{
    "version": "1.5.0",
    "item": {
        "id": "blog_v4",
        "title": "Website Architecture Costs in 2026: What Are You Paying For?",
        "url": "https://www.dbeta.co.uk/blog/website-architecture-costs-2026.html",
        "summary": "Website architecture is best costed as total cost of ownership rather than cost to launch. DIY builds, plugin stacks and engineered platforms carry very different long-term costs, driven mainly by integrations, governance and scalability, with realistic budgets ranging from about £500 to over £200,000.",
        "category": "Business Strategy",
        "image": "https://dbeta.b-cdn.net/blog/how-much-websites-costs.jpg",
        "author": {
            "name": "Donatas Tranauskis",
            "url": "https://www.donatastranauskis.com"
        },
        "published_at": "2026-03-05T07:46:00+00:00",
        "updated_at": "2026-03-24T13:34:04+00:00",
        "faqs": [
            {
                "question": "How much does a custom website cost in 2026?",
                "answer": "A standard business website typically ranges from £5,000 to £25,000. However, structured business platforms with integrations and active SEO goals range from £10,000 to £60,000, while fully engineered enterprise digital platforms start around £60,000 and can exceed £200,000 depending on complexity."
            },
            {
                "question": "What is Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for a website?",
                "answer": "Total Cost of Ownership is the true cost of a website over its lifespan (usually 3-5 years). It includes the initial build cost, plus hosting, security patching, structural updates, technical SEO maintenance, and the cost of dealing with technical debt if the site was built poorly."
            },
            {
                "question": "Why are plugin-based websites cheaper to build but more expensive to own?",
                "answer": "Plugin-based websites (like standard WordPress builds) are cheap to launch because they use pre-built, generic code. However, they become expensive to own because relying on dozens of third-party plugins creates massive technical debt, security vulnerabilities, and frequent breakages that require constant developer intervention."
            },
            {
                "question": "What drives the cost of website development?",
                "answer": "Beyond visual design, the main cost drivers are content model complexity (how many unique templates are needed), API integrations, publishing governance rules, enterprise-grade security compliance, and how scalable the underlying architecture needs to be."
            }
        ],
        "sources": [
            {
                "label": "OWASP - Top 10 Web Application Security Risks",
                "url": "https://owasp.org/www-project-top-ten/"
            },
            {
                "label": "NIST - Cybersecurity Framework",
                "url": "https://www.nist.gov/cyberframework"
            },
            {
                "label": "Google Search Central - Core Web Vitals",
                "url": "https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/core-web-vitals"
            }
        ]
    }
}