Plenty of agency websites answer "how much?" with "it depends, let's talk". It does depend. But without a number you can't compare anyone with anyone, and you often find out the price only after someone has sized up your budget.
So here are real numbers. What the cheapest route costs, what we charge and why the range is as wide as it is, what you'll keep paying after launch, and what a quote should spell out before you sign anything. Third-party prices below are as published in September 2026. They change, so check the linked pages before you budget.
How much does a small business website cost?
Anywhere from about $150 a year to five figures, depending on who builds it and what it has to do. It helps to split it into three routes:
| Route | What you pay | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself on a builder | From about $12-19/month | A template you fill in and maintain yourself |
| Freelancer or template setup | Varies widely | Someone else fills in a template, usually on a builder |
| Custom build by a team | $2,500-12,000 with us | Designed and built for your business, which you own outright |
For the do-it-yourself route, Squarespace's Basic plan is listed at $19 a month, or $12 a month paid yearly, and Shopify's Basic plan for online stores starts at $19 a month on yearly billing. That's the real floor for a working site.
The freelancer route is the hardest to price because it covers everything from a student filling in a template to an experienced developer. We're not going to invent an average for it. Ask for a fixed price and the checklist further down applies just the same.
What do our website builds cost, and why the range?
$2,500 to $12,000, and you get a fixed price in writing before anything starts. That's the same range on our website building page, on our FAQ and in the quote we send you.
Three things move a project up or down that range:
- How many pages you need. A focused site for one service in one area is a different job from a site with a page for every product, service and location.
- Whether your writing and photos are ready. If you hand us finished words and good photos, we build. If we're writing, sourcing or shooting, that's extra work and it shows in the price.
- Whether we're moving content from an old site. Carrying across dozens of existing pages, with redirects so you don't lose the Google rankings they've earned, takes time.
A logo and simple brand, if you need one, is an add-on at $800 to $2,000.
What's in every build regardless of size: a design made for your business rather than a stock template, a site that's fast on a phone, set up properly for Google before it goes live, and handed over so you own it outright. No monthly platform fee to us, and nothing switched off if you later decide to work with someone else.
A typical build takes five to seven weeks from the first call to launch. The biggest variable is usually how quickly the wording gets signed off, not how quickly it gets built.
What will you pay after the site launches?
Less than most people expect. The site itself is paid for. What's left is the running costs you'd have with any website:
- A domain name. A yearly fee to a registrar. Some, like Cloudflare Registrar, sell domains at cost.
- Email on your domain. Google Workspace's Business Starter is listed at $7 per user per month.
- Hosting. The site runs on hosting in your name, and you pay the host directly, not us. For a typical small business site this is a small monthly cost.
- Your Google Business Profile. It's free, and for local businesses it's often worth as much as the website.
None of these go through us. If we disappeared tomorrow, your site would keep running.
What about SEO, ads and content?
Those are separate from the build and entirely optional. Some businesses need them, some don't, and none of them are required to keep the site running. Here's what each costs with us:
| Service | Price | Billed |
|---|---|---|
| Website health check | $800-1,500 | Once, delivered in five working days |
| AI automation (lead follow-up) | $1,200-4,000 | Once, for the setup |
| SEO | $800-2,000/month | Monthly |
| Google Ads and Meta Ads management | $600-1,500/month plus ad spend | Monthly |
| Organic content | $600-1,800/month | Monthly |
| Ongoing growth (the monthly work together) | $2,000-5,000/month | Monthly |
The honest advice: don't sign up for monthly marketing on the day your site launches. Let it run for a while, see where inquiries come from, and then decide which gap is worth paying to close.
Is a DIY website builder good enough?
Sometimes, yes. If you have one service, a small area, very few competitors online, and the time and patience to do it yourself, a builder will get you a presentable site for the price of a couple of lunches a month.
It stops being good enough when:
- You need to rank for competitive searches, and the template's speed and structure hold you back. We cover the speed side in why a slow website costs you customers.
- The site has to do a job a template doesn't, like a quote form that asks the right questions or pages for every area you cover.
- Your time is worth more than the difference. Hours spent fighting a page builder are hours not spent on paying work.
What should a website quote include?
Enough that you could compare it line by line with anyone else's. Before you sign, check it answers all of these:
- A fixed price, not an hourly estimate that can grow.
- The list of pages being built, by name.
- Who writes the words and who supplies the photos.
- What happens to your old site, including redirects for pages that already rank.
- Who owns what. The domain, the hosting account and the site itself should all be in your name.
- What's not included, so nothing turns up later as an extra.
- A timeline, including what you have to deliver and when.
- What happens after launch, and what it costs if you need changes.
A quote that's vague on ownership is the one to worry about most. A site you can't move is a site you're renting.
How do you avoid paying for the wrong website?
Know what's actually wrong before you pay to fix it. If you already have a site that isn't bringing in work, a rebuild isn't automatically the answer. Sometimes it's speed, sometimes it's one missing page, sometimes it's the Google profile.
That's what our website health check is for: $800 to $1,500, five working days, and a ranked list of fixes you can take to us or to anyone else. If a rebuild is the answer, you'll know why. If it isn't, you've saved the difference.