How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Website in Nigeria?

While a novice in the IT industry, I had always wondered how much a website costs to develop. As a result, I had a craving to understand the fundamentals in developing a website to the extent that it became a passion for me to design websites.

Individuals and businesses are beginning to accept the fact that they need an online presence to increase patronage to their businesses and services. In doing this they need to showcase their businesses and services to their existing and prospective customers easily, with no bounds around the world and at affordable prices.

With this in view, how much does it cost to develop a website to showcase your businesses and services in Nigeria?

In order to know the cost, we need to understand the elements that make up a website and attach costs to each of them, thereby achieving the total cost of developing a website.

First of all, to develop a website for personal or business use, you need to decide on the domain name. A Domain name is a name which is entered in a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) for people to be able to access your website. E.g., if your business name is “Example” then your domain name should be www.example.com. Though, if you are unlucky, someone else may have registered the domain name already and you may have to settle for something else. Anyway, this article is not about registering domain names so I can’t go deep into it.

Presently, the cost of registering a domain name in Nigeria ranges from N1,500-N4,000, depending on the registrar. It can even go higher for special domain names or for names which have already been bought and are up for sale. Domain names are like internet data subscriptions that expire within a given period. They usually expire on a yearly basis, so they need to be renewed at the cost which the registrar is using. Therefore, in most cases, if you bought the domain name for N1,500, you would renew at N1,500.

After you have decided on the domain name, you can get FREE domain name registration when you pay for a hosting service. In simple terms, a Hosting Service is used to publish your website on the internet. There are so many hosting service providers in Nigeria and abroad that have different packages. A few of them are:

Web Hosting Service Providers in Nigeria

• hostnownow.com
• whogohost.com
• utiware.net

The cheapest plan amongst them starts at N2,000/year for shared hosting and goes up to N100,000/year and are more expensive for dedicated hosting. These hosting plans vary in the website disc space, bandwidth, etc. Based on these plans you can decide which best suits your website

Foreign Web Hosting Service Providers

• namecheap
• bluehost.com
• hostgator.com
• godaddy.com

The cheapest plan amongst them starts at $9.88/year, for first time purchase and $38.88/year, for renewal, and goes up to $227.4/year for shared hosting and are more expensive for dedicated hosting. As mentioned before, these hosting plans vary in the website disc space, bandwidth, etc. Based on these plans you can decide which best suits your website

After choosing a hosting plan from a hosting company, it remains the setting up and design of the website. If you do not know how to design a website then you can engage a website designer.

Cost of Designing a Website in Nigeria

The cost of their services depends on the kind of website, complexity and the number of website pages.

Website page designs can start from N2,000 and higher, depending on the complexity. Also, graphic works can increase costs. The homepage which is the main page of a website can start from N5,000, which can be higher or lower, depending on the complexity, features and graphics.

In order for an expert Website Designer to work on your website, he/she will need to develop an HTML template/theme or pay for a CMS template/theme. This is an average of N20,000 and could be more depending on the functionalities and features of the site.

A template/theme represents and look and feel of the website, and this will need to be set up and designed according to the requirements of the website owner.

Cost of Setting up a Website in Nigeria

Setting up a website entails installing the template/theme, functions and features of the website. This can start at N5,000 and can go up to N100,000 and more, depending on the kind of website.

So using the above figures we can deduce that the cheapest a website can cost using the cheapest plan is:

Cost to Develop a Website in Nigeria

• Service Costs
• Domain: N1,500
• Hosting: N2,000
• Setting up a website: N5,000
• Template/Theme: N20,000
• Design (assuming homepage at N5,000 & 4 other pages at N2,000 each): N13,000
• Total – Minimum cost of a standard, 5-page website development in Nigeria: N41,500

Other services such as graphic works (mentioned above), social media page creation and integration, Search Engine Optimization(SEO), etc., can also increase the cost.

Please Note: This is an estimate based on the present day and the cheapest costs. This cost may not apply based on the use of particular professional services or in the future due to economic circumstances