The short answer
It depends. But that's not helpful, so here's the longer answer.
Website pricing in South Africa falls into three broad tiers. Where your business sits depends on what you actually need - not what someone wants to sell you. We'll walk through each tier honestly, including our own pricing, so you can make a decision based on facts rather than sales pitches.
Tier 1: Template and DIY sites (R1,500 - R10,000)
This is the Wix, Squarespace, and cheap WordPress territory. You pick a template, drop in your content, and you're live. Some freelancers offer this as a done-for-you service at the lower end of this range.
What you get:
- A functional website that looks decent on day one
- Basic pages: home, about, contact, maybe a gallery
- Hosting usually included in a monthly subscription
- Drag-and-drop editing so you can update it yourself
What you don't get:
- Custom design that reflects your brand specifically
- Performance optimisation for South African mobile networks
- Proper SEO setup beyond the absolute basics
- Someone to call when something breaks
- Structured data for AI search engines like Perplexity and ChatGPT
Who this suits:
Template sites serve a purpose. If you're a one-person operation just getting started and need something online quickly, a template site is better than no site at all. We'd rather you have a Wix site than just a Facebook page.
But if your business is established and your website is a genuine sales tool - a guesthouse taking bookings, a wine farm attracting visitors, a restaurant filling tables - a template site will hold you back within a year or two.
Tier 2: Mid-market specialists like us (R12,000 - R45,000)
This is where we sit. It's also where most small to medium businesses in hospitality, food, and wine should be looking.
At this tier, you're working with a specialist who understands your industry, builds on professional platforms, and delivers a site that performs - not just one that looks good in a screenshot.
What you get with Moducraft:
- Custom design tailored to your business and audience
- Built on Statamic, Laravel, or WordPress depending on what suits your needs
- Mobile-first development (not just "responsive" - actually designed for phones first)
- Performance optimisation for South African conditions
- SEO foundations including structured data and technical setup
- Content migration from your existing site
- Training so you can manage your own content
- Clear scope document before we start: what's included and what's not
Our specific pricing:
- Site Refresh - R12,000. Your existing site redesigned and rebuilt on a modern platform. Same content, better everything else.
- Site Rebuild - R25,000 to R45,000. A full project with strategy, custom design, development, and content. Where you land in this range depends on scope.
Where you sit in the rebuild range:
- R25,000 - R30,000: A five to eight page site with custom design, contact forms, a gallery, and solid SEO. Typical for a guesthouse, small wine farm, or single-location restaurant.
- R30,000 - R38,000: Everything above plus more complex features like an integrated wine list, multi-location content, event listings, or a simple online ordering flow.
- R38,000 - R45,000: A larger site with custom functionality, multiple content types, advanced integrations, or e-commerce elements.
We scope every project properly before quoting. No surprises halfway through.
Tier 3: Enterprise agencies (R150,000+)
The big agencies in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Teams of ten to twenty people, boardroom presentations, brand workshops, and project timelines measured in months.
What you get:
- Large teams with dedicated project managers, designers, developers, and strategists
- Extensive brand strategy and research phases
- Complex custom development and integrations
- Enterprise-grade hosting and support
What you should know:
This tier makes sense for large businesses with complex needs - corporate sites, large e-commerce operations, multi-brand portfolios. If you're a wine farm or a guesthouse, you're paying for overhead that doesn't benefit you.
We've seen small hospitality businesses spend R200,000 on a site they could have had built for R35,000 - with the same result for their actual customers. Agency size doesn't equal quality.
The ongoing costs people forget
The build is only part of it. Every website needs ongoing attention:
- Hosting: R100 to R500 per month for most small business sites
- Domain renewal: R100 to R300 per year
- SSL certificate: Usually included with modern hosting
- Updates and security: Someone needs to keep the software current
- Content updates: New photos, seasonal menus, rate changes
This is where care plans come in. Ours start at R3,000 per month for the Care Plan (hosting, updates, security, small content changes), R7,500 per month for the Growth Plan (everything in Care plus SEO, monthly reporting, and content strategy), and R15,000 per month for the Strategic Plan (everything in Growth plus GEO optimisation, conversion work, and priority support).
Month-to-month. No lock-in contracts. You stay because it works, not because you're stuck.
How to decide what you need
Ask yourself three questions:
- Is your website a cost or an investment? If your site directly brings in bookings, orders, or enquiries, invest properly. If it's just a digital business card, keep it simple.
- What does your competition look like? Search for your type of business in your area. If the top results have professional sites and yours doesn't, you're losing customers to them.
- Do you have time to manage it yourself? If no, factor in a care plan. A neglected website is worse than no website.
What to do next
If you're trying to figure out where your business fits, we're happy to have a straight conversation about it. No sales pitch, no pressure. Sometimes we tell people a template site is genuinely the right move for where they are right now.
Have a look at our services page for the full breakdown of what's included at each level, or get in touch and we'll point you in the right direction - even if that direction isn't us.