Ever stay up at night wondering how much it cost to build websites that you use every other day? We’ve compiled a list of how much it costs to create some of the world’s most popular websites (and platforms) and what their value is in today’s modern age. Some of these huge brands receive over a million unique visitors on a daily basis and they know how important good user experience is. Websites can prove to be priceless for brands who care about their customers.

A development cost can hugely depend on the sheer size of the project and how far a brand is willing to push the barriers of technical development and design. With most website projects development consists of:

• Project management
• Front end development
• Back end development
• UI/UX design
• Analysis
• Quality assurance

Booking.com

One of the most trusted and visited travel sites, which receives 2.8 million unique users each day. Booking.com has cemented itself as one of the leading brands in their market and their website reflects that with one of the most seamless user experience available on the web.

Current Value (Estimate): $30,061,074 USD

Unique Users (Daily): 2,856,533

Page Views (Daily): 13,726,486

Global Traffic Rank: 76 (Top 100)

Estimates show that development for the latest Booking.com website took anywhere between 1,923-2,322 hours. If this site was created in the UK for an average hourly rate of £43, the total cost of the site would come to an estimated grand total of £99,846.

You can see how much Booking.com have invested in their website to provide their users with one of the best possible user experience for travel/accommodation websites in the world. The number of unique visitors they get on a daily basis shows how much they needed a full-featured website which could handle the load and they did not cut any corners when it came to developing it.

Pinterest

Pinterest’s popularity has exploded in recent years, with more and more people uploading, browsing projects and images every day. Artists and designers have discovered how valuable a platform like Pinterest is, and can be for both displaying artworks and also finding inspiration.

Current Value (Estimate): $25,515,287 USD

Unique Users (Daily): 2,610,509

Page Views (Daily): 11,650,789

Global Traffic Rank: 79 (Top 100)

Estimates say that the Pinterest site cost $120,000 USD to complete development, with it costing anywhere from $2-2.5 million a month for the San-Fransisco company in development and storage costs to maintain its website at the scale it is at today.

TripAdvisor.co.uk

We’ve all been on this website numerous times to see what others say about the places we’re planning to visit, whether it be a restaurant or a hotel, TripAdvisor has been assisting us with quality reviews (and some rubbish ones) in recent times. It is one of the world’s most recognisable peer review websites and has become an essential part of a restaurants credibility. The site contains over 500 million reviews and counting.

TripAdvisor has built a simple to use platform where users can post and view reviews with ease. TripAdvisor’s platform has a smooth user experience, with everything easy to get to and everything explained as soon as you arrive on the website.

Estimates say that TripAdvisor platform cost anywhere between £20,000-£25,000, as it is a very complex project with a lot of backend work. On top of that, there will be a lot of maintenance costs associated with a site like this.

Current Value (Estimate): $1,044,113 USD

Unique Users (Daily): 179,464

Page Views (Daily): 476,763

Global Traffic Rank: 2,068

Uber

Let’s shift our focus over to the world of apps and what better app to talk about than, one of the world’s most recognisable brands, Uber. Uber has changed the modern world for the better, creating an app with one of the most revolutionary user experiences in recent times. The app can store user and driver details, book cabs, track the location of their drivers and also process payment options. (Oh and not to forget their famous rating system.)

An app like Uber’s is one of the most complex out there, full of a lot of coding. Development for an app of this size is hard to put even an estimate on.

A lot of leading app development companies have given their two cents and their estimates to the pricing of Uber’s app development. These estimates range anywhere from $80,000-$300,000 USD and it’s no surprise why. Uber set out to create a platform to change the world and also be simple enough to use that older generations can pick up and order a cab within seconds with ease.

Pricing for an app like Uber doesn’t take into account maintenance for a project of this magnitude. Constant quality testers and developers are on hand fixing bugs and problems every hour to provide users with a perfect experience without any major hiccups.

Uber has recently valued themselves at $84.2bn, making it one of the largest IPO’s of all time, with it’s highly anticipated step onto the stock market following in the steps of other giants such as Facebook.

Uber.com Website

Current Value (Estimate): $2,045,980 USD

Unique Users (Daily): 345,135

Page Views (Daily): 934,235

Global Traffic Rank: 1,109

It’s easy to see how much big brands value their companies and are willing to spend to create a platform their users will recognise and adhere to. Pulling out all the stops when developing a polished, seamless experience with a lot of technical specifications involved. These brands have extensive measures in place to maintain these websites and platforms, always putting the customer’s experience first.

Need more information on websites and how it can be a pivotal part of a brand’s success, contact us today.