Guide
What Should a Website Package Include?
A website package should spell out in writing what you get and what happens after launch, and state that the domain, hosting and code are yours. If it doesn't say who owns the domain, ask before you pay.
Where these points come from
We read the package pages of five Australian web studios and two published cost guides on 21 October 2026, and lined up what each one included and left out. The names are left out, the prices and patterns are kept. Most fixed-price packages on those pages ran from A$500 to A$2,520 for a set number of pages, so the comparison is between like-for-like small business sites.
What a package should include
| Inclusion | What to look for | The question to ask |
|---|---|---|
| Pages | A number, such as "up to 5 pages", plus the price of extras | What does page six cost? |
| Design | A custom design, or a named template, and how many rounds of changes | How many revisions are included, and what does another one cost? |
| Mobile layout | Built for phones first, not shrunk from a desktop layout | Can I see a site you built on my phone? |
| Contact or quote form | A form that emails you, with spam filtering | Where do the enquiries go, and what if the form breaks? |
| Basic on-page SEO | Page titles, descriptions, headings, a sitemap, Google indexing | Will each page have its own title and description? |
| Hosting | Who hosts it, for how long, and the price after the first year | What does hosting cost in year two? |
| Support | What counts as a small change, and how fast they reply | If I need a phone number changed, how long does it take and what does it cost? |
| Ownership | Domain, hosting account and code in your name | Whose name is the domain registered to? |
What packages often leave out
These came up again and again as missing from the base price, or mentioned without a number:
- Copywriting. One cost guide said many designers don't include it in base quotes, and put core-page copy at A$500 to A$1,500. If you're writing the words, the package price holds. If you're not, ask.
- Hosting after year one. One package page bundled 12 months of hosting and didn't say what it cost after that. That's the number to get in writing.
- Photos. A half-day shoot runs about A$800 to A$1,500. Your own phone photos of real work are often better for a small business anyway.
- Extra pages. One guide put extra pages at A$150 to A$300 each. A service business with one page per service climbs past five pages quickly.
- Ongoing SEO. "Basic SEO" in a package usually means titles, descriptions and indexing. Ongoing work (content, local pages, links) is a separate monthly service, at A$500 to A$3,000+ a month in the guide we read.
- Features beyond pages. Bookings, a shop or a customer login are quoted on their own, from about A$1,000 each.
Check who owns the domain
Of everything in a package, ownership is the line that matters most when something goes wrong. If the domain is registered to the designer, they control your email and your web address. Our free domain lookup shows the business a domain is registered to and its ABN. It should be your business. Ask for the hosting login and the code to be handed over too, or at least written into the agreement as yours.
What "support" should mean
Support is the vaguest word on most package pages. Some mean a few weeks of bug fixes after launch. Others mean small text and photo changes for as long as you stay. A care plan is a separate monthly product, which the pages we read priced at A$39 to A$300 a month. Before you sign, get three things in writing: what counts as a small change, how fast they reply, and what happens to the site if you stop paying for support. The right answer to the last one is "nothing, it stays online and it's still yours".
What our packages include
Starter is from A$1,000 + GST: up to five custom-coded pages, a contact form, basic on-page SEO, Google indexing, and ongoing support for small changes. Growth is from A$3,000 + GST and adds a dashboard to edit your own text, images and blog posts, local SEO with service and suburb pages and local business markup, and analytics in the dashboard. Both can be paid in six weekly instalments. Growth's monthly plan runs from A$75 to A$2,000 a month + GST, depending on how much work you want from us each month. Near the top it includes marketing material, graphic design, constant changes and code changes deployed as soon as they're done. The domain, hosting and code stay in your name whether you keep the plan or not.
Where to next
- Every inclusion in our packages
Starter and Growth, line by line, with the six-week payment split.
- Hosting, DNS and email: what "we handle hosting" covers
The plumbing under a package.
- Check who your domain is registered to
Free. Shows the business it belongs to, the registrar, and who hosts your DNS and email.
Get every inclusion in writing
Send us what your business needs. We'll reply with a fixed price and a written list of what's included, what isn't, and what support looks like after launch.
