What we do, and what it costs
What a law firm website costs.
Every figure on this page is the real one, and the price is the size of the firm and nothing else.
All your practice areas and all your attorneys are included, however many that is. We do not charge by the page.
At a glance
- Rebuild the site you have
- R8,500
- A new site, from
- R12,500
- Looking after it, from
- R1,950 a month
Paid once
Building the website.
Rebuilding an existing site
R8,500
The firm keeps the website it has and we rebuild what is underneath. If you are happy with the look, we keep the look. It loads faster, there is nothing left on it for anybody to hack, and from the day it launches somebody is checking it every week. The same price whatever the size of the firm.
A new website, sole practitioner
R12,500
Designed and written from the beginning for a practice of one. Your practice areas, your profile, the pages a client actually needs, and an enquiry form that is tested before it goes live and every week after that.
The usual engagement
A new website, two to five attorneys
R18,000
The usual engagement. A profile for every attorney, a page for every practice area, and a structure built around how the firm actually takes work in rather than around a template. Most of the five websites on this site are this size of firm.
A new website, six to twelve attorneys
R28,000
More people and more practice areas means more page templates and more relationships between them: which attorney appears on which page, and how a visitor lands on the right one. That is what the difference in price pays for.
A new website, thirteen or more
Quoted
At that size it stops being the same work, so it is quoted rather than priced. Tell us what the firm needs. If we are not the right people we will say so and point you at somebody who is.
Against the market
Cheaper than an agency. Dearer than a template.
The cheap end of this market is a template with your logo dropped into it, built once and never opened again. The expensive end is an agency that will not name a number until you are sitting in a meeting.
We are deliberately in neither place, and the price is on the page so you can check that for yourself.
- Template shopsR1,580 – R8,980
Published rates, two SA studios
- Attorney sites, advertisedR4,500 – R5,500
Advertised “from” prices
- Five-page site, averageR6,254 average
Survey of 56 SA agencies
- De Novo DigitalR8,500 – R28,000
Published on this site, every tier
- Mid-range agenciesR15,000 – R50,000
Most business websites, two SA studios
What is included
The same four things every time.
Nothing below is an extra and nothing below is scoped separately.
Every practice area and every attorney
Nothing is charged by the page. A firm that does more, and has more to say about it, does not pay more than a firm that does less.
- A page for each practice area
- A profile for each attorney
- Contact, fees and enquiry pages
- A POPIA page written for your site, not generated
The writing
We draft it and the firm corrects it, which is a far shorter argument than a blank page. Two rounds of changes are included. If you would rather supply your own copy, that is fine too.
- Practice area pages
- Attorney profiles
- The home page and the small print
- Two rounds of changes, then R650 an hour
How it is built
As plain files served from a content network rather than as an application with a database behind it. That is why there is nothing to patch, nothing to hack, and nothing that can break overnight because a plugin updated itself.
- No database and no plugins
- No administrator login to be guessed
- Tested on phones, tablets and laptops
- Images and code kept small on purpose
Search and compliance
On-page and technical search work is part of the build and not an extra. So is checking the site against the rules your firm is actually held to.
- Page titles and descriptions written, not generated
- Structured data so search engines know the firm
- Redirects mapped from the old addresses
- POPIA and Legal Practice Council rules checked
What is actually running when somebody visits.
The left column is a typical firm website: five separate things that have to be kept patched, any one of which can be attacked. The right is the same pages with the machinery taken out.
A typical firm site
What is actually running when you visit it
- Web server you rentcan be attacked
- WordPress installationcan be attacked
- Databasecan be attacked
- Plugins, each one an entry pointcan be attacked
- Admin login, open to the internetcan be attacked
- Your pages, somewhere underneath
Five things to keep patched
A site we build
The same pages, with the machinery removed
- Your pages, already built
- Served from a global network
Nothing to patch
Paid monthly
Looking after it once it is built.
The build happens once. This is the part that runs for as long as the website does, and it is the reason there is a monthly fee at all.
Every week
We submit the contact form and see whether it arrives, then check every link, how fast the site loads, and where the firm comes up in Google. A form that stops delivering does not tell you it has stopped, which is the whole reason this exists.
Same day
You email a change — a new attorney, a new fee, a paragraph that is now wrong — and it is on the site the same working day. There is no ticket queue and nobody to whom it gets forwarded.
Every month
One page. How many people came, what they searched for to find the firm, and who got in touch. Not a dashboard login that nobody opens twice.
Every year
We run the same 69-check review over your own site that we run on a stranger’s, so it is properly examined once a year whether anything looks wrong or not.
- Care — sole practitioner
- R1,950
- Care — 2 to 5 attorneys
- R2,950
- Care — 6 to 12 attorneys
- R3,950
- Care — 13 or more
- Quoted
- Found — coming up in search for your town
- R4,950
If you want them
- Google Business Profile, set up properly
- R2,500 once
- A review system that asks at the right moment
- R1,500 once
- Professional email on your own domain
- R1,500 once
- Google Ads, managed
- From R4,500 a month
Terms
The commercial part, in full.
You are going to read the agreement properly. It is quicker for both of us if there is nothing in it you have not already seen.
- Deposit
- Half the once-off fee before work begins, the rest at launch.
- Changes during the build
- Two rounds included. After that R650 an hour, agreed in writing before it is spent.
- Term
- Twelve months, then month to month on sixty days’ notice. No automatic renewal into a new fixed term.
- Payment
- Monthly by card or debit order. Five per cent off for debit order.
What you own
The firm owns it from the first day.
- Yours permanently
- The domain, every word and photograph on the site, your logo and brand assets, and all the data the site collects.
- Licensed while you subscribe
- The underlying template and the code that runs on it. That is the honest position, and you should read it here rather than find it in a clause.
- If you leave
- You take the domain, the content, the brand assets and the enquiries, whatever the reason. You may buy the build out at six times the monthly fee, or rebuild it elsewhere from the content you already own.
Who owns your law firm’s website →What POPIA requires of a law firm site →The LPC advertising rules →
Questions
Questions about working with De Novo Digital.
- How much does a law firm website cost?
- Rebuilding an existing site is R8,500. A new site is R12,500 for a sole practitioner, R18,000 for two to five attorneys and R28,000 for six to twelve. Thirteen or more is quoted. The price depends on the size of the firm and not on the number of pages — all your practice areas and all your attorneys are included.
- What is the monthly fee for?
- Looking after the site once it is built. We check it every week, make the changes you email us the same working day, and send one page at the end of the month showing who visited and what came in. Once a year we run the same 69-check review over your own site. From R1,950 a month.
- Do we have to change how our website looks?
- No. If you are happy with the look, we rebuild it looking the same. What changes is underneath: it loads faster, there is nothing left on it for anybody to hack, and somebody is watching it.
- Who owns the website and the domain?
- Your firm does, from the first day. The domain is registered in your name, every word and photograph on the site is yours, and so are the enquiries it collects. The term is twelve months and then month to month on sixty days’ notice.
- Can you write the content?
- Yes. We draft it and your firm corrects it, which is a far shorter argument than a blank page. Two rounds of changes are included in the price. If you would rather supply your own copy, that is fine too.
- Does the firm have to be near you?
- No. We work with law firms anywhere in South Africa, and none of it needs a meeting — the five sample websites were built the same way yours would be, by email and telephone.
Start with a free review.
Send your firm’s web address. We go through the site against a written list of 69 checks and email you the six problems worth fixing first, each in one sentence, with what we measured. It lands within two working days, it costs nothing, and we do not telephone you afterwards.