What a Website Actually Costs in Lebanon

Few developers here publish this, and the silence is doing real damage. People asking for a website here have no reference point, so quotes arrive with no way to judge them, and the gap between the cheapest and most expensive answer for the same job can be several times over.

I am not going to pretend there is one number. But there is a structure to the cost, and once you can see it you can read any quote — mine or anyone else's — and tell what you are being charged for.

My website prices at a glance (2026)

If you want the short answer first: most websites I build cost between $300 and $1,000, and a large platform can run above that. This is where the common types of site start:

These are my own prices, in US dollars, and they are starting points rather than quotes. Arabic and English together is priced into the build rather than added as a line item, because it changes the structure underneath, not just the text. The rest of this guide is about what moves a project up or down from those starting points — and how to read anyone's quote, mine included.

You are paying for decisions and time, not pages

The instinct is to price by page count. It is almost useless.

A five-page brochure site where every page is text and a photo is a small job. A three-page site where one of those pages is a booking system with availability, confirmations and an admin view is a much bigger one. Pages are not the unit. Distinct behaviours are.

When you get a quote, the useful question is not "why is it this much for five pages" but "which parts of this are custom, and which are assembled from things you have built before".

What genuinely moves the price

In rough order of how much they add:

Selling things. A catalogue, a basket, order records, payment states, stock. Doing it properly for Lebanon means cash on delivery as a real path, two currencies with a rate you control, and an order that can continue over WhatsApp. This is the single biggest multiplier.

Two languages. Not the translation itself — the structure underneath. Separate URLs per language, mirrored layouts, hreflang, an admin panel that holds both versions. Adding Arabic properly after the fact costs considerably more than building for it from the start.

A CMS you actually control. A site you can edit yourself costs more up front than one where every change is a phone call to a developer. For a business that changes its content often, it can pay for itself, and it removes the worst dependency in this industry: needing to reach a specific person to change your own opening hours.

Integrations. Anything that talks to something else — payment provider, delivery company, accounting, an existing stock system. The cost here is rarely the code. It is the discovery, the edge cases, and whatever the other system does badly.

Migrating an existing site. Moving without losing your search rankings is careful work: mapping every old URL to a new one, preserving metadata, redirecting properly. Skip it and you can lose traffic you spent years earning.

In short:

What each tier includes

The labels in the table above mean different things to different people, so this is what they mean in mine.

A brochure site is a small number of pages — typically home, services, about and contact — designed for the phone first, with your phone number, WhatsApp and a map where people look for them. It includes the search groundwork: page titles and descriptions, structured data for your business, a sitemap, and pages that load quickly on mobile data.

A business site with a CMS is all of that plus an admin panel. You change text, swap photos, update prices, add a project or publish a post yourself, without a phone call. For most businesses this is the tier that makes sense, because the alternative is paying someone every time your opening hours change.

An e-commerce shop adds a product catalogue with options like size and colour, stock that updates when an order comes in, a checkout built around cash on delivery and WhatsApp confirmation, prices in dollars or Lebanese pounds at a rate you set, delivery zones, and an order dashboard you can use from your phone.

A platform is anything where users have accounts or the site runs part of the business: bookings with availability, client portals, dashboards for several branches, systems that talk to other systems. These are scoped individually, because no two are alike.

Every tier includes three things that should never be optional: the domain in your name, a site that works properly on phones, and a written scope before work starts.

What you are often overpaying for

Design rounds with no brief. Endless revisions because nobody agreed what the site was for. Agree the goal and the structure before anyone opens a design tool.

A custom build of something standard. A blog, a contact form and a photo gallery are solved problems. Paying for bespoke versions of them is paying for someone's learning.

A mobile app you do not need. Most businesses asking for an app want a website that works well on a phone. An app means two builds, two review processes, and persuading people to install something. The bar for needing one is high.

Monthly fees with nothing behind them. Ask what a retainer actually covers. Hosting and a domain are small, known costs. If a monthly fee is much larger than those, you should be able to name what the difference buys.

Freelancer, agency or template platform

Three routes, each with honest trade-offs. A template platform here means something like Wix or Shopify.

None of these is right for everyone. A platform is the sensible choice in the cases described below under when you should not hire a developer at all. An agency earns its overhead when a project genuinely needs a designer, several developers and a project manager working at once. For a business website or a shop in Lebanon, a freelancer who builds it end to end is usually the middle path: you pay for the work rather than the office, and you deal with the person writing the code. Whichever route you take, the after-launch question in the quote section below applies to all three.

