What we know, written down.
Guides for South African business owners and agencies: what things cost, why a site fails, what a retainer should actually buy, and how to tell when you are being sold a reporting subscription.
How much does a website cost in South Africa?
A properly scoped business website in South Africa in 2026 falls into three bands. A template build runs R3,500 to R10,000.
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Why does my website get visitors but no enquiries?
A website that gets visitors and no enquiries usually has one of six problems: the page does not say what you do in the first sentence, the main action is missing or unclear, the page loads too slowly on mobile, the form is too long or broken, nothing on the page makes you trustworthy, or nobody can tell which page produced the enquiry. All six are fixable, and most are fixable in days rather than months.
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What does an SEO retainer cost in South Africa?
A monthly SEO retainer in South Africa typically costs between R3,500 and R15,000. Ours is R8,700 a month with a three-month start, covering a keyword and competitor map, technical SEO monitoring, a content production cadence, a monthly strategy call and reporting tied to enquiries.
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How does white-label development outsourcing work for agencies?
White-label development means an agency sells work to its client and a subcontractor delivers it under the agency’s brand. The agency keeps the client relationship, sets the client-facing price, and pays a day rate or reserved monthly capacity.
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How fast should a website be on South African mobile networks?
For South African mobile traffic, aim for a Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds on a mid-range Android phone over 4G, Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1, and Interaction to Next Paint under 200 milliseconds. The number that matters is not your office fibre result, it is a mid-range phone on congested LTE, because that is where most of your visitors are.
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How do I know if my web agency is overcharging me?
To tell whether a web agency is overcharging you, run six checks: what exactly the monthly fee buys, what hosting costs on its own, who owns the domain, hosting and code, whether you can change the site yourself, whether the same work could be bought at a published day rate, and whether the agency can name the person doing the work. Overcharging is rarely one outrageous line.
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Why these are public
Most agencies do not publish prices or explain how the work is done, because vagueness protects the quote. We would rather you arrive already knowing what a scoped build costs, what a retainer buys, and what a day rate is, so the conversation can be about your problem instead of about numbers.
If something here is wrong for your situation, say so. A guide that is useful is one you can argue with, and every number on this site is the number we actually work to.
Have a question this does not answer?
Send it. If it is a real question we will answer it properly, and if the honest answer is that you do not need us we will say that instead.