"How much for a website?"
It is a completely reasonable question and it cannot be answered, for the same reason "how much for a building?" cannot be answered. The honest response is a range so wide it is useless, which is why you get either a vague number that changes later or a request for a meeting you did not want.
We say on our homepage that no brief is required, and we mean it — tell us the goal in fifteen minutes and we will send a plan in about 48 hours. That is a deliberate position, because demanding a formal brief from someone who has never commissioned software is a way of making the customer do the supplier's job.
But there is a difference between required and useful. Thirty minutes of writing on your side changes what comes back: a fixed figure instead of a range, a delivery date instead of "depends", and — the part that matters most — quotes from different suppliers that can actually be compared to each other.
Here is exactly what to write.
Why vagueness costs you money in both directions
When a supplier cannot see the edges of a job, they have two options.
They can price the risk in, which means you pay a premium for the version of your project that turns out to be complicated. Or they can price it out, quote low, and recover the difference later through change requests — which is how a $2,000 project becomes $5,000 without anyone technically breaking a promise.
Neither is dishonest. Both are what a rational supplier does with an unclear job. The fix is not to negotiate harder; it is to remove the uncertainty that both behaviors are responses to.
And there is a second cost, quieter and larger. Three quotes against a vague brief are three quotes for three different projects. You cannot compare $900, $2,400 and $6,000 if each supplier imagined a different scope. Most people, unable to compare, pick on price or on feeling — and that is how the cheap quote that excluded content, the mid quote that included a year of hosting, and the expensive quote that was actually the right job all get judged on a single number.
The eight things
None of these requires technical knowledge. All of them are things only you can answer.
1. What the site is for, in one sentence
Not "a modern web presence". A job. "Get people to book a consultation." "Sell 40 products to buyers in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan." "Let existing clients check the status of their order without calling us."
This single sentence changes more about a quote than everything else combined, because it determines what the site is. Write it first and make it specific enough to be wrong.
2. Who it is for, and where they are
Are they in one city or six countries? What languages do they read? Are they on phones on mobile data, or at desks? Are they buying for themselves or for a company?
Language is the item people most often leave out and it is one of the biggest cost drivers in the brief. A trilingual site is not a monolingual site with a switcher. On Bronjoy we run Russian, Uzbek and English, and the standing rule is that English leaking onto a Russian or Uzbek page is treated as a bug — which means every piece of directory vocabulary goes through a shared dictionary rather than being translated ad hoc. That discipline is work. It has to be in the brief, not discovered in week three.
3. What a visitor should be able to do
List the actions, in plain verbs. Read about services. Compare prices. Send an enquiry. Create an account. Pay. Upload a document. Book a slot. See their order history. Download an invoice.
This list is the scope. Almost everything else in a quote is a consequence of it. Two items are worth flagging because they change the class of project: anything involving user accounts and anything involving payments. A brochure site with a contact form and a platform where people log in and pay are different products with different prices.
4. How many pages, roughly
An estimate is fine. "About eight: home, four services, about, contact, blog." The difference between 5 and 15 is real money; the difference between 8 and 9 is not.
Say explicitly whether you need a blog or news section, because that is not a page, it is a system with a listing, filters, an editor and a template.
5. Who writes the words and who provides the pictures
The most commonly omitted item in every brief we receive, and the most common cause of a project sitting still.
Be honest with yourself here. "We'll provide the content" is true in intention and often false in practice, and a project waiting six weeks for copy costs both sides more than paying for it would have. If you want the supplier to write it, say so — we price content from $120 — and if you have existing material, say what condition it is in.
Same for images. Do you have photography? Does it need shooting? Are you comfortable with stock? For a store, who is producing product photos, and how many is a line item, not a detail.
6. What it must connect to
Any system that already exists: a CRM, an accounting package, a booking tool, an inventory system, a payment provider, a mailing list, a Telegram channel.
For each one, answer one question: does it have an API, and do you have credentials? An integration with a documented API is routine. An integration with a system that has no API is a different project, and occasionally an impossible one. Finding that out in week one is cheap; finding out in week six is not.
