What does a premium animated website cost, and what can you build yourself?

• Design: the layout, the motion and the feel. This is the hard part and what separates an average site from a premium one.
• Build: turning the design into working code that is fast on phones.
• Content: your words, photos and prices.
• Hosting and domain: usually the smallest cost.
• Time to check, fix and maintain it.

A template gives you the design and most of the build. An AI tool gives you the build. An agency gives you all of it, plus project management, for a price that depends on scope.

Tools such as Lovable, v0 and Bolt build a site from a description and preview it in the browser. The free plans are limited: Lovable lists five credits per day (up to 30 a month), v0 lists a daily limit of 7 messages plus a one-time $5 credit, and Bolt lists 1 million tokens a month. Limits change, so check each tool's pricing page.

• Cost: close to nothing to start.
• Time: hours of prompting and fixing.
• Risk: the design is whatever the AI invents, so animation quality varies, and credits can run out mid-project.

Start from a designed template and use the AI to make it yours. On MOTION/LAB, browsing and the live demos are free, Prompts Pro is $169 a month, and the "Make it mine" wizard prepares your prompt. The result is close to the demo, not identical (see why).

• Cost: the plan, plus the AI tool.
• Time: an afternoon for a simple site.
• Risk: motion values can drift, but the fix prompts help.

Download the real HTML, CSS and JavaScript of the template, change the text, colours and photos, and publish. A single template is $39 one-time, and All Access is $299 a month for every template and effect. Because you edit instead of rebuilding, the design matches the demo and you use far fewer AI credits.

• Cost: $39 for one template, or the All Access plan if you build many sites.
• Time: an hour or two for a simple site.
• Risk: you still need your own photos and copy, and placeholders mark photos that cannot be shipped.

A custom design and build by professionals gives you something made for you, with strategy and project management. Quotes vary widely with scope, motion complexity, 3D, content and how many pages. We do not quote ranges, because we cannot support one honestly. Ask for a written quote with line items, a clear delivery date, who owns the code, and what ongoing changes cost.

• Cost: set by the quote.
• Time: weeks to months.
• Risk: choosing on price alone, or buying motion that slows the site on phones.

Hosting a simple site is free on Cloudflare Pages and Netlify, whose documentation states no restriction on commercial sites, and Vercel's free plan is non-commercial only. A custom domain is bought from a registrar and costs extra; the hosts' pages we read do not price domains. Full steps are in How to put your AI-built website online for free.

1. If you only need to test an idea: route 1.
2. If you want a designed look and will do the work: route 3 is the cheapest way to a result that matches the demo.
3. If you do not want to do it yourself and want it quickly: we set it up for you, using a template.
4. If the site is central to a larger brand and you have the budget: route 4, with a written quote.

Whatever you choose, check the speed on a real phone before you launch. Our measurements of 125 templates show what is normal.