Export Guide · 02
The cash cost is lower than you think — the real cost is labour hours. Get that straight first, and quotes stop being confusing.
A B2B export site that can take enquiries costs under US$150 a year in cash (domain, hosting and business email are all available on low-cost or free plans). What actually costs money is labour: getting from zero to live usually takes 40–80 hours. So quotes differ not on “materials” but on who does the work and how deep they go.
(1) Build it yourself
Cash US$60–200/year, 40–80 hours of your time, plus the learning curve. For people with time, appetite and no rush to go live.
(2) Template website vendors
US$400–1,700; you supply material and coordinate, about 10–20 hours. For tight budgets where a presentable storefront is enough.
(3) Enquiry-focused / custom build
US$1,100–4,200; you are involved for 5–10 hours. Includes structured data, multilingual architecture and search-indexing setup — built for long-term use and Google indexing.
Worth paying: domain (about US$10/year), overseas hosting (US$40–200/year), business domain email (US$0–40/year). These three are the foundation — don’t cut them.
Not urgent: multilingual language packs (hand-building a few pages is cheaper to start), paid templates (free ones are plenty to start), premium CDN (the free tier is entirely sufficient for a B2B site).
Don’t pay: premium domains, high-spec servers (a B2B showcase site has tiny traffic), commercial SSL (free is fine), purchased “backlink packages” — exactly the behaviour search engines penalise.
Because a low cost base doesn’t mean a low quote. For the same job, the gap comes down to number of pages and languages, whether search-indexing setup is included, whether ongoing updates are included, and who eats the rework.
When you get a quote, don’t just look at the number — ask four things: how many pages? how many languages? is indexing setup included? what happens to changes after delivery?
Q: What’s the biggest difference between cheap and expensive?
A: Mostly what happens after delivery. Cheap usually means a one-off handover with changes billed separately; expensive usually includes setup and a maintenance period. Ask clearly — don’t judge on the first-year quote alone.
Q: Do I have to buy hosting?
A: Yes, but not expensive hosting. A B2B site with a few dozen visitors a day runs fine on an entry-level plan. The key is that the data centre is overseas — domestic servers are slow to reach from abroad and require ICP filing.
Q: Whose name is the domain in?
A: It has to be your company’s. Registering the domain, business email and social accounts under the client company’s name is our default with every client; what isn’t yours can be taken away at any time.
Further reading: The first step for a domestic factory · What export agency operation does