How to build a website:four routes,you need one
People choose on a feature list and then pay for ownership: a builder, a self-hosted CMS, a subscription to a ready-made site from 12,800 ₸ a month, or a custom build from 1,500,000 ₸. On launch day the four look much the same. A year in they don't: prices need changing, someone wants a page in Kazakh, and somebody has to sit down and do it. Two of the four routes we run ourselves, so we have no reason to send you anywhere else.
from 12,800 ₸
a month: ready site, hosting and updates included
2 of 4
we do ourselves: the subscription and custom builds
3 days
trial, no card: try it on your own content
What people ask before choosing anything
Four ways to do it, each with its own cost of ownership
The routes differ in one thing: who pays for the site after launch. In money, in contractor hours, or in your own evenings. Here is what each one costs.
A builder, from scratch
You assemble the page from blocks on someone else's platform. The first screen goes up in an evening. Then it turns out the structure, the copy and the logic are yours to invent as well, and every new page brings that work back round. The low bill in month one gets paid back with your evenings in year two.
A self-hosted CMS
WordPress or similar: the code and the database are yours, with a theme or plugin for every case. The bill for that arrives later. Updates, paid plugins, backups, certificates and a person who watches all of it are costs you cannot see on installation day.
A subscription site
Our route: a site for your niche is already assembled, and you edit it in the admin panel. By hand in the editor, or in words through the AI assistant, which is included in the subscription. Domain, hosting and updates are on us, from 12,800 ₸ a month. Calculations, integrations and a client area are covered by our own custom development, once you get that far.
A custom build
A project shaped by your problem: its own design, its own integrations, calculations, a customer account area. It is our second product: a landing page from 1,500,000 ₸, a corporate site from 3,000,000 ₸, an online shop from 5,000,000 ₸, a portal with a client area from 8,000,000 ₸. The estimate is fixed before work starts.
Nine rows where the routes genuinely diverge
The rows are picked on one test: the answer to each one moves the decision. A dash means “depends on the plan, the plugin or the contract”.
| INIT subscription | Website builder | Self-hosted CMS | Custom build | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A site with copy and structure for your trade, live minutes after you pick it | An empty template, your own copy | |||
| A design built for your trade without a designer's fee | Included in the project estimate | |||
| The owner makes edits, with no hourly invoice | By hand in the plan; in words with the assistant, included in the subscription | By hand only, block by block | Copy yes, layout needs a developer | |
| Platform updates, backups and SSL — inside the subscription price, no separate invoices | Included, but the domain and enquiries cost extra | |||
| Three languages with separate content, out of the box | Multilingual included in every plan | |||
| Enquiries land on a kanban board, not in an inbox | Sent to an inbox | A form plugin | ||
| The enquiry card names the page and the section it came from | ||||
| Calculations, integrations, a customer account area | Custom development from us, from 1,500,000 ₸ | |||
| A cost of ownership you can predict a year ahead | From 12,800 ₸/mo, everything included | The plan plus apps and edits |
“Custom build” is also us: from 1,500,000 ₸ for a landing page, from 8,000,000 ₸ for a portal with a client area and integrations. One team runs both routes. So moving from the subscription to a project does not start from a blank page: the structure, the copy and the enquiries you have collected are already there.
One comparison at a time
Every write-up follows the same shape: what the alternative asks of you, what it adds up to over a year, and at which point moving to INIT pays off. Start with the route you are already considering.
04
Four situations where the answer is already known
If your situation is described below, there is nothing left to compare — take the route named.
If your site has to calculate, integrate and run its own logic, that is our custom development, from 1,500,000 ₸. We name the route before you pay, not after.
We run both routes: a subscription to a ready-made site from 12,800 ₸ a month and bespoke development from 1,500,000 ₸. Same team either way, and the route gets picked for the job, so we have no reason to sell you the one that is simply easier to sell.
What to compare, and what is a wasted evening
Half the comparisons on the internet are written around attributes that change nothing. On the left are the questions whose answers move the decision. On the right is what looks decisive and is not.
Ask these
Each answer removes at least one route from the list
- Timing: when the site must be online rather than “in development”
- Cost of ownership over a year: subscription, hosting, plugins and developer hours together
- Who makes an edit at 18:40 on a Wednesday, and what it costs
- A year from now: you have outgrown the templates — what then
- Whether Kazakh and English need their own content rather than machine translation
- Where enquiries land, and whether anyone sees them on Monday morning
Do not spend time on these
Looks like a criterion, decides nothing
- The number of templates in the gallery — you will use one
- “SEO optimisation” with no list of what is actually done
- A count of integrations when you need exactly one
- How fast the first page is assembled: it is assembled once
- A first-month price quoted without the second-year one
- The word “AI” in the description, with no statement of what it does
One evening, four steps, in this order
The order matters: each answer narrows the choice for the next step. Start at the fourth and you will be comparing the prices of routes that do not suit you anyway.
Write down what must be true a year from now
Not “we need a site” but “a fifth of revenue comes from site enquiries” or “a catalogue in three languages”. This is the only criterion on which the routes actually diverge; the rest is taste.
A criterion instead of a wish list
Work out who edits the site, and how often
Once a quarter or every week. Whether there is someone in-house who will do it, and what an hour of a contractor's time costs. This answer removes half the routes.
Whether you need a contractor on retainer
Test the simplest route on your own content
Not on demo copy: take your own services, prices and photographs and build the home page out of them. One evening shows whether the ready-made sections are enough for your particular business.
Whether ready-made is enough
If it was not, go to development — not to a pricier template
If step three ran into logic that simply is not there, a pricier template will not add it. That is the moment for a conversation about a project: the problem, the boundaries, a fixed estimate from 1,500,000 ₸.
Project boundaries and an estimate
What people ask about these comparisons
Timing, cost of ownership, and moving from one route to another.
You can compare forever, or spend an evening on your own content
A 3-day trial, no card, then from 12,800 ₸ a month. If by the end of the evening it is clear the job needs a project, write to us: custom development from 1,500,000 ₸ is run by the same team.
- A your-name.shardit.app address is issued immediately
- Your enquiry reaches the kanban board and a person replies
- Nothing is charged before the trial ends
Five sections you can open right now
Read next
Neighbouring sections that answer the question this one raises.
