How Much Does It Cost to Hire a Web Designer in Sri Lanka?

"How much will a website cost?" is the first question almost every business owner asks me, and it has been since we started building websites in Sri Lanka in 2010. It's a fair question. But on its own it's the wrong one, because the price you pay on day one is only part of what a website really costs you.

In this guide I'll give you real numbers from our own price list, explain what pushes a quote up or down, show you what it costs to keep a website running year after year, and share a few stories from businesses that found out the cheapest quote is rarely the cheapest website.

The short answer

In Sri Lanka in 2026, hiring an established web design company typically costs:

• LKR 95,000 to 145,000 for a professionally designed business website
• LKR 150,000 to 265,000 for an online store
• A custom quote for larger or more complex projects, which can run past LKR 1 million
• From around LKR 25,000 a year after the first year, covering hosting, domain, email, maintenance and support

You will find freelancers and "website deals" much cheaper than this. We don't compete with them on price, and further down I'll explain why some businesses come to us after trying that route first.

What it costs to build a website with Mobiz

We publish our prices because I believe a business owner should be able to plan a budget before picking up the phone. Here is what our fixed-scope packages include.

Business websites

• Starter, LKR 95,000: up to five custom-designed pages. A good fit for a small business, a professional practice or a new venture that needs a credible presence online.
• Growth, LKR 145,000: up to fifteen pages, plus the features we use to help growing businesses compete on Google.

Both are designed from scratch rather than dropped into an off-the-shelf template. Both are tested on desktop, tablet and mobile, built with on-page SEO foundations, live in about two weeks, and include the first year of hosting, SSL and updates.

Online stores

• Store Starter, LKR 150,000: a complete online store with up to 30 products, payment gateway integration and a smooth checkout.
• Store Growth, LKR 265,000: everything in Store Starter, plus AI-powered tools to help you sell more.

Like our websites, both store packages go live in about two weeks and include the first year of operations.

The Keune online store, one of several eCommerce sites we have built for RF Asia International’s brands.

Bespoke and enterprise projects

Some businesses need more than a package can offer: a website for every company in a group, a booking system, an ERP integration or a fully custom platform. For these we scope the work properly and give a fixed bid. You know the price before we start, not after.

What makes a website cost more or less

Two businesses can both ask for "a website" and need very different things. These are the factors that move the price the most.

The cost goes up with:

• More pages or more products
• Custom features and third-party integrations such as payment gateways, ERP systems or bookings
• Multilingual sites, for example Sinhala and Tamil alongside English
• Bespoke design and motion work
• Compliance requirements in regulated industries such as healthcare

The cost comes down when:

• Your needs fit one of our fixed packages
• Your content (text, photos, product details) is ready to publish before we start
• You stick to standard integrations

If you want one easy way to keep your cost down, have your content ready. It saves time for everyone and keeps the project moving.

The cost most quotes leave out: running your website

Building a website is a one-time cost. Running it is not. Every website needs hosting, a domain name, security updates, backups and someone to call when something goes wrong. Many quotes never mention any of this, and business owners only find out a year later when the renewal bills arrive, or when the site goes down and nobody answers the phone.

At Mobiz, the first year of hosting is included in every package. From the second year, running costs start at around LKR 25,000 a year. That covers cloud hosting, your domain name, five business email accounts, and maintenance and support. Maintenance and support come included with hosting, which most providers charge for separately.

Sites that need more resources, such as large online stores or high-traffic platforms, cost more to host, up to around LKR 100,000 a year for a dedicated server setup. We tell you up front which one your site needs.

Here is what that means over three years:

• Starter website: about LKR 145,000 in total, or roughly LKR 4,000 a month
• Growth website: about LKR 195,000 in total, or roughly LKR 5,400 a month
• Store Starter: about LKR 200,000 in total, or roughly LKR 5,600 a month

Ask every designer you speak to for this same three-year figure. If they can't give you one, that tells you something.

Why the cheapest quote usually costs more

I understand why a cheap website is tempting. When you run a business, every rupee counts. But a website is not a one-time purchase like a name board. It's closer to a vehicle: what matters is whether it keeps running for years, and whether someone stands behind it when it breaks down.

Two stories from our clients show what that looks like.

When the freelancer disappeared

The owner of Sri Lanka Driver Guide with Car, a private driver and tour business, came to us after their freelancer disappeared and left them stuck. For a tourism business, every day without a working website means bookings going to competitors. We had their site up and running within a week, and today it runs on our hosting, maintenance and support.

Sri Lanka Driver Guide with Car — back online within a week after their freelancer disappeared.

When a website gets hacked

Ishya Spa, a spa and wellness business in the United States, came to us after their website was hacked. We recovered the site, later revamped it completely, and it has run with us ever since. A hack is the moment you find out whether anyone is really responsible for your website. With a cheap, unsupported site, the answer is usually no one.

IshyaSpa.com — recovered after a hack, later revamped, and running with us ever since.

What you're really paying for

When you hire an established studio, you're paying for things a low quote rarely includes: dependability, responsiveness, accountability and experience. Here is what each of those means at Mobiz.

Dependability: clients who stay for years

The best proof I can offer is how long our clients stay with us. All of the businesses below run on our hosting, maintenance and support.

• Econutrena has been with us for more than five years. In that time we've helped them build a large online product portfolio, advised on their digital strategy, and supported their email and IT security.
• Suhadha.lk, a technology retailer, has been with us for more than five years. Together we've helped them win a strong share of their market and rank at the top of Google for their products.
• Manamperi Group has trusted us with seven group company websites over six years.
• RF Asia International has had five eCommerce websites built by us for their different brands over six years, the latest in 2026.

