Every community is unique, and the cost of a municipal website redesign depends on your starting place and the complexity of your goals. That said, we can provide some ballpark direction that will help if you are creating a budget for your city, town or regional government website.
1. Population
First, the cost of your government website will reflect the size of the population served. Typically, we find that if there are more people living in, investing in, and visiting a region, there are more services to provide, more decision-makers to engage, and more information to make available. This means more website customizations are required. And of course, adding complexity increases project costs.
By population, municipal website budgets in the USA and Canada tend to fall within the following ranges:
| Population Served | Website Design & Development Budget |
| 500 to 7,999 | $5,000 to $20,000 |
| 8,000 to 19,999 | $25,000 to $100,000 |
| 20,000 to 49,999 | $50,000 to $125,000 |
| 50,000 to 99,999 | $75,000 to $250,000 |
| 100,000 to 499,999 | $150,000 to $500,000 |
| 500,000 or more | $300,000 to $1,000,000 |
2. Desired Outcomes
If it’s your job to budget for a new website design and build, you might look at the table above and wonder— what determines whether a project comes in at the low- or high-end of a typical range? Your project process and desired outcomes have a major effect on cost. To decide on a budget for your website project, it’s important to answer questions like:
- What kinds of application integrations, data presentations, and login portals are needed?
- Is the site architecture and content already done and ready for the new website?
- How much community input and engagement would you like in the website design and development?
- If community engagement is important for your website view Upanup's CiviKit Engagement Platform.
- Would you like a custom design or would an existing template meet your needs?
- If you are unsure which option is the right fit for your community read this article about custom and template designs or check out Upanup's CiviKit Website Solution for small municipalities.
- How many design options do you want to see, and how many rounds of revisions to your chosen design?
- Are recreation venues and programs part of the website?
- View this article about tips for integrating PerfectMind into your website.
The more back-end complexity, content requirements and changes, user experience testing, and creative work involved, the higher your project budget needs to be.
3. Associated Costs
Beyond design and development, an accurate budget takes into account other one-time and ongoing costs associated with your new website.
- Hosting and security costs vary based on storage needs, geography, and whether you choose to host your site through a third-party provider like us or internally, through infrastructure maintained by your IT department. Best practices for security, failovers, and backups should be included in these costs.
- Technical support and maintenance services keep your new website useful and up-to-date for the communities you serve. For government websites, we find annual external support costs are typically 10% to 15% of the initial project cost.
- Licences are an ongoing cost with proprietary Content Management Systems (CMS), if you choose to go that route (view our news post about proprietary vs open source systems). Our team prefers customizing municipal websites with Drupal – a flexible, open-source CMS – so there are no ongoing fees. There may also be licensing costs for third-party applications you want integrated with your new website (like program registration, bill payments, job boards or engagement tools).
- Content for your new website can be created internally by your staff, externally by professional content strategists, or a combination of both (as is most often the case). Effective writing and high-quality photography or videography can require an upfront investment. This initial cost pays off through positive user experiences and easy-to-access information, as well as showcasing your community in the best light to potential residents, tourists, and investors.
- Internal staffing and resources are a cost often overlooked by municipalities— especially when it comes to content creation, editing, and website updates. Your staff’s ongoing work is important for a successful web presence that makes the most of your investment going forward.
Finally, if you’re wondering what all of this means for your municipality, we can help. Our team builds award-winning web solutions and we have a track record of happy clients for custom government websites across Canada (view our client testimonials). We pride ourselves on serving the citizens of each of these municipalities with great online experiences and easy access to information.
Have questions about your municipal website budget? Get in touch— we are happy to help you out.