How much does a website cost in Nigeria?

Search this question and you will get pages from Shopify, Fiverr and a dozen American agencies quoting between six hundred thousand and twenty million naira, converted from dollars, for a market that is not yours. None of them will tell you what it costs here.

So here it is, plainly.

The short answer

For a small business in Nigeria, a website that works properly costs somewhere between six hundred thousand naira and three million naira to build, depending almost entirely on whether it is a website or a system.

That gap is not vagueness. It is the difference between two completely different things that people call by the same name.

The difference nobody explains

A website shows people who you are. Pages, photographs, your services, a way to contact you. It does not remember anyone. Nobody logs in. Nothing is stored except the messages people send you.

A system does work for you. Customers create accounts. Orders are recorded. Staff log in and see different things depending on their role. Payments come in. Reports come out. You stop keeping things in your head.

Almost everyone who asks for a website with a budget of two hundred thousand naira actually wants a system, and almost everyone quoting them two hundred thousand naira is quoting for the first thing.

That mismatch is where projects die. Six weeks in, someone says "so where do I see the list of my customers?" and the answer is that it was never in the price.

What actually moves the number

In rough order of how much they cost:

• Whether people log in. Accounts, passwords, password resets, sessions, roles, permissions. This one thing roughly doubles a project. It is not a page, it is a security surface.
• Whether money moves through it. Paystack or Flutterwave integration is not hard. Handling a payment that half-succeeded, a customer who was charged twice, a webhook that arrived out of order, and a record that survives an audit — that is the work.
• Whether you need an admin side. Somewhere for you to add products, edit prices, see orders, without calling the developer. Building this properly is often a third of the project, and skipping it means you are dependent on someone forever.
• How custom the design is. A good template, adapted well, costs a fraction of a design drawn from nothing. There is no shame in a template. Most of the sites you admire are running one.
• How much content you have ready. Photographs, product descriptions, staff names, service explanations. A project stalls for weeks waiting on these more often than it stalls on code.

The costs nobody mentions in the quote

The build price is not the whole price. Budget for these separately:

• A domain name, renewed yearly.
• Hosting, renewed yearly. Shared hosting is fine for most businesses. You do not need a dedicated server, and anyone selling you one for a brochure site is selling you something you will not use.
• An SSL certificate, which should be free. If someone is charging you for a basic one, ask why.
• Changes after launch. Your prices will change. Your services will change. Somebody has to make those edits, and it will either be you, in an admin panel that was built for you, or a developer you have to reach on WhatsApp.

That last one is worth thinking about before you build, not after. A cheaper site with no admin panel is a subscription to whoever built it.

Why the cheapest quote is usually the most expensive

If three people quote you and one is a quarter of the others, one of four things is happening.

They have not understood the job. They are planning to use a page builder and hand you something you cannot change. They intend to disappear before the hard part. Or they are underpricing to win the work and will run out of money and motivation halfway through.

The fourth one is the most common and the most expensive, because you do not find out until you have paid a deposit and lost three months.

Ask any quote these questions:

• What happens after launch if I need to change a price?
• Who owns the code and where does it live?
• What is not included in this number?
• What happens if it takes longer than you said?

An honest developer will have clear answers. Someone guessing will get uncomfortable.

How to make a small budget go further

Build one thing properly instead of five things badly.

Almost every business we talk to has one workflow that eats their week. Taking bookings. Chasing payments. Knowing what is in stock. Answering the same question forty times. Build that one thing, use it for three months, and let what you learn pay for the next piece.

This is also cheaper in the long run, because the second piece gets built against something real instead of against a guess about what you would want.

What we charge

We do not price a build until we understand it, because a number quoted against two paragraphs is a guess, and a guess published as a price is something you get held to before either of us understood the work.

What we do publish is what it costs to find out. Twenty thousand naira for a session and a written answer to what you should build first, if you have an idea and nothing built yet. One hundred and fifty thousand for a full written specification and a fixed build quote, if you are already running a business and need a number you can approve.

Builds start from nine hundred thousand naira for one workflow done properly, and the scoping fee comes off the build.

And if you just want to know roughly where you stand before spending anything at all, tell us what you are trying to do. That part is free.