Teardown
10 layers
What a website is actually made of
Nine parts and the page they add up to. Pull the stack apart, then unplug a layer and watch what the visitor sees change.
Reference
The same nine, in text
Every layer, and what it is for
If you are comparing quotes, this is the list to check them against. Anything missing here is not free, it is unbuilt.
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01
Domain and DNS The address people type
A domain is a rented pointer, not a thing you own outright. You pay a registrar every year, and DNS records tell the rest of the internet which server answers for that name. Changes take minutes to hours to spread.
- Without it The site still exists, but only at a raw IP address or a platform subdomain. Nobody types 203.0.113.42 into a browser, and every business card you printed is wrong.
- Cost $20 to $40 a year
- Who holds it Registered in your name, on your card. This is the single piece most worth keeping out of a developer's account.
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02
Hosting A machine that stays awake
Somewhere a computer has to be running and holding your files, ready to answer when someone asks. Shared hosting, a platform plan, or a serverless provider that only bills when a request arrives.
- Without it The address resolves to nothing. Visitors get a connection error, and search engines drop the site within days of the first failed crawl.
- Cost $0 to $30 a month for a small site
- Who holds it Billed to you directly, in your account. I do not resell hosting at a markup.
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03
Delivery and cache Copies kept near the visitor
A CDN stores a copy of your pages in dozens of cities so the bytes travel a few hundred miles instead of crossing an ocean. Most modern hosts include one and never bring it up.
- Without it The site works and it is slow, especially for anyone far from the server on a phone. Slow enough that a chunk of visitors leave before the first image finishes loading.
- Cost Usually included with hosting
- Who holds it Configured once during the build, then it runs itself.
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04
HTML The structure and the words
The content itself, in order, marked up so that a browser, a screen reader, and a search crawler all agree on what is a heading and what is a button. Everything above this layer decorates it.
- Without it There is no page. The other layers have nothing to style, script, or measure.
- Cost Part of the build
- Who holds it Mine to write, yours to keep, in a repository you own.
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05
CSS Everything you can see
Layout, type, color, spacing, and the rules that make one set of content work on a phone and on a 27 inch monitor. A design decision that never becomes CSS does not exist.
- Without it Every word is still there, stacked in one column in Times New Roman with blue underlined links. Unplug it and watch the preview.
- Cost Part of the build
- Who holds it A bespoke design system is a separate line item. Clean and functional is not.
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06
JavaScript The parts that respond
Menus, validation, filtering, and the 3D scene you are currently dragging. It ships to the visitor's device and runs there, which is why too much of it makes a cheap Android phone crawl.
- Without it Static content keeps working. Interactive pieces freeze in place. A site built entirely in JavaScript shows a blank rectangle instead.
- Cost Part of the build
- Who holds it The honest constraint: every feature here is weight on someone else's battery.
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07
Content and CMS What you can change without me
A database and an editor. Products, posts, hours, staff, prices. The difference between fixing a typo yourself in a minute and emailing a developer about it.
- Without it Every word is written into the code. Cheaper to build, and more expensive the first time anything changes.
- Cost Often included in a platform plan
- Who holds it Yours to edit. If you cannot update your own hours, you bought the wrong thing.
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08
Forms and email How a lead reaches your inbox
For most small business sites this is the only part that makes money. Validation, spam filtering, reliable delivery, and a record kept somewhere other than one person's inbox.
- Without it A visitor has to find a phone number and decide to use it. Most of them will not, and you never learn that they were there.
- Cost Part of the build
- Who holds it Submissions land in a place you control, not a service only I can log into.
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09
Measurement and SEO Whether any of it worked
Analytics, a sitemap, structured data, and the tags that decide how a link looks when someone shares it. None of it appears on the page. All of it decides how many people arrive.
- Without it The site looks identical, which is exactly why this is the first thing quietly cut from a cheap quote. Unplug it and compare the preview. Nothing changes, and you are flying blind.
- Cost Part of the build
- Who holds it Analytics under your own account, so the history survives me.
The point
Why this page exists
Three of these are invisible
Unplug the CMS, the forms, or the analytics and the sample page still looks finished. That is the whole problem with buying software on a screenshot. The layers a client can see get built first because they are the ones that get checked, and the layers nobody looks at are where a thin quote finds its margin.
Nothing above is exotic. It is the ordinary shape of a small business site, and any developer quoting you should be able to say which of the nine they are building, which you are already paying someone else for, and which they are leaving out on purpose.
What this costs to build
A single page site with all nine layers connected starts at $600. The recurring pieces, the domain and the hosting, are billed to you directly and run in the range of a phone bill. The estimate tool prices the rest.