The running costs, which are smaller than people expect

Separate from the build:

• A domain is a fixed yearly cost, typically in the range of ten to twenty dollars for a .com. Register it in your own name. This is not negotiable — if your developer owns your domain, they own your business's address.
• Hosting for a normal business site is cheap and often free at low traffic on modern platforms. A brochure site should not carry a meaningful hosting bill.
• Maintenance is real but optional in the short term. Things drift: dependencies age, a payment provider changes an API, content goes stale.

The honest version is that a small site's running costs can be under fifty dollars a year. Anyone quoting substantially more should be able to say what the extra is for.

When you should not hire a developer at all

Genuinely:

• You just need to be findable. A complete Google Business Profile and an active Instagram will serve you better than a neglected website. Do those first. They are free.
• You are testing whether the business works. Validate demand before commissioning software. A website will not create demand that is not there.
• You need a shop, quickly, and you are small. A hosted platform will get you selling this week. You will hit its limits eventually — particularly around cash on delivery and currency — and that is a fine problem to have later.

A developer is worth it when you have something specific that off-the-shelf tools cannot do, when the site is load-bearing for your revenue, or when the site has to grow with the business.

What a real quote looks like

Whoever you hire, a quote you can trust has: the scope written down, what is explicitly not included, what you must provide and by when, a delivery date, and what happens after handover.

That last one matters most and is asked about least. Find out, in writing, before you pay anything: whose name the domain will be in, who you call when something needs changing, and what happens if you stop working together. The domain, at least, should be registered to you from day one.

If a quote cannot tell you that, the price is not the problem.

How to compare two quotes

Two quotes for "a website" are rarely for the same thing. Before comparing the totals, line them up on these:

• Scope. The same pages, the same features, the same number of languages? A quote for a site in one language is not cheaper than a quote for two; it is a quote for something else.
• Editing. Is there an admin panel, and what can you change with it — everything, or only a blog?
• Content. Who writes the text and supplies the photos, and by when?
• Revisions. How many rounds of changes are included, and what does an extra one cost?
• What is excluded. Anything not written into the scope will be charged separately or not done at all.
• After launch. What happens when something breaks in month three, and what does that cost?
• The domain. Whose name will it be registered in?

The cheaper quote is often the one that answers fewer of these. Ask both sides the same questions in writing, and the comparison usually settles itself.

So what do I charge

For what it's worth, my own work starts at $300 for a brochure site, $500 for one with a CMS you manage yourself, and $700 upwards for e-commerce. Those are US dollars, and they are starting points rather than quotes — what you actually pay is decided by the behaviours listed further up, which is the whole argument of this piece.

If you want a real number for your own project, tell me what it has to do and I will come back with a written scope and a price before any work starts.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a website cost in Lebanon?

Most websites cost between $300 and $1,000. A brochure site starts at $300, a site with an admin panel you manage yourself at $500, and an online shop at $700, while a large platform with accounts or bookings can run above $1,000. The scope of the project decides where in that range it lands.

How much does an e-commerce website cost in Lebanon?

My online shops start at $700. From there the number depends on how many products you have, whether they have variants and tracked stock, which payment routes you need, and how delivery is charged.

Does a website in Arabic and English cost more?

Yes, because it is more than a translation: each language needs its own URLs, a layout that works right-to-left, and an admin panel that holds both versions. Building for both languages from the start costs considerably less than adding Arabic later.

Are there monthly costs after the website is built?

A domain is a fixed yearly cost, typically ten to twenty dollars for a .com, and hosting for a normal business site is cheap or free at low traffic. A small site can cost under fifty dollars a year to run. Maintenance is optional in the short term, but real over time.

Why do quotes for the same website vary so much?

Because they are rarely for the same website. One may include an admin panel, two languages and the search groundwork; another may include none of them. Compare quotes on scope, editing, content, revisions and after-launch support before comparing the totals.

Whose name should the domain be in?

Yours. The domain is your business's address online, so it should be registered in your name from the start. Ask for that in writing before you pay anything, whoever you hire.

Related

If you are weighing a rebuild rather than a first site, moving off WordPress without losing your rankings covers what that actually involves. For the selling side, what actually works when you sell online in Lebanon goes through cash on delivery, two currencies and WhatsApp ordering in detail.

If you are starting from the design rather than the price, website design covers how a design project runs, from the brief to launch.

I build business websites and online shops for companies in Lebanon, including in Tripoli, Minieh and Akkar. To talk about a project, get in touch.