What a small business website really costs in 2026

Ask five people what a small business website costs and you'll hear five answers between "free" and "twenty grand." Oddly, most of them are telling the truth. They're just pricing different things. One means a site builder subscription, another means a freelancer's flat fee, and another means an agency project with branding, copywriting and photography thrown in.

This guide splits a website into the parts you actually pay for, so you can put two quotes side by side and see what's really in each. We build websites for a living, so we're not neutral. Our own prices are near the end, and you're welcome to skip that part.

The five things every website costs

Whoever builds your site, you pay for the same five things in one form or another. Some quotes bundle them together and some list them separately. Either way, they're in there.

1. The domain name. Your address on the web, like yourbusiness.com. A .com usually costs somewhere around $10 to $25 a year at a mainstream registrar. Watch for cheap first-year deals that renew at a much higher price, and for add-ons you don't need at checkout.

2. Hosting. The server your site lives on. Basic shared hosting for a small business site often runs from a few dollars to around $30 a month. Site builders like Wix and Squarespace include hosting in their monthly plan, which is part of why their plans cost what they do.

3. The SSL certificate. That's the padlock in the browser bar, the thing that makes your site load over https. Most hosts include one free these days. If someone charges you a yearly fee just for SSL on a small site, ask why.

4. The build. Design, writing, setting up the pages and forms, and the technical work that helps Google understand the site. This is where prices vary most, because it's mostly people's time.

5. Upkeep. Software updates, security patches, backups, fixing things when they break, and small edits like new hours or a new photo. Some owners do this themselves, some pay a monthly fee, and some ignore it until the site breaks. That last option tends to cost the most.

What the main options cost

Doing it yourself with a site builder

Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy's builder and similar tools let you put together a decent-looking site on your own. The plans most small businesses end up on cost roughly $15 to $40 a month, so about $200 to $500 a year, plus a domain if it isn't included.

The real cost is your time. Expect a few weekends to get something you're happy with, and longer if you're writing the text and editing photos yourself. The other catch is that you can't really take it with you. You can usually export some of your content, but you generally can't move the finished design to another host. If you leave, you rebuild.

DIY makes sense if you're just starting out, money is tight, and you enjoy this kind of thing. It makes less sense if your time on the job is worth $80 an hour and you're spending it fighting a page editor at 11pm.

Hiring a freelancer

Freelance prices for a small business site run from a few hundred dollars to several thousand, depending on experience and what's included. A good freelancer can be the best value on this list. A bad one can vanish halfway through with your domain registered in their name, which is why the questions at the end of this guide matter more than the price.

Hiring an agency

For a custom site for a small business, agencies commonly quote somewhere between $2,500 and $10,000, and more when branding, professional photography, lots of copywriting or an online store are included. You're paying for a team, project management, and usually more rounds of design.

For a restaurant group or a company with its own marketing department, that can be money well spent. For a two-truck plumbing business that needs five clear pages and a phone number people can tap, it's often more than the job calls for.

The "free" website with a monthly fee

Some companies build your site for nothing upfront and charge a monthly fee instead, often somewhere between $50 and $300 a month. It's an easy yes, and the math only shows up later. At $150 a month you've paid $5,400 after three years, and in most of these deals you still don't own the site. Stop paying and it goes offline.

That isn't automatically a bad deal if the fee covers real ongoing work you'd otherwise pay for. Just read the contract for two things: who owns the site and the domain, and what happens when you cancel.

Why one website costs more than another

When two quotes for "a five-page website" are thousands of dollars apart, the gap is usually somewhere in this list:

• Writing. Does the price include someone writing your page text, or are you expected to supply it? Good copy takes real time.
• Custom features. Online booking, payments, quote calculators, customer logins and connections to your other software all add work.
• How many different page designs there are. Ten pages that share two layouts cost less than ten pages that each look different.
• Photography. Your own phone photos are free. A photographer for a day isn't, though it can be worth it.
• Revisions. Two rounds of changes, or unlimited? Unlimited usually gets priced in somewhere.
• Moving an old site. Carrying over dozens of old pages and redirecting the old addresses so you don't lose your Google rankings is real work.
• Selling online. A store is a different project from a brochure site, with its own setup for products, payments, shipping and tax.

A sample first-year budget

Here's roughly what year one looks like for a typical five-page site for a local service business. These are ballpark figures to help you sanity-check quotes, not prices from any particular company.

• DIY builder: nothing to build, about $300 to $500 for the year's plan and domain, plus 20 to 40 hours of your own time.
• Freelancer: perhaps $800 to $3,000 to build, around $100 to $300 a year for hosting and domain, plus whatever they charge for changes later.
• Agency: perhaps $2,500 to $10,000 to build, plus hosting, plus a maintenance plan if you want one.
• Monthly-fee website: often nothing upfront and $600 to $3,600 for the year, depending on the plan.

Where our pricing fits

At the time of writing, our website plans are a one-time $249, $549 or $999 depending on how many pages you need, plus $99 a year for domain, hosting and maintenance. You own the site and the domain. We can charge less than a typical agency because we mostly build for trades and local service businesses, whose sites need similar things, and we've built a lot of them. The current details are on our website development page and our pricing page.

We're not the right fit for everyone. If you need a large online store, an elaborate custom brand, or a lot of original articles written for you, an agency or a specialist will serve you better.

Questions that show what a quote really includes

Before you sign anything, get written answers to these:

1. Whose name will the domain be registered in, and will I have the login?
2. Will I get admin access to the website and the hosting account?
3. What exactly does any monthly or yearly fee cover?
4. What does a small change cost after launch, and how quickly does it get done?
5. Who writes the page text, and how many rounds of changes are included?
6. If I cancel, what do I walk away with?

If the answer to either of the first two is anything other than "yes, it's yours," think hard before going ahead. There's a longer list in our guide to questions to ask before you hire a web designer, and if you already have a site, here's how to check that you own it.