Ask three web agencies for a quote and you'll get back three documents that look nothing alike. One has a single total. One lists a dozen line items you can't decipher. One shows a very low build price with a small line underneath: "hosting and maintenance billed separately."
People who build websites for a living will tell you a website can cost anywhere from NT$20,000 to NT$2,000,000. That's not an exaggeration. The word "website" simply covers wildly different things.
So before you compare quotes, get one thing straight: a company website only involves three kinds of money. Once you know what each one pays for, you can read any quote, and you can answer the question your boss is going to ask: will this cost us anything again next year?
1. A company website only involves three kinds of cost
The cost splits three ways: a one-time build fee, an annual system fee, and an annual domain fee. Once you see those three, every quote maps onto them.
| Item | How often | Paid to | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build fee | Once | Web agency | Discovery call, site structure, layout design, build, pre-launch checks |
| System fee | Yearly | Web agency or platform | Hosting, SSL certificate, backups, system updates, technical support |
| Domain fee | Yearly | Domain registrar | Your web address itself, e.g. yourcompany.com.tw |
A quote may not use these words. Some agencies call the build fee a "setup fee" or "design fee." Some call the system fee "hosting and maintenance," "annual maintenance," or a "management fee." The label doesn't matter. Look at how often you pay it and you'll know which of the three it is.
The second one is the one people miss. Plenty of owners assume the website is done once it launches, then get a surprise bill in year two. If a quote shows you a single number, the first thing to ask is whether it includes the annual costs, and for how long.
2. What does the build fee pay for, and why is it always "quoted on request"?
The build fee pays for people's time, not for pages. That's why estimating by page count usually misses the mark.
Build prices published by Taiwanese web agencies land roughly in these ranges (these are the numbers agencies post on their own websites, checked October 2026; the ranges are wide and contradict each other, so treat them as a rough guide only): a one-page website runs about NT$10,000 to NT$50,000, a brand website about NT$30,000 to NT$150,000, and a fully custom system starts around NT$300,000.
Two quotes for the same five-page brand website can differ threefold, and it comes down to three things: whether anyone helps you work out what the site is for, whether anyone organizes your content, and whether anyone looks after the site after launch. We broke those down in Brand website quotes range from NT$30,000 to NT$300,000. What's the difference?
Content deserves its own note, because it's where projects blow up.
Almost every quote includes a line that says "copy and images supplied by the client." What happens after you supply them varies a lot. We've had several projects stall for months because the client's material never arrived. So now we draft the copy ourselves for the client to review, and we help source photos, so nobody gets stuck at that step.
Why push so hard on this? Because search results build up over time, and it usually takes three to six months before you see anything. Every month the site sits unfinished is a month of momentum you don't get back. Launching first and refining afterward beats waiting for perfect material. Text and photos can be changed later in the admin panel, and we walk you through it at handover.
So when you ask for a quote, ask this: "If what I give you isn't enough, what happens?" The answer will be either "we leave it blank for now" or "we give you a checklist of what each page needs." That's the difference.
3. What does the system fee pay for?
The system fee pays for everything that keeps the site running after launch. It breaks into five parts: hosting, the SSL certificate, backups, system updates, and technical support.
Hosting is where your site lives. Cheapest isn't best here, because hosting directly affects how fast your site loads. Google's own research found that 53% of mobile visits are abandoned when a page takes longer than three seconds to load (from Google's mobile site speed research published in 2016 and 2017). If the hosting can't keep up, every dollar you spent on design and content is worth less.
The SSL certificate is the padlock next to your address. Without it, browsers show visitors a "not secure" warning.
Backups are your insurance when something breaks. The question isn't whether backups exist, but how far back you can roll. We keep 14 days of full backups.
System updates cover both the software and its security. Skip them and the odds of a break-in creep up year after year.
Technical support means having someone to call when something goes wrong. It's the hardest item to compare, because definitions vary: some plans only guarantee the site stays up, while others will make content changes for you.
We roll all five into one system fee, and the numbers are public: a brand website is NT$12,000 a year and up, a one-page website NT$6,000 a year and up, and each additional language adds NT$3,000 a year and up. The build fee is the one we can't quote up front, because page count, features, and how much content help you need differ on every project. We quote after we've talked, so the number actually fits what you're trying to achieve.
