“How much is a website?” is a bit like asking how much a car costs. The honest answer is a range — and the range depends far more on what the site has to do than on how it looks. Here's how I'd think about it if I were buying, not selling.
The short answer: three common paths
| Path | Typical upfront cost | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself on a site builder | $0–$500, plus a monthly plan and your time | Very early stage, tight budget, simple needs |
| Freelancer or small studio | Roughly $1,000–$6,000 | Most local service businesses |
| Agency | Often $8,000 and up | Larger brands, complex sites, big content needs |
These are the ranges you'll commonly run into when you collect quotes, not hard rules. A custom web application — customer logins, dashboards, complex integrations — is a different category and can cost much more.
What actually drives the price
- Number of pages and how much writing is involved. Five pages you write yourself is very different from fifteen pages someone has to draft.
- Features. Online booking, payments, quote forms with photo uploads, member areas and integrations each add work.
- Design approach. A well-chosen template adapted to your brand costs less than a design started from a blank page.
- Content. Professional photos, copywriting and translations are real costs, whoever does them.
- Search and accessibility basics. Page titles, descriptions, fast loading and accessible design take time to get right — and they matter.
What a fair $1,200–$2,000 website should include
At the small-business end of the market, you shouldn't be paying for a pretty brochure that sits there. For a fair price you should expect:
- A design that works on phones first — that's where most local searches happen.
- Clear answers on every page: what you do, where you work, what it costs or how to get a quote, and how to reach you.
- A contact form that actually reaches you — tested — plus click-to-call.
- Your Google Business Profile set up or cleaned up and linked to the site.
- Fast loading, page titles and descriptions, a sitemap, and basic accessibility.
If a quote in this range leaves out the form testing, the Google profile or the mobile layout, ask why.
The ongoing costs people forget
The build is a one-time cost. A website also has running costs, and a good quote names them up front:
- Domain name: usually around $10–$25 a year for a .com.
- Hosting: from free (for simple, fast static sites) to roughly $10–$50 a month for typical managed hosting.
- Business email: Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace is billed per user per month.
- Tools: booking, payments and form services often have their own subscriptions or transaction fees.
- Care: updates, backups, security and small changes — either your time or a maintenance plan.
DIY or hire someone?
Site builders are genuinely good now. If you enjoy it and your needs are simple, DIY can be the right call. The hidden cost is time: learning the tool, writing, finding photos, and fixing things later. If your hourly value is high, or you need booking, payments or integrations that must work reliably, hiring usually pays for itself.
Red flags in a website quote
- The domain is registered in the designer's name. Your domain is your address online; it should belong to you.
- “Unlimited revisions” with no written scope. It sounds generous, but it usually means nobody agreed on what's being built.
- Guaranteed Google rankings. Nobody controls Google's results; good basics help, guarantees are a sales line.
- A long contract for hosting you can't leave. Month-to-month care plans are normal.
- No mention of who updates the site after launch. Someone will need to — decide who before you sign.
How to compare quotes without surprises
- Is the price fixed, and what exactly is included (pages, features, rounds of changes)?
- Who writes the text, and who provides photos?
- Will the domain, hosting and files be in your name?
- What are the monthly costs after launch, line by line?
- What happens if you want to leave — can you take everything with you?
A cheap quote that leaves you renting a site you can't move is often more expensive over three years than a fair quote where you own everything.
What I charge
For transparency: a starter website (up to 5 pages, mobile-first, contact form, Google Business Profile) starts at $1,200; a website with booking and payments starts at $2,000; and website care is $75/month for hosting, updates, backups and an hour of changes. Quotes are fixed, and you own the site.
A simple first-year budget
Using my own prices as an example: a starter website at $1,200, website care at $75 a month ($900 for the year) and a domain at roughly $20 comes to about $2,120 for the first year, then about $920 a year after that if you keep the care plan. Business email is separate and depends on how many people need a mailbox. If you'd rather update the site yourself and skip the care plan, the second-year cost drops to the domain and hosting.
Do I still need a website if I'm on Google and social media?
Often, yes. A Google Business Profile is essential for local search, and social media is good for staying in touch — but you don't control either one, and both show your competitors right next to you. A website is the one place where you decide what customers see, where your booking and quote forms live, and what Google links to when someone searches your name. The good news is that it doesn't have to be big: a few clear pages that answer real questions beat a large site nobody maintains.
The bottom line
Decide what the site must do for your business — get calls, take bookings, sell — then compare quotes on that, including the monthly costs and who owns what. The right price is the one that pays for itself in customers, not the lowest number on the page.