What a website actually costs in Kenya in 2026 (and why ours costs less)
Kenyan agencies publish KES 25,000 to 400,000 for a website. We charge 10,000 to 20,000. Here is exactly what drives those numbers, and how to tell a fair quote from a bad one.
Ask five Kenyan agencies what a website costs and you will get five different answers, all of them technically true. The published ranges right now look roughly like this:
| What you are buying | What agencies publish |
|---|---|
| Single landing page | KES 25,000 – 60,000 |
| Small business site, 3–5 pages | KES 50,000 – 120,000 |
| Corporate site, 6–15 pages | KES 100,000 – 280,000 |
| Online shop | KES 100,000 – 400,000 |
| Custom web application | KES 250,000 and up |
We charge KES 10,000 for a 3-page company profile site and KES 20,000 for six pages. That is a fifth of what the market publishes for the same thing, and the honest reaction to that is suspicion. So let us deal with it directly.
Why ours costs less
Three reasons, none of them glamorous.
We build on the same stack every time. Every site we ship runs on the same framework, the same hosting setup, the same deployment pipeline. We are not learning a new system on your budget. The second site on a stack costs a fraction of the first one, and we are well past the second.
We do not run an agency overhead. No account manager forwarding your emails to a developer. No office in Westlands to pay for. When you message us on WhatsApp, the person who replies is the person who will build it.
We keep the scope honest. A 3-page site is genuinely three pages: home, about, contact. It is not a discovery workshop, a brand strategy deck and a 40-page proposal. If you need those things, they are real work and they cost real money — but most businesses asking for a company profile site do not need them.
What actually pushes the price up
The page count is the least important thing in a quote. These are what move the number:
Custom functionality. A booking system, a member login, a calculator, a dashboard. Anything where the site does something rather than shows something. This is where 20,000 becomes 120,000, and fairly so.
Payments. Taking money online means M-Pesa integration, which means a Daraja application, a Paybill or Till in your business name, and a callback handler that reconciles what came in. It is not hard, but it is not free.
Content you do not have. If we are writing your service descriptions and sourcing your photos, that is a different job to formatting the ones you send us. Most quotes assume you are supplying content. Check.
Ongoing changes. A price for building is not a price for maintaining. Decide up front whether you want to change things yourself or call someone every time.
The costs nobody puts in the headline number
Three things sit outside almost every website quote in Kenya:
- Domain: roughly KES 1,500 – 3,500 a year
- Hosting: roughly KES 6,000 – 30,000 a year, depending on what you are running
- Maintenance: commonly KES 5,000 – 20,000 a month if you take a retainer
We bill domain and hosting at cost and do not mark them up. Ask any agency directly whether they do — the answer tells you a lot.
Why the cheapest quote is often the most expensive
There is cheap because someone is efficient, and cheap because someone is cutting the things you cannot see. The second kind shows up about eight months later.
What gets cut, in our experience of rebuilding other people's work:
- No mobile layout. Most of your visitors are on a phone. A site that only works on a laptop is not a cheap site, it is a broken one.
- No Google setup. No page titles, no descriptions, no sitemap. The site exists and nobody can find it.
- A pirated template. Looks fine, breaks on the next update, and cannot be legally handed to another developer.
- The domain registered in the agency's name. This one is the worst. When you fall out, they hold your business's address.
What to ask before you pay anyone
Five questions. Any agency that answers all five plainly is probably fine, whatever they charge.
- Is the domain registered in my business name, and do I get the login?
- What exactly is in the price, and what is billed separately?
- Can I see three sites you built that are live right now? Not screenshots — live URLs you can click and use.
- What happens when I need a change in six months, and what does it cost?
- Who actually builds it? If the person selling cannot answer a technical question, they are reselling.
So what should you spend?
If you are a professional practice, a contractor, a school or a consultancy and you mainly need to look credible and be reachable — a company profile site is the whole job. You are not going to get five times the result by paying five times the price.
If you are selling online, taking payments, managing stock or booking appointments, you are buying software, not a website, and you should expect to pay accordingly.
The mistake we see most often is not overspending or underspending. It is buying the wrong thing: a beautiful brochure site for a business whose actual problem is that orders arrive as WhatsApp screenshots at midnight.
Questions people ask us
- How much does a basic website cost in Kenya?
- Most Kenyan agencies publish KES 25,000 to 60,000 for a single landing page and KES 50,000 to 120,000 for a small business site. Biziirise charges KES 10,000 for a 3-page company profile site and KES 20,000 for 6 pages, because we build on a stack we reuse across every client rather than starting from scratch each time.
- What is not included in a website quote?
- Almost always the domain (roughly KES 1,500 to 3,500 a year) and hosting (roughly KES 6,000 to 30,000 a year). Many agencies also bill a monthly maintenance retainer of KES 5,000 to 20,000. Ask for all three in writing before you pay a deposit.
- How long does it take to build a small business website?
- A 3 to 6 page company profile site takes a few days once you have supplied your content. The delay is almost never the building. It is waiting on your photos, your service descriptions and your final sign-off.
- Do I own the website after paying for it?
- You should. Insist that the domain is registered in your business name, that you hold the hosting login, and that you get the files. If an agency will not give you those three things, you are renting, not buying.
- Is a cheap website worth it?
- It depends entirely on what makes it cheap. Cheap because someone reused a proven stack is fine. Cheap because it is an unlicensed template, has no mobile layout and no Google setup is not — you will pay someone else to rebuild it within a year.