We wrote a broader guide to website pricing in South Africa a few months back. Since then we've split our own offering into two clear tracks, hand-coded HTML and CMS, and the question we get most now is simply: which one, and why does the price differ?
This guide answers that directly, with real numbers, page by page.
Two Ways to Build a Website, Two Different Price Curves
Broadly, every website you can buy falls into one of two build types:
- Hand-coded HTML: built line by line in code, no CMS underneath it. Faster, lighter, and every page is exactly what it needs to be and nothing more.
- CMS-based (content management system): built on a platform like WordPress, where you can log in and edit content yourself without touching code.
Neither one is universally "better." They solve different problems, and that's what drives the price difference.
Hand-Coded HTML Pricing
Our HTML track is priced by page count, since that's the main driver of build time:
- Landing page (1 page): R1,799
- 3-page site: R3,499
- 6-page site (most popular): R5,299
- 9 to 10-page site: R7,499
- E-commerce store: R7,999
- Enterprise / custom scope: Custom quote
This is the cheaper track overall because there's no CMS licensing, plugin ecosystem, or database layer to build and maintain, just clean code doing exactly one job.
CMS Pricing
The CMS track costs more at each tier because it includes the CMS setup itself (database, admin dashboard, content editor training) on top of the design work:
- 1-page CMS site: R1,899
- 3-page CMS site: R2,799
- 6-page CMS site: R4,299
- 9-page CMS site: R6,799
You're paying for the ability to log in and update your own content: new blog posts, price changes, new products, without calling us every time.
When Hand-Coded HTML Makes Sense
- Your content barely changes (a service business with a fixed set of pages)
- You want the fastest possible load time and PageSpeed score
- You'd rather send us an email for changes than manage a dashboard yourself
- Security matters to you and you want the smallest possible attack surface
When CMS Makes Sense
- You publish new content often: blog posts, new products, changing prices
- You want to make text and image edits yourself without waiting on us
- You're planning to grow the site significantly over time, more pages, more sections
- Multiple people on your team need to update the site
If you're not sure which one fits, ask yourself how often your website's content actually needs to change. Rarely, go HTML and save. Constantly, the CMS licence pays for itself in time saved.
What's Included at Every Tier
Regardless of which track or tier you choose, every build from us includes the basics that some cheaper providers quietly leave out:
- Mobile-first responsive design
- SSL certificate (https)
- Basic on-page SEO: meta titles, descriptions, schema markup
- Google Analytics setup
- Contact form with spam protection
- You own the domain, hosting, and all files, outright
What to Do Next
The right choice comes down to how your business actually uses its website, not which option sounds more impressive. If you're still weighing it up, read our custom vs templated comparison, or see the full pricing breakdown with every tier and what's included.
Not sure which track fits your business? Tell us what you need and we'll recommend the right one, honestly, even if it's the cheaper option.