Here is a small confession from inside the trade: over the last few years, the tools of this work have taken a leap. Not the ordinary kind, where things get five percent nicer each year — the once-in-a-generation kind. Work that took me a week in 2019 takes days now. Some of it takes an afternoon.

You are not supposed to hear that from someone who builds websites for a living. Let me explain why I am telling you anyway.

What changed

The tedious parts of this craft — and there were many — have been melting away. Building out page layouts. Producing revision after revision. Resizing and adapting graphics for the tenth time. Custom illustration work that used to be a line item that made treasurers flinch. The modern tools handle the drudgery at a speed that would have sounded like a joke a few years ago, and they get better every season.

The craft did not disappear. Knowing what a page should say, what to leave out, how a 75-year-old reader actually experiences a screen, what your organization needs versus what merely looks impressive — that is still judgment, and judgment still takes years to earn. What disappeared is the labor between the judgment calls. And labor is what those big invoices were mostly billing for.

The part nobody updated: the prices

Much of the industry noticed the tools and kept the 2015 price list. Faster work, same quote, wider margin — and a quiet hope that clients would not do the math.

So if you have ever looked at a five-figure quote for a straightforward website and felt a nagging sense that something did not add up — trust that feeling. You were not behind the times. You were doing arithmetic.

Let me say the concrete version plainly: a basic content website — the pages that tell your story, welcome your visitors, and take a contact message, with no online store attached — should not cost thousands upon thousands anymore. It simply does not take what it used to take. The same goes for a modest set of graphics to go with it; ask anyone who paid 2015 prices for a logo refresh what they think of that market. Sheesh.

What still costs real money, honestly

Fairness cuts both ways, so here is the other side of the ledger. Some things did not get cheaper, because they were never about labor:

• Listening. Understanding your mission well enough to say it in a sentence takes real conversation, and there is no tool for that.
• Complexity that is genuinely complex. Online stores, donation systems, member portals, custom integrations — real engineering, honestly priced.
• Care over time. Updates, backups, a person who answers — the quiet monthly work is human attention, and it costs what attention costs.

My policy, stated out loud

When my tools get faster, your invoice gets smaller. That is the whole policy, and it is why my flat quotes are sized the way they are. The productivity windfall of this profession is real; the only question is who keeps it. I split it with my clients — because most of my clients are non-profits, and I can think of better places for that money than my margin.

Holding a quote right now that feels heavier than the work sounds? Send it over. I will tell you what the job actually involves in plain language — free, even if you never hire me, and even if the honest answer is that the quote is fair.