Ask three agencies for a quote on “a new website” and you’ll get three numbers that aren’t comparable, because none of them are quoting the same thing.
A proper fixed-scope quote lists the pages or features being built, what’s explicitly excluded, who’s responsible for content and assets, and how many rounds of revisions are included before extra work is billed separately. Without that detail, a low number is often just a low number with more gaps in it.
The other half of a fixed-scope quote is what happens when something outside it comes up mid-project — a new page request, an integration nobody mentioned at the start. A quote that’s genuinely fixed-scope treats that as a separate, clearly priced addition, not something absorbed silently into a growing invoice.
Before signing anything, ask for the scope in writing, not just the price. If a vendor can’t produce one, that’s the answer to whether the number they gave you means anything.