7. Your deadline, and whether it is real
There is a difference between "we would like it soon" and "our conference is 14 October and the site must be live". Real deadlines are not a problem — they are information. They let a supplier tell you what fits.
We did exactly that on a local services marketplace we took over mid-build. An honest estimate put the remaining scope at about eight months; the client had roughly one. So the scope was cut to what launch genuinely required, the rest moved to a post-launch backlog, and it shipped in about a month. That conversation was only possible because the deadline was stated as a fact rather than a preference.
8. Your budget, as a band
Yes, really. The objection is that naming a budget means you will be charged all of it. The reality is that withholding it means you are quoted for a project that may bear no relation to what you can spend, and you both waste two weeks finding out.
A band is enough. Our own contact form offers Under $250 · $250–$500 · $500–$1,000 · $1,000+ · "Not sure — advise me" — and that last option exists because the right answer for many people genuinely is "tell me what this should cost".
What a band actually buys you is a recommendation instead of a proposal. A supplier who knows the ceiling can tell you what to drop, what to phase, and what is not worth doing at your budget. That advice is the most valuable thing in the exchange and you cannot get it while the number is a secret.
The template
Copy this. Fill it in. Send the same text to every supplier you are considering.
1. What the site is for (one sentence):
2. Who it is for, and languages needed:
3. What a visitor must be able to do (list the actions):
4. Roughly how many pages, and is there a blog:
5. Who writes the copy / provides the images:
6. Systems it must connect to (and do they have an API):
7. Deadline, and what it is tied to:
8. Budget band:
Anything else that matters:
Sites you like, and what you like about them:
Sites you dislike, and why:
The last two lines are worth more than they look. "I like this one" is not useful. "I like this one because the pricing is on the page and I did not have to email anyone" tells a supplier something they can act on.
What a good quote back looks like
You have done your part. Here is how to read theirs. A quote worth taking seriously has five things:
A fixed figure with a written scope. Not an hourly rate with an estimate of hours. We agree the figure and the scope before any work starts, and it does not move unless you ask for something outside it — and you approve the extra first.
A delivery date, not a duration. "Six weeks" starting when?
An explicit list of what is not included. This is the strongest signal of a serious quote. Content, photography, third-party licences, translation, hosting after year one — a supplier who names the exclusions is a supplier who has read your brief.
Payment terms. Ours are 50% to start, 50% when it is live and you are happy.
What happens after launch. Support period, response time, price after. Fourteen days on a landing page up to twelve months on a web app, then $39 a month or nothing.
If two quotes differ by 3x against the same brief, one of them has misunderstood the job or excluded something. Ask which — the answer is usually in the exclusions list, and it is usually content.
The thirty-minute version
If you write nothing else, write these three lines and send them:
What we want people to do: ______ What we already have: ______ What we can spend: ______
That is enough for a real conversation and far more than most enquiries contain. Everything above is refinement.
Tell us what you need. You get a fixed price and a delivery date back — free, and with no obligation to proceed.
Frequently asked questions
Will naming a budget mean I get charged the whole budget?
It can, with a supplier who prices to the number rather than to the work. The defense is not secrecy, it is comparison: send the same brief and the same band to three suppliers. Someone pricing to your budget rather than to the job becomes obvious immediately, and you have learned something useful about them.
What if I genuinely do not know what I need?
Then say that, in those words, and ask for a recommendation rather than a quote. It is a completely normal position and any decent supplier has a version of the conversation ready. Our discovery call is about thirty minutes and costs nothing.
Should I write technical requirements?
No. Describe outcomes, not implementations. "Customers should be able to pay with a card and with Payme" is a requirement. "Use Stripe with a webhook" is a design decision you are making on behalf of someone you are paying to make it.
How many suppliers should I ask?
Three is plenty. More than that and the comparison becomes a job in itself. Make sure all three get identical text — a brief refined between conversations produces quotes you cannot compare.
Does a better brief make the project cheaper?
Usually somewhat, because it removes the risk premium. More reliably, it makes the price accurate, which is worth more. The expensive outcome is not a high quote. It is a low quote for a project that was never the one you needed.
