It's more expensive than it would be going with someone who costs a bit more. Spent thousands trying to do it cheap and it was an absolute headache. Work with someone local. It costs a bit more upfront but you'll be saving yourself $'000s and a lot of time. 

It's also important to ensure your website can be easily found and crawled by search engines. I've lost count of the number of conversations I've had where my first suggestion is a rebuild because of how the site is structured.