Building a professional website is a significant investment for any business. But website development costs can vary widely depending on whether you hire a local web design agency or freelance developers based overseas. In this article, we’ll compare average website costs when working with Australian web professionals versus outsourcing the work to freelancers in the Philippines.
The Cost of Local Australian Web Designers
Hiring a web design agency in Australia to build a small business website typically costs between $3,000-$15,000 on average based on the site’s complexity. Larger corporate and ecommerce sites often exceed $100k when you factor in things like custom features, web applications, ongoing hosting, maintenance, and support.
The exact price depends on the scope of work, including:
- The number of pages/templates to design
- Whether you need a content management system installed
- Ecommerce functionality like a shopping cart and payment gateway
- Custom programming for advanced interactivity and features
- Search engine optimization during development
- The complexity of information architecture
- Hosting, updates, and ongoing maintenance fees
As a rough guide, basic brochure websites with around 5 pages can be developed for $3,000-$5,000 in Australia. Medium sized sites with up to 15 pages tend to cost $5,000-$10,000. More advanced functionality like booking systems, user logins, and integration with other software can raise the cost to $15,000-$25,000 or more.
Why Website Creation is More Expensive with Australian Providers
The higher prices charged by Australian web studios and freelancers comes down to the significantly higher labor costs compared to overseas. Australian developers have much higher median salaries than those in developing countries. The latest data shows IT professionals in Australia earning over $85,000 per year on average.
At Australian agency rates of $100-$150 per hour, even a very basic, 5-page website would take at least 30-40 hours for a single developer to design, program, and launch. This adds up to $3,000-$6,000 very quickly even on a small project.
There are also higher business costs in Australia compared to outsourcing overseas. Overheads like taxes, software licenses, office space rental, hardware, utilities, administration plus margins all influence the minimum rates local agencies can realistically charge while remaining profitable.
The Cost Savings from Outsourcing Website Design to the Philippines
Given the high costs associated with local Australian developers, many businesses are turning to overseas talent to save money. The Philippines has become an extremely popular choice for affordable and high quality web design and development services.
Filipino web designers and software developers typically charge between $5-$50 USD per hour on average. This results in website build costs between $1,000-$5,000 USD for most small to medium complexity sites with up to 15 pages.
Here is a comparison of typical costs in the Philippines vs Australia:
- 5 Page Brochure Website – $1,500 USD ($2,200 AUD) vs $3,000-$5,000 AUD
- 10 Page Small Business Site – $2,500 USD ($3,600 AUD) vs $5,000-$10,000 AUD
- 15 Page SME Site – $4,000 USD ($5,800 AUD) vs $10,000-$15,000 AUD
- Ecommerce Site – $5,000+ USD vs $15,000+ AUD
As you can see, even when paying in USD and factoring currency conversion rates, there are massive savings to be had. You can get a site for the same budget from $1,500 USD as a local developer would charge $5,000-$10,000 AUD or more.
additionally, Filipino designers, developers and agencies tend to include more value-added services in their website packages compared to Australian providers:
- Content Writing/Copywriting
- Image Sourcing and Editing
- Website Hosting and Email
- Initial SEO Setup
- Site Backup and Maintenance
So the total cost difference when comparing feature-for-feature is even wider.
Ensuring Quality Results with Filipino Web Developers
The one risk associated with outsourcing is receiving substandard quality or results. But there are a few ways to mitigate this when hiring Filipino freelancers:
- Only hire top rated talent with dozens of good reviews
- Check previous website examples that are live online
- Start with a small test project to assess capabilities
- Use escrow payments through freelance sites to protect deposits
- Break projects into milestones to ensure progress
The other advantage is that labor costs are low enough in the Philippines that you can often have multiple freelancers or an entire team working together on your project for less than the price of one Australian resource.
This collaboration, combined with proper project management and staged deliverables, helps ensure quality results are achieved reliably.
Outsourcing website design overseas can clearly save 50-75% compared to using Australian web developers. And Filipino freelancers offer a great combination of talent, affordability and strong English abilities. With the right approach, you can save significantly on your website build costs without sacrificing quality by tapping this overseas talent pool.
SkillSets Marketing offers a wide variety of services that can be tailor-fit to your agency’s needs. From website design and development, to any type of graphic designs, to search engine marketing (SEM). Reach out to us if you are interested to scale your business with our services on the background that you can white-label as your own.
