Ask five people in Bali what a website costs and you’ll get five answers between “a few million rupiah” and “it depends”. Both are true, and neither helps you plan.
So here’s a straight answer, using our own prices as the example, plus what pushes a quote up and the running costs that tend to get left out.
The short answer
For a small business in Bali, a professionally built website usually falls into one of four bands:
| What you need | What it usually is | Our starting price |
|---|---|---|
| Company profile | 4–6 pages: who you are, what you do, how to reach you | from IDR 4,999K |
| Online store | Shopify set up on a free theme, products, payments, shipping | from IDR 5,999K |
| Hotel or villa | Rooms, gallery, location, and a booking engine connected | from IDR 6,999K |
| Custom web app | Booking flows, client portals, dashboards | quoted per project |
These are starting points. Every project gets a fixed quote after a short call, so the number you agree is the number you pay.
You’ll find cheaper. A friend of a friend can put a template live for less. You’ll also find agencies charging ten times more. The useful question isn’t “who’s cheapest?” but “what am I actually getting for the money?”
What pushes the price up
The page count matters less than people think. These are the things that really move a quote:
- Bookings and payments. Connecting a booking engine, taking deposits, or handling payments in IDR and foreign currencies adds real work and testing.
- More than one language. English plus Bahasa Indonesia, or Russian, or Chinese for your guests, roughly means writing, checking and maintaining the site twice.
- Content you don’t have yet. If nobody has written the copy or taken the photos, someone has to. Good photography is the single biggest upgrade for a hotel or villa site, and it’s often a separate cost.
- Custom features. A calculator, a member area, a menu that updates from your POS. Anything that isn’t a standard page gets scoped on its own.
- Moving from an old site. Migrating a store or a blog without losing your Google rankings takes care: redirects, checking every old link, and keeping product data intact.
The running costs nobody mentions
A website isn’t a one-off purchase. Budget for these every year:
- Domain name. Your .com or .id address, renewed yearly.
- Hosting. Where the site lives. Cheap shared hosting is the most common reason small sites in Bali load slowly.
- Care and updates. Plugins, security fixes, small content changes, and someone to call when something breaks.
- Platform subscriptions. Shopify plans, booking engine fees, paid themes or apps.
We include three months of care free with every website, then it’s IDR 600K a month for hosting, updates and fixes. Whoever you work with, ask what happens after launch, in writing.
The cheapest quote is often the most expensive website, once you count the year after launch.
Five questions to ask before you pay
- Do I own the domain, the site and the data? The domain should be registered in your name, not the developer’s. If you leave, you take everything with you.
- Is the price fixed? Get a fixed quote with a clear list of what’s included. “Estimate” often means “more later”.
- How fast will it load on a phone? Most of your visitors are on mobile, often on patchy connections. Ask to see a past project on your own phone.
- Will Google be able to find it? Basic SEO, a sitemap, analytics and Google Search Console should be set up at launch, not sold as an extra.
- What happens after launch? Who fixes it, how fast, and what does that cost per month?
Template, freelancer or studio?
- DIY website builder. Cheapest to start, fine for testing an idea. You’ll spend your own time on it, and it’s hard to make it fast or rank well.
- Freelancer. Can be great value. Check that they’ll still be around in a year, and that the domain is in your name.
- Studio. Costs more than a freelancer, but you get a process, a team, and someone accountable after launch.
None of these is wrong. Pick the one that matches how much the website needs to earn for you. A villa that gets most of its bookings online needs more than a café that mostly needs a menu and a map.
So, what should you budget?
If you need a clean company site, plan from around IDR 5 million to build it, plus a monthly amount for care. If you need bookings or a store, plan more, and put money aside for photos. If you need something custom, start with a short call and a fixed scope before anyone names a number.
Not sure which fits? See our pricing, or reply “audit” to hello@avaiacreative.id and we’ll review your current site for free, even if the answer is “keep what you have”.
Want a second opinion on your site?
Send us your website and we’ll show you where enquiries and bookings are slipping through.
Abel
Founder of Avaia. Builds websites and the automations behind them, from Bali.
