the giveaway is usually speed. A site that genuinely needs photographs, writing, two languages and a booking integration cannot be built in three days. Anyone who says it can is reselling something that already exists, and you will recognise it — because so does everybody else here.
The best way to a real number is a short conversation about your business, followed by a fixed written quote you can read in full. If you already have a site, ask for a free audit first — sometimes the honest answer is that it needs a repair rather than a rebuild, and that is a much better day for your budget.