"$5,000 vs $10,000" is the most common question we get from prospects. Most don't really want our pricing — they want to understand what they're trading off at each tier. The answer changes more between $2k and $5k than between $10k and $20k. Here's what each dollar buys.
$2,000 — the Landing Page Sprint
One page. Three weeks. Custom layout, written by us, conversion tracking installed.
What it does well: serves a specific paid traffic channel hard. Loads fast. Converts visitors who arrive with intent. Survives audit.
What it doesn't do: replace your whole site. Carry a blog. Handle multi-product or multi-location. Anything beyond one job for one audience.
$5,000 — what the extra $3,000 buys
Five to seven pages instead of one. Brand alignment across the build (logo, colour, type). Basic content writing for service pages. Image sourcing from your existing photos. Project management overhead for a longer engagement.
The mistake at $5k: thinking you're getting "double the Sprint". You're not — you're getting a site that does five jobs adequately rather than one job exceptionally. For a paid-traffic-driven business, the Sprint usually outperforms the $5k site for the first 12 months.
$10,000 — what changes at the middle tier
Real design work, not template adaptation. Photography brief (you still take the photos, but we direct the shot list). Custom CMS for blog and case studies. Performance budget set and tested on real devices. One or two integrations — Calendly, HubSpot, a payment gateway. About six weeks of work, two designers part-time.
The Novus Glass build sits at the top of this bracket. The right tier for an established SMB that needs the site to do work, not just exist.
$20,000 — the proper agency build
Strategy phase: a week of discovery, customer interviews, competitor research, message hierarchy. Content writing for every page by a writer who isn't the developer. Photography or video shoot scheduled and directed. Multi-system integrations — CRM, marketing automation, payment, inventory. Three months minimum.
What the extra $10,000 between $10k and $20k buys, mostly: time. Time to write properly. Time to shoot. Time to integrate. Time to review three rounds instead of one. If you don't have an in-house content team or a six-figure annual ad budget, you don't need to spend this yet.
Two named patterns we see often
The cheap site that works: a $2,000 Sprint built for a Brisbane physio with one ad campaign. Converted at 11% from cold Meta traffic. Paid for itself in three weeks. The owner wrote the copy, took the photos on a phone, picked the colour. It works because the brief was honest.
The expensive site that doesn't earn out: a $24,000 build for a one-person consultant. Brand strategy, custom photography, ten pages of content. Hasn't generated a single lead since launch in March. The site is beautiful and the business doesn't need a beautiful site — it needs leads. Wrong tier, wrong tool. We won't take a brief where the budget and the business don't match up; that mismatch always ends in regret.
How to know which tier you need
- Under 20 leads needed a month : Sprint is enough.
- 20–60 leads, paid traffic running : $5–10k bracket.
- 60+ leads, multi-channel : $10–20k.
- E-commerce or multi-location : $20k+.
- No paid traffic yet : Sprint first, prove the funnel, then upgrade.
The pricing page shows where we sit, and the cost note covers the national bracketing.
The takeaway
The cheapest site that does the job for the next 12 months is almost always the right one. Upgrading later is easy. Walking back a $20,000 site that doesn't work is expensive in money and pride. The websites offer is built around landing on the right tier first time.