What it costs to outsource a website, and how to brief it: freelancer or web studio for a small business

What causes trouble after outsourcing a website is less whether it was expensive than what was never decided. The domain stayed in the studio's name. Every update needed a new request. When you went to another provider, the original files were not handed over. Each could have been prevented with a few lines at the time of ordering.

This article covers what drives the cost, how to set the scope, how to compare a freelancer with a studio, and the laws involved. Whether to rebuild your current site is covered in do you need a website redesign?. If you are outsourcing a business system or app rather than a website, requirements and contracts work differently; see the complete guide to commissioning system development.

One disclosure: I am myself an individual contractor who takes on web and development work. I describe the weaknesses of hiring an individual just as they are.

What drives the cost

"Market rates" for a company website appear in many comparison sites and studio blogs. In researching this article, though, I found no primary survey whose organizer, sample and date could be confirmed. Amounts compiled by comparison sites or studios themselves rarely make clear the size or date of what was counted, so they are no benchmark for your own estimates. So this article does not quote market prices. Instead, here are the factors that move an estimate. When comparing estimates, check that their scope matches on this table before looking at the totals.

When estimates differ widely, the assumptions usually differ somewhere on this table: the cheap one assumes you supply copy and photos, while the expensive one includes interviews and a shoot. Ask both to quote on the same assumptions and they become comparable.

You will misjudge less if you do not consider the build fee alone.

Cost of ownership (say, five years) = build fee
                    + (annual server, domain, paid plugin fees × years)
                    + (maintenance and update fees × years)
                    + internal time spent on updates

Even with a low build fee, a site that needs a request for every update ends up costing more to own.

In my case, the base rate is ¥7,000 an hour (excluding tax), and scope and price are fixed in writing before work starts (pricing page).

If you are building with a subsidy, eligible expenses and application timing come with conditions, so see also can you build a website or online store with Japan's small business sustainability subsidy?

Four rights and names to settle before ordering

This is the most important part of the article. These four are laborious to win back once production is over.

Even when you leave registration to a studio, tell them in writing that the domain registrant must be your company's name, and give the provider a working account of their own rather than a shared password. Domain expiry, preventing hijacking, and how to hold DNS and backups are covered in detail in running a small-business website with no IT staff.

Copyright: "assign all copyright" is not enough

Copyright in designs and text made by an outside creator belongs to the creator unless something is agreed. The rule that makes work produced by employees in the course of their duties the company's (work made for hire, Article 15 of the Copyright Act) does not normally apply to outside contractors.

If copyright is assigned to you, watch Article 61(2) of the Copyright Act.

• Article 27 is the right to translate, arrange, transform or adapt a work. It covers changes such as reworking a design or rewriting text.
• Article 28 is the right to use the derivative work created by such changes.
• Article 61(2) provides that where the Article 27 or 28 rights "are not specifically mentioned as objects of the assignment" in a copyright assignment contract, they are presumed to be reserved to the assignor.

So a contract saying only "all copyright is assigned" leaves the rights involved in changing the work presumed to remain with the creator. The Agency for Cultural Affairs' copyright contract manual also says that when assigning all copyright you need to state that it includes "the rights provided in Articles 27 and 28 of the Copyright Act," and gives a sample clause along these lines (the original Japanese follows).

Party A assigns to Party B, as of the date of this contract, all copyright
in the Work (including the rights provided in Articles 27 and 28 of the
Copyright Act).

甲は乙に対し、本契約の締結日をもって、本著作物に関するすべての著作権
（著作権法第27条及び第28条に規定する権利を含む）を譲渡する。

Two more things to decide:

• Moral rights. An author's moral rights cannot be assigned (Article 59). Among them, the right to integrity (Article 20) is the right not to have the work altered against the author's will. If you expect your company or another provider to change the design later, settle how moral rights are handled in the contract.
• Assets the provider brings in. Stock photos, fonts and paid themes or plugins are licensed to the provider by third parties, and the provider may not be able to assign them. For each asset, check whose name the licence is in and whether you can keep using it after the contract ends.

