01Why five pages is the actual line
Five pages is not an arbitrary round number, it is roughly the point where a site stops being one connected argument and starts being several separate decisions: a homepage, a services or products overview, an about page, a contact page and maybe one more, all pulling from a brief a founder can describe in one message. Past that point, each additional page usually needs its own content decision, someone has to write or approve copy for it, choose images for it, and decide where it sits in the navigation, and those decisions do not compress into 48 hours just because the pages before them did. The limit exists because compressing that many content decisions into two days is where quality actually starts to slip, not because building more pages is technically harder.
- Around five pages is where a site stops being one argument and becomes several separate content decisions
- Each extra page needs its own copy, images and navigation placement decided by someone
- The limit is about content decisions per day, not raw technical difficulty
- The same real code and design quality applies past five pages, just on a longer timeline
02What actually changes when a site is bigger
What changes is the timeline, the price band and the deposit rule, not the ownership terms. A larger business site still runs 500 to 2,500 EUR depending on the exact page count and integrations, confirmed before work starts, the same way a five-page site is. A store, with products, cart and checkout, moves into its own band at 2,500 to 4,500 EUR, and a web app or portal starts from 5,000 EUR, because those involve decisions, payment logic, inventory rules, user accounts, that a static page count does not capture at all. Unlike a standard 48-hour build, which asks for nothing upfront, a custom or larger project is scoped and quoted first, and PROOF48 may ask for a deposit as agreed before starting the work.
- A larger business website still runs 500 to 2,500 EUR, confirmed before the build starts
- Stores move to their own band, 2,500 to 4,500 EUR, because of cart and checkout logic
- Web apps and portals start from 5,000 EUR, priced on the actual decisions involved
- A larger or custom project is scoped and quoted first, and may require a deposit as agreed
A build that grew past a simple site on purpose
Noryse needed a brand built from nothing, a name, a positioning, a palette and a type system, plus a production store with six product pages, Stripe checkout and a private portal for the manufacturer. That is well past a five-page brochure site, and it was scoped and priced as such from the start rather than squeezed into a 48-hour slot it was never going to fit.
See the build: NoryseQuestions, answered
How many extra days does a bigger site actually add?
It depends on how much of the content, photography and copy already exists. PROOF48 confirms a specific timeline once it knows the real page count and what still needs to be written or sourced, rather than quoting a generic number.
Do I still send just one reference link for a bigger site?
Yes, that stays the same starting point. For a bigger project it usually turns into a short follow-up conversation about the extra pages and integrations, rather than a full brief document.
Where PROOF48 fits
More than five pages does not mean a different developer, it means a longer honest timeline and a different payment rule. PROOF48 prices a larger website 500 to 2,500 EUR, confirmed before work starts, scoped and quoted separately, and may ask for a deposit as agreed, unlike the no-deposit standard 48-hour build.
Cosmin Tiu · Founder, PROOF48
Cosmin has worked in online marketing and software development since 2018, and has built with AI every day since January 2023. He still writes code from scratch daily, in Python, React, Rust and C#. PROOF48 ships business websites in 48 hours and invoices afterwards, so every opinion on this blog was paid for in real builds, not in theory.