4. What it costs to buy the same things separately
Bought piece by piece, the same set of services usually costs more than a single system fee. This is the most practical way to judge whether a system fee is reasonable: price out each thing it includes.
| Item | Market price if bought separately | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Entry-level shared hosting about NT$1,500 to NT$8,000 a year; a VPS about NT$10,000 to NT$30,000 a year | Industry estimate, based on Taiwanese hosting companies' published rates |
| SSL certificate | Free, or from a few thousand NT dollars | Domain-validated certificates are available free; commercial certificates are quoted separately |
| Backups | Depends on whether your hosting includes them | If not, you set them up yourself or buy a service |
| System and security updates | Hire a developer per incident | Done when something breaks, so the cost isn't fixed |
| Technical support and maintenance | Monthly plans run about NT$1,500 to NT$8,000 a month | Industry estimate, roughly NT$18,000 to NT$96,000 a year |
In fairness, you can't just subtract this table from any agency's system fee, because what each one counts as "maintenance" varies a lot. In the monthly range above, some plans only guarantee the site stays online and charge separately for changing a single line of text.
What the table does is help you ask the right questions. When you see an annual fee, go item by item: Is hosting in there? Is SSL? Are there backups? Who handles the updates? Do I pay extra to change my own content?
Two things usually surface. First, some quotes look cheap because most of the items have been moved into "billed separately." Second, some annual fees aren't low at all, yet include no more than the cheaper ones. Our system fee covers all of it because these capabilities are built into the system rather than stacked up from plugins, so there's nothing to bill for separately. For what the system actually includes, see AI website builds.
5. Three ways to calculate annual fees, and they differ sixfold
There's no standard rate. The Taiwanese market uses at least three methods, and the gap between them is too wide to compare directly.
First, a percentage of the build fee. This is the most common framing, but there's no consensus on the percentage. Among the published figures we checked, some say 5% to 10% of the build fee, some say 15% to 20%, and some say 20% to 30% (from Taiwanese web agencies' own websites, checked October 2026). For the same website, the lowest and highest methods differ sixfold.
Second, tiered monthly plans. Basic, standard, and advanced, running from a little over NT$1,000 to a little over NT$8,000 a month (industry estimate). With this method, check carefully how many changes each tier includes.
Third, one all-inclusive annual fee. Hosting, backups, certificates, updates, and support in a single number. The advantage is that budgeting is simple and the figure doesn't move in later years.
So when you compare annual fees, don't compare percentages and don't compare headline prices. Ask one question: what does this cover, and what doesn't it cover? Two agencies both quoting NT$12,000 can cost very different amounts in practice if one includes technical support and the other charges for every text change.
6. What to budget for year one and year two
When you write the budget, split it into "one-time" and "fixed annual" on two separate lines. Your boss and your accountant will both be able to follow it.
Year one = build fee (once) + system fee (one year) + domain fee (one year).
Year two onward = system fee (one year) + domain fee (one year).
The domain is the smallest of the three. Taiwanese registrars publish rates of roughly NT$700 to NT$1,500 a year for a .com.tw. One caveat: renewal isn't always the same price as year one. Hosting and domains often carry an introductory price that reverts afterward. The wholesale registry price for .com also rises about 7% from November 2026, and retail prices usually follow.
So when you present the budget, leave 10% to 20% of headroom on the "fixed annual" line. Not because you'll be upcharged, but because domain renewals, extra storage, and adding a language are the kind of small changes that only surface after launch.
7. Seven things to settle before you sign
None of these seven are about price, but they decide how free you are three years from now. Settling them before you sign is far easier than dealing with them afterward.
- Whose name is the domain registered under? Who buys it? If you move later, can you take it with you?
- Can I take all the content and design files with me? Text, images, and the data in the admin panel.
- Who holds the admin accounts? Do you have enough access yourself?
- Is there a lock-in period? How long, and what does it cost to leave early? We don't lock clients in: if you don't want to renew next year, or you want to take the site down, that's fine.
- Do I pay extra to change a word or swap an image? This decides whether you file a ticket and wait every single time.
- Are there backups? If something goes wrong, can the site be restored?
- Who do I contact after launch? The person you talked to, or a support inbox?
Here's why the first one leads the list. We took on a website migration for an association whose domain was registered under their previous agency and couldn't be recovered. Since the old site had little search traction anyway, letting the domain go cost them very little, so we moved the content across, registered a new domain, and rebuilt. Starting fresh on the new domain, it now performs well in both search and AI results.
Situations like that are workable, but better avoided. We offer website migration as a service, and in practice most of the trouble traces back to whichever of these seven questions nobody asked. For what it's worth, one pattern we see: when clients want to change agencies, it's rarely about price. It's usually that the admin panel is hard to use, search isn't delivering, or they want one small change and can't reach whoever built the site, then wait a week or two for a developer.
Putting the budget together
Write down three things and the budget writes itself: what the website is supposed to do for the company, what you pay once in year one, and what you pay every year from year two on. Get the first one clear and the other two numbers start to mean something.
If you have a quote or two in front of you that you can't make sense of, or you're not sure whether you need a brand website or a one-page website, send us the consultation form and let's talk. We listen to your situation first, then give you advice and a quote, rather than throwing out a number and leaving you to guess.