Anyone quoting a website price before seeing the scope is quoting a template. Five things move the number, roughly in this order of impact.
1. Page count, and how different the pages are
Twenty near-identical pages cost less than five genuinely different ones. Design effort scales with distinct layouts, not with URLs. A brief that says twelve pages tells a designer almost nothing; a brief that says four layouts, twelve pages tells them everything.
2. Who writes the content
The most common cause of a stalled website project is a client who expected the agency to write the copy, and an agency who expected the client to supply it. Decide this at brief stage and price it explicitly. Copy is not a small line item.
3. One language or two
A bilingual site is not double the cost, but it is not the same either. Right-to-left layout is a real design problem: mirrored spacing, different typography, different line lengths. It has to be built in from the start rather than retrofitted, and retrofitting is where bilingual projects go over budget.
4. Custom build or platform template
A template gets you live faster and cheaper, and constrains you later. A custom build costs more and is yours. Neither is wrong. What is wrong is paying custom prices for a template, which is common and hard to spot without asking directly.
5. What happens after launch
Hosting, updates, security patching and content changes are ongoing. A quote that omits them is not cheaper, it is incomplete. Ask what year two costs before you sign for year one.
What to ask for in a quote
A fair proposal separates design, build, content and post-launch into distinct lines. If those four arrive as a single number, you cannot tell what you are paying for, or what you would save by cutting something. Ask for the split. An agency that will not give it is telling you something.
Common questions
Does a bilingual site cost double? No. The build is shared; the additional cost is design work for right-to-left layout and the content itself. Budget meaningfully more than a single-language site, but nowhere near twice.
Do you build in Arabic? Yes. Right-to-left is designed in from the start, not retrofitted. This site you are reading has a complete Arabic twin built the same way.
Why do quotes vary so much for the same brief? Usually because the briefs are not actually the same. Page count, who writes the copy, and whether post-launch support is included account for most of the spread.