A business doesn't come back for a second, fifth or seventh website unless the first one worked.

Suhadha.lk — more than five years with us, and ranking at the top of Google for its products.

Responsiveness: you won't be left waiting

When you contact us during business hours (Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 6pm Sri Lanka time), you'll usually hear back within a few hours. Outside those hours, you'll have a reply by 10am the next working day. A written proposal follows within four business hours of that first reply. We publish these commitments, so you can hold us to them.

Accountability: a process you can see

Once you sign with us, the project moves to our client portal at portal.mobiz.lk. That's where we share designs, exchange files, collect your feedback and get your approvals. After launch, it's where you'll find your invoices, payments, support tickets, audit reports and website health. It's also available as an app on your phone.

This matters more than it sounds. When a project runs on WhatsApp messages and phone calls, nobody remembers who approved what, files go missing, and when something goes wrong there's no record to check. In the portal, every decision leaves a trail.

A typical project runs like this:

• Enquiry, discussion and a written proposal
• Contract and onboarding to the client portal
• Design, feedback and approval in the portal
• Build and testing across desktop, tablet and mobile
• Launch, in about two weeks for a package or three to six weeks for a standard custom business website
• Ongoing hosting, maintenance and support, with tickets and reports in the portal

Ownership: your website belongs to you

Your website, your content and your files belong to you, always. We register and manage your domain name on your behalf, and any change or transfer needs your written permission. That rule exists to protect you. Nobody, whether a former employee, a scammer or a well-meaning relative, can move your domain without your approval in writing.

Experience and technology

Mobiz began in 2010 from joomlasrilanka.com, an officially recognised Joomla resource, and was incorporated in 2014. Since then we've delivered work for more than 300 clients in Sri Lanka, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States and South Africa, with a marketing office in Australia since 2021.

Today our sites run on our own Laravel-based CMS, built for speed, caching, clean semantic markup and visibility in AI-powered search, with security and performance protection in front of every client site on our cloud hosting.

11 red flags to check before hiring any web designer

Whether you hire us or someone else, check every quote against this list:

• No written contract, or full payment upfront. A professional studio works to a contract with staged payments. Paying everything before work begins leaves you no leverage if things go wrong.
• The domain is registered in the designer's name with no clear terms. If you fall out, you could lose control of your own business name online.
• Pirated or "nulled" premium themes and plugins. They often carry hidden malware and can't be safely updated.
• No SSL certificate and no backups. Without SSL, browsers warn visitors your site is not secure. Without backups, one bad day can wipe out your site.
• Hosting renewal is never mentioned. The quote looks cheap until the second-year bill arrives.
• "Unlimited" hosting, emails or revisions. Nothing is truly unlimited. It usually means overcrowded servers or a project that never ends.
• Prices that look too good to be true. Proper design, development, testing and support take real time. If a price can't cover that, something is being skipped.
• Months of delay for a simple website. A small business site should take weeks, not a season.
• No warranty, help desk or support portal. If you don't know who to contact when something breaks, nobody is responsible.
• No analytics or regular reports. Without data you can't see who visits, what they do, or whether your website is paying for itself.
• Shared hosting with no separate login for each client. Your site sits inside someone else's account, and you have no access of your own.

When you don't need a web designer yet

This might sound strange coming from a web design company, but not every business needs a website today.

If you can't commit to a website's basic running costs, or to building it properly to a reasonable standard, don't start one. A half-finished website does more harm than good. In that situation a well-kept Facebook page will do the job for now.

But if you want to build long-term relationships with your customers, grow a brand reputation you control, and make decisions based on how real people use your site, you need a proper website. Get it built by us, or by any competent designer. Just make sure it's done properly.

How payment works with Mobiz

We never ask for the full amount upfront. For smaller projects we take 50% to start and 50% at launch. For larger projects over LKR 1 million, payments are split 40%, 30% and 30% across the project. Every invoice and payment is tracked in your client portal.

Hiring a Sri Lankan web designer from overseas?

About 40% of our revenue comes from clients outside Sri Lanka, with work delivered across the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and the UAE. We work video-first, and we've built websites for founders we've never met in person.

At current exchange rates, our packages work out to approximately:

• Starter: USD 320 or AUD 490
• Growth: USD 480 or AUD 740
• Store Starter: USD 500 or AUD 770
• Store Growth: USD 880 or AUD 1,360

You get the same process, client portal, support and accountability as our local clients.

Get a free audit or a free quote

If you already have a website, start with our free website audit. We'll check your site's speed, SEO, security and health using the same in-house tools we use for our own clients, and tell you honestly what needs fixing.

If you're planning a new website, see our web design packages and pricing and ask for a free quote. You'll get a clear, itemised price, including what it will cost to run in year two and beyond.

About the author

Amila Rajapaksha is the founder and Managing Director of Mobiz International. He began his career in 2006 as a software engineer at Hayleys Infocraft, went on to lead teams of developers, QA engineers and designers as a tech lead, and founded JSL Web Solutions, one of Sri Lanka's pioneering Joomla development companies. He has since served as CEO and CTO of Sri Lankan technology firms and holds an MSc in Software Engineering from the UK. Under his leadership, Mobiz has delivered websites, eCommerce stores and custom software for more than 300 clients across six countries.