A small business website can cost anywhere from a modest monthly subscription to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on how it's built. Doing it yourself on a builder is the cheapest in cash. A freelancer working from a template usually lands in the hundreds to low thousands. A custom design and build typically runs several thousand dollars and up, and online stores or sites with booking and admin tools cost more.
That's a wide range, so here's what actually sits behind those numbers, plus the ongoing costs people tend to forget.
The three main ways to get a site
1. A DIY website builder
You sign up for a builder, choose a template and do the work yourself. You pay a subscription, and hosting is included.
To give you a real reference point, Squarespace's pricing page lists plans from about $19 to $139 a month, depending on the plan and whether you pay yearly or monthly. If you mainly want to sell online, Shopify's plans start around $29 a month billed yearly and go up from there. Prices change, so check the current page before you decide.
What you're really paying: a subscription, plus your own time. For a simple site, that time is often a few weekends. For a store, more.
Good for: new businesses, tight budgets, and simple sites you're happy to maintain yourself.
2. A template customized by a freelancer
A freelancer starts from a builder template or a WordPress theme and sets it up with your content, colors and photos. You still pay the platform's subscription or hosting on top.
Typical cost: commonly a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, depending on the number of pages and how much customizing is involved.
Good for: owners who want it done for them and don't need anything unusual.
3. A custom design and build
The site is designed from your brand and built for what your business needs, rather than adapted from a theme. This is where booking flows, online stores with inventory, customer portals and admin dashboards live.
Typical cost: usually several thousand dollars for a smaller custom site, and well into five figures for a large store or a platform with custom features. Agencies tend to sit at the higher end because you're paying for a team.
Good for: businesses where the website brings in real bookings, orders or leads, and anyone who needs features a template can't handle.
What drives the price up or down
Whoever you hire, a few things move the number more than anything else.
- Number of pages. A three-page site and a twenty-page site are different projects.
- Features. A contact form is simple. Online booking, payments, product inventory, member logins or an admin dashboard take real engineering time.
- Design. Starting from a template is cheaper than designing from your brand.
- Content. If you already have your text and good photos, it costs less. If someone needs to write copy or plan a photo shoot, budget for it.
- Search setup. Local pages, page titles and descriptions, structured data and speed work take time, and they're a big part of whether people actually find you.
- Rounds of changes. Find out how many are included.
- Timeline. Rush jobs usually cost more.
The ongoing costs nobody mentions
The launch price isn't the whole story. These are the costs that keep coming after the site is live.
Domain name
Your web address renews every year. A typical .com is in the range of roughly $10 to $30 a year, though some extensions and premium names cost more. Some builders include the first year free with a yearly plan.
Hosting
Builders include hosting in the subscription. A custom site needs hosting too. For a small site that can be inexpensive, but it's still a line item.
A professional address on your own domain usually means a separate monthly fee per person through a provider like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.
Apps and plugins
This is the one that sneaks up on people. A booking app, a reviews widget, a pop-up tool, an email signup form. Each one can be a small monthly charge, and they add up. On a store, some platforms also charge transaction fees, especially if you use an outside payment provider. Shopify, for example, lists separate fees for third-party payment providers on its pricing page.
Payment processing
If you take payments online, the payment processor takes a percentage of each sale. That's true almost everywhere, whether it's Stripe, Square, PayPal or a platform's own system.
Upkeep
Someone needs to keep the site secure, update software, fix things that break, and change hours, menus and prices. If that's you, it costs time. If it's someone else, it's usually a monthly plan or an hourly rate.
Your time
Even on a fully managed site, you'll spend some time sending updates and photos. Plan for it.
How to budget without overspending
- Start with what the site needs to do. List the jobs: show your hours, take bookings, sell products, collect leads. Pay for those, not extras.
- Add up the yearly total, not just the launch price. A cheap build with a pile of monthly apps can cost more over two or three years than a slightly pricier site with fewer subscriptions.
- Ask what you own. Your domain, your content and ideally your site should be yours if you ever leave.
- Spend on speed and search. A beautiful site that loads slowly on a phone or doesn't show up on Google won't earn its cost back.
- Grow in stages. It's fine to launch with a smaller site and add a store or booking later.
When the cheapest option is the right one
If you're testing an idea, just opening, or most of your customers come from word of mouth, a builder subscription is often the smart move. You can always invest more once the business is steady. I'd rather see someone start simple than stretch for a site they can't afford.
What I charge
I design and build custom websites, online stores and admin dashboards, and I offer monthly care plans to keep them fast, secure and current. My prices are set before any work starts, and I'm flexible. If you tell me your budget and what matters most, I'll work to find a version that gets your business going. You can see my current packages and care plans on my services page.
What makes my approach different is that I don't hand over a prebuilt template. I build the site with you, so it carries your voice, and I make sure it's fast and set up for Google from the beginning.
Not sure what your current site needs?
If you have a site already, my free website audit will show you how it performs on a phone in about 30 seconds, using Google's own testing tool. It's a good way to see whether you need a rebuild or just a few fixes.
If you'd like a real number for your project, you can tell me about it here. No pressure either way. I read every one myself.
