How long does it take to build a website for a small practice?

"How long does it take to build a website?" is one of the first questions practitioners ask us, usually right before "how much does it cost?" The honest answer ranges from a few hours to a few weeks, and the difference depends on how the site is built and how quickly the content comes together.

Here are real numbers for each approach, using Hostinger's guide to website build times, and what we see in our own projects.

With a website builder: hours to a few days

If you build a single page yourself on a website builder, Hostinger's guide estimates 4 hours to 3 days in total: about an hour to a day for planning, a few hours to a day for design and setup, a few hours for testing and around an hour to publish.

That estimate assumes you already know what you want to say. For most practitioners, the slow part is not the builder, it is writing the texts, choosing photos and deciding how to describe your services.

With WordPress: about a week

For a single page built on WordPress, Hostinger's guide estimates 2 to 8 days: planning, design and setup, testing and deployment. WordPress gives more flexibility than a simple builder, but needs more setup, from themes to plugins and security.

Designed and coded from scratch: one to three weeks

A single page designed and coded from scratch takes longer, because every part is planned around your practice. Hostinger's guide estimates 8 to 21 days for a custom single page site: a few days of planning, up to a week of design and prototyping, up to ten days of development, then testing and launch.

Larger sites with several pages naturally take longer, depending on how many pages and features you need.

Our own timelines at Delas

These are the timelines on our services page, so you can compare:

• Website in a Day: one day, with a short questionnaire beforehand so your content, logo and colors are ready.
• One-Page Web Design: between 2 and 4 weeks, designed from scratch.
• Multi-Page Web Design: between 2 and 6 weeks, for a site with up to five pages.

For the custom options, the pace depends mostly on how quickly feedback comes back after each round of changes.

The design is rarely what slows a website down. The content and the feedback are.

What actually makes a project take longer

In our experience, delays almost always come from the same few places:

• Texts that are not ready. Writing about your own work is hard. Start with your services and your about page early.
• Photos. A professional photo session needs booking, shooting and editing time. Plan it before the site starts if you can.
• Feedback rounds. Every round of comments that waits a week adds a week.
• Changing direction midway. Agree on the style and the main pages at the start, so the design does not restart halfway through.
• Domain and hosting access. Have your logins ready, or give your designer access early.

What to prepare before you start

A short list makes any timeline shorter:

• A sentence about who you help, and the services you want on the site with their prices or starting prices.
• Your about text, even a rough draft. A designer can polish it, but the story has to come from you.
• Photos: a warm portrait and a few pictures of your space or your work.
• Your logo and colors, or a few websites you like, so the style is clear from day one.
• Access to your domain, or a decision about which domain to buy.

With these ready, a template site can go live the same day, and a custom site can move from first draft to launch without long pauses.

How to get online faster

If speed matters most, start with a template and one page. You can be online in a day, start receiving clients, and grow into a custom or multi-page site later. Prepare your texts and photos before the project begins, and set aside time to reply to feedback within a day or two.

At Delas, that is exactly what Website in a Day is for. If you would rather have a page designed from scratch, our one-page website usually takes two to four weeks. You can see finished examples in our portfolio, and we wrote about how to structure a single page in one page website examples for small practices.