You can also choose a licence instead of an assignment, for instance when the provider reuses generic components across projects. In that case, write into the licence what you may change yourself and whether another provider may rework it. Having it in writing matters more than which you choose. Have a lawyer or other professional check the actual contract wording.

Freelancer or web studio

The difference between providers is less about skill than about structure.

The biggest risk in hiring an individual is continuity, and that applies to me too. As someone working alone, if I am out of action through illness or an accident, work stops for that period. I do not cover this weakness with a promise to supply a replacement, and I do not take on 24-hour incident response or guaranteed response times. Instead, I set up rights and accounts in the client's name from the start and deliver in a form another engineer can pick up, which keeps the loss small if work stops.

If you hire an individual, check whether rights will be created in your name and whether source files and an account list are part of the deliverables, and choose someone who answers concretely. How to prepare for depending on a single provider is set out in running a small-business website with no IT staff.

When hiring a studio, ask who will actually do the work and whether any of it is subcontracted. Deciding everything through the salesperson alone makes it easy for intent to drift between you and the maker.

The laws involved: the Freelance Act and the Toriteki Act

Here are the laws that may apply when a small company outsources a website, with the conditions for each. All were checked against Japan Fair Trade Commission and SME Agency material as of 9 November 2026. Whether a specific deal is covered should be checked with a professional.

The Freelance Act (in force since 1 November 2024)

Its formal name is the Act on Ensuring Proper Transactions Involving Specified Entrusted Business Operators. It applies when the provider is an individual who uses no employees, or a corporation with only one representative and no employees. The JFTC's Q&A explains that a corporation commissioning work for its own operations counts as commissioning "for its business," and outsourcing a company website normally falls under that.

Your duties depend on your own situation as the buyer.

"Employees" here means workers scheduled for 20 or more hours a week and expected to be employed continuously for 31 days or more. Short-hours or short-term staff alone do not count.

For websites, revisions are the point to watch. Making the provider redo work can be a prohibited act unless the provider is at fault. Writing into the order where revisions within the original scope end and additional requests begin protects both sides.

The Toriteki Act (in force since 1 January 2026)

The former Subcontract Act has been amended into the Act on Ensuring Proper Transactions with Small and Medium-sized Entrusted Businesses (the "Toriteki Act"), adding an employee-count test to the capital test. However, outsourcing your own company website is in many cases not covered. The JFTC's FAQ (Q43) answers that a website is normally an information product for "own use," used to promote the company, and that outsourcing a part the company has no ability to create itself is not a commission to create an information product. It can be covered if you have an in-house web department, commission content offered for a fee on the site, or include program development, so check with a professional.

Withholding tax

Some fees paid to individuals require income tax to be withheld at source. National Tax Agency material lists design fees among them. Which parts of a website invoice qualify depends on the work, so check with a tax accountant or the tax office.

A briefing template

If your first message to a provider covers the following, you can compare estimates.

[Goal]        What the site should achieve (e.g. receive product enquiries, job applications)
[Audience]    Who the readers are
[Scope]       Page types needed, and a rough page count
[Copy/photos] What you will supply / what you want them to produce
[Features]    Forms, booking, multiple languages and so on
[Updates]     Pages you want to update yourselves after launch
[Ownership]   Domain, server and CMS admin to be in our company's name
[Copyright]   Assignment wanted (including Articles 27 and 28) / or discuss licence scope
[Deliverables] Source files, account list, update instructions
[After launch] Period of fix support; whether you want maintenance
[Budget/time] An upper guide, and when you want to launch
[Approval]    Who signs off internally, and how many days it takes

Many hesitate to state a budget, but doing so makes proposals more comparable. It is enough to add that you do not expect them to propose up to the full amount.

Final check before signing

If you are considering working with me, the scope and how costs are set are on website fixes and maintenance. My work centres on small sites and partial improvements; I do not take on large sites whose main aim is elaborate design. For those, I recommend a web studio.