A website quote is rarely late because the developer is dragging their feet - it is late because there was nothing there to price. I get emails that read, in full, “hello, could you quote a site for my company”, and honestly there is no answer to that except more questions. Every round of questions costs a day: I ask, you reply in the evening, I clarify, a week goes by, you still have no number, and you start to suspect something is wrong on my end.
This piece is about the front door of the process, not about prices. Prices I have written up separately - if you are after ranges and what the number is made of, that is in how much a website costs. Here I cover what to actually paste into the email so a concrete figure comes back within a day, and what has to be in that reply for it to be comparable with anything else.
Why a website quote can come back in a day at all
I price work, not websites. I am not estimating what a site is “worth” - I am counting the hours to design the layout, build the subpages, move the content, wire up the forms, do the mobile version and test it. Every one of those is countable, as long as I know how much of it there is.
That is the entire secret behind the one-day turnaround. If the enquiry lists the pages, I know whether we are talking about six screens or twenty-six. If I know who writes the copy, I know whether writing goes into the quote. If I have the address of your current site, fifteen minutes tells me what can be salvaged and what goes in the bin. Without those things, quoting turns into guessing - and an honest developer asks instead of guessing. That is where the weeks of silence come from, the ones clients read as disinterest.
The flip side: a developer who fires back a number with no questions about scope is not being fast. They have priced something they have not seen, and you will pay the difference later under the heading “that was not in the offer”.
What to put in the enquiry email
I do not need a document. I need a few paragraphs, bullet points are fine, written on the run is fine. Specifically:
1. What you do and who buys from you. Two sentences will do. A site for a manufacturer selling to wholesalers is laid out differently from a site for a clinic where people book appointments. This drives the structure, not the decoration.
2. The address of your current site, if you have one. Even if you are embarrassed by it - especially then. Ten minutes on your old site tells me more than an hour of conversation: how much content exists, what the page addresses look like, what it runs on, and whether it can be moved without losing search positions.
3. A list of pages, or of what has to be on the site. It does not have to be complete. “Home, about, four services on separate pages, projects, contact, blog” is a full brief. The biggest single swing in price comes from exactly here, because every page is a design, a piece of copy and a build.
4. What you already have and what you do not. Logo, brand guidelines, photos of finished work, copy, service descriptions. This is the line that most often decides where in the range you land, and it is almost never in the original enquiry. “I have a logo and photos, I have no copy” is a sentence worth thousands in either direction.
5. Two or three sites you like. They can be from a completely different industry. This is not about copying - it is so I know whether you want something spare and technical or soft and image-led. One sentence like “I like this one because you immediately see what they do” replaces three rounds of design revisions.
6. Timeline and budget, even roughly. I know this is the uncomfortable one, and that you are worried the price will magically match whatever number you name. With me it works the other way round: a budget tells me whether we have anything to talk about, and lets me propose a sensible scope instead of an offer you will reject anyway. If the budget does not cover what needs doing, you hear that on day one, not after three meetings.
Then the specifics, where they apply: extra languages, selling online, an integration with your stock system or a booking calendar, accessibility requirements. Any one of those can change the size of the project outright, so it is better said in the first email than halfway through the build.
Plenty of people sit on an enquiry because it “is not ready yet”. Usually that means things you genuinely do not have to settle on your own.
You do not need to know what the site should be built on. That is the developer’s call and they should be able to justify it. You do not need finished copy - saying you have none is enough, because it is an ordinary line in a quote, not something to apologise for. You do not need hosting picked or a domain registered. And you do not need to describe the goal in industry language: “I want people to call after they have looked at our projects” is a better brief than a sentence about conversion funnels.
The one thing worth thinking through is the goal itself. Should the site bring enquiries, sell online, take pressure off the phone, or simply exist as credentials in a tender? Each of those answers leads to a different site and a different price.
What should come back
A quote is not one number in an email. A figure without a scope is useless - you cannot compare it with another figure without a scope, and if there is ever a dispute there is nothing to point at. A proper offer has four parts: the written scope (what gets built, how many pages, what is on your side), the price with a note on whether it is fixed or an estimate, a date with a note on what it counts from, and what happens after handover - who fixes bugs and for how long.
I work fixed-bid: the number is agreed before we start and does not grow along the way unless the scope changes. Typical website projects with me land somewhere around 5,000-10,000 PLN net, and where in that range you fall follows directly from the six points above. Running costs after launch sit apart from that, because it is a separate decision and a separate bill - I broke it down in what website maintenance costs.
What actually delays a quote
In my experience four things push the date out, and only one of them sits with the developer.
The first is the one-line enquiry described above. The second is a scope that moves while the quoting is happening - if a store or a second language appears two days in, the counting starts over, and that is fair to both sides. The third is the absence of one person who decides: when the enquiry comes from three people with three different visions, the developer is not pricing a project, they are refereeing an internal argument. The fourth is an unusual integration that cannot be estimated without reading someone else’s documentation - there the honest answer is to quote the rest of the project and carve the integration out as its own stage.
When you are asking several developers
That is sensible and nobody reasonable takes offence. There is one condition for it to mean anything: send everyone exactly the same description. Do not paraphrase it differently each time, do not add a requirement for the second developer that the first never heard about. Otherwise you get three prices for three different projects and compare them as if they were the same thing.
Second condition: compare scopes before you compare numbers. If the cheaper offer swells with add-ons the moment you ask one question about copy and access credentials, it was not cheaper, it was described in fewer words. How to vet the developer themselves - live project links, access, code ownership - I set out in the piece on who can build my website.
How it runs on my side
You send an email with whatever you have. If something is missing I ask about one or two things, not twelve. I look at the current site, work out what is worth saving, and send back a quote with a written scope and a date. For a typical company enquiry that comes back within one working day; for a project with integrations it takes longer, but then I say up front when I will get back to you.
The first look is free and commits you to nothing. If after going through your site I conclude that you do not need a new one, only fixes on what you have, I will say so - even when it means a smaller job. I would rather lose one project than sell someone a rebuild they do not need.
FAQ
Do you charge for a quote? I do not, and neither do most honest developers. What does get charged is a pre-implementation analysis on large systems - there you receive a document with the architecture written out, which you can take anywhere. An ordinary quote for a company website is part of selling, not a service.
How long should I wait for a quote? For a company website, one to two working days is a healthy standard, provided the developer got the full picture. A week of silence with no questions coming back is a warning sign - either they have no capacity, or the enquiry is stuck somewhere.
Should I state a budget in the enquiry? Yes. The usual fear is “then they will quote exactly that”, but in practice a budget acts as a scope filter: the developer proposes what can be done properly for the money instead of sending an offer twice the size that you bin unread.
Why do two quotes for the same site differ by a factor of two? Because they are almost never for the same thing. The difference sits in the design (custom or a ready-made theme), in copy and photos, in how many revision rounds are included, and in what happens after handover. Before you decide one is expensive, write those four lines out against each offer and see whether they are even mentioned.
Need something like this on your side? I design and build websites for B2B companies - from scratch or as a rebuild of what already stands. Send me the scope and a quote with a date comes back.