How much does a website cost, honestly
Five ways to get a website with the real ranges for each, plus the recurring bills that never appear in the quote.
Short answer: a small business website costs anywhere from nothing to $35,000, and both ends are honest prices. The number depends on who builds it and how much of the work is yours. Below are the five routes with real ranges, what actually moves the price, and the bills that arrive after launch.
All figures are August 2026 and in US dollars, because that is the currency quotes are usually written in. Rates vary a lot by country: the same brochure site is routinely three to five times cheaper from a competent freelancer in Eastern Europe, South Asia or Latin America than from a studio in North America or Western Europe. When you read a "national average", check which nation it averaged.
Five routes and what they cost
Do it yourself on a builder — $0 to $400 a year
Wix, Squarespace, Tilda and friends. The subscription is $15–35 a month, the free tier puts their branding and their subdomain on your site. You pay in evenings: the layout takes an hour, the copy takes two weeks, because writing it is the actual job.
AI generator — $0 and an evening
You describe the business, the model writes the copy and assembles the page. Useful for a first draft and for finding out what a page should even contain. What you get is a starting point that still needs your real prices, your photos and a read-through — the model does not know your business.
Marketplace freelancer — $300 to $1,500
Fiverr, Upwork and similar. Fine for a template filled in with your content. The risk is not the price but the definition: "a 5-page website" can mean five thoughtful pages or five copies of the same page with different headings. Ask what happens after handover before you buy.
Independent freelancer — $1,500 to $8,000
One person doing structure, copy, design, build and launch. Hourly rates in 2026 run $50–150 in high-cost markets and a fraction of that elsewhere. This is where most small business sites are actually made, and where the range is widest, because "website" says nothing about scope.
Agency — $10,000 to $35,000, and up
Separate designer, developer, copywriter, project manager and tester. You are buying process and accountability as much as pages: a contract, deadlines on paper, and someone answering the phone in eight months. Overkill for a five-page brochure site, necessary when three departments must approve the wording.
What actually moves the number
Ask "what is included" instead of "how much". These are the line items every estimate is made of, and the ones where quotes really differ.
- Number of unique page templates. Twenty pages sharing one layout is one design, not twenty.
- Design origin: stock template, customised template, or original mockups. The gap between the first and the third is measured in multiples.
- Copy. If the builder writes it, that is a large slice of the estimate. If you write it, subtract roughly a third and add a few evenings.
- Functionality: forms, calculators, filters, booking, payments, CRM and inventory integrations.
- Content loading. Migrating 100 product entries is work, not a courtesy.
- Photography. Stock is free-ish and looks it; a half-day shoot changes a site more than a redesign does.
- Deadline. Rush work costs more everywhere, and that is legitimate.
The bills nobody quotes
The build is a one-off. These repeat, and they are the reason a cheap site sometimes turns out expensive.
- Domain: $10–20 a year, more for premium extensions. Renewal usually costs more than the first year.
- Hosting: $5–30 a month for a normal site; managed WordPress hosting runs higher.
- Platform subscription if you built on a hosted service: $15–40 a month, more with a store.
- Maintenance: $20–50 a month if you do it yourself, $95–195 for a typical small business plan, more for anything complex.
- Paid themes, plugins and licences, most of which renew annually.
Budget $1,000–6,000 a year in total for a small business site, depending on how much is managed for you. Skipping this line is the single most common budgeting mistake, and it surfaces exactly twelve months after launch.
Website maintenance: what it is and what it should cost
Why the same brief gets a $1,200 and a $12,000 quote
Usually not because one of them is lying. The cheap quote assumes a template, your copy, your photos, no revisions past the first round, and no responsibility after handover. The expensive one assumes original design, written copy, testing on real devices, and someone fixing things next spring.
Both are valid purchases. The mistake is comparing them as if they were the same product, which is what happens when the estimate is a single line saying "website development".
How to compare quotes without a technical background
You do not need to understand the stack. You need answers to seven questions, and any builder worth hiring answers them without hedging.
- How many unique page designs are included?
- Who writes the copy and who supplies the photos?
- How many rounds of revisions are in the price, and what counts as a new request?
- What is it built on, and can I edit content myself afterwards?
- What happens after launch: is there a warranty period, and how long?
- Who owns the domain, the hosting account and the site files when the invoice is paid?
- If you disappear next year, what does my next developer inherit?
That last pair matters more than anything about design. Domain and hosting should be in your name from day one, and the answer to the last question should not be "the site is on my server".
Red flags
- A price quoted before any question about the business. That is the price of a template.
- One-line estimates. Nothing to compare, nothing to argue about later.
- 100% upfront with no contract and no milestones.
- Guaranteed first place on Google. Nobody can promise it; the only guarantee is the invoice.
- Unusually cheap with no explanation. Something specific is being skipped — usually copy, mobile layout, or whether the contact form works at all.
How to spend less without regretting it
- Write the copy yourself, or hand over raw material: prices, timelines, the questions customers actually ask. It is the most expensive part of someone else’s time.
- Take a template and spend the difference on photography of your own work.
- Ship a small site that works, then extend it. Half the "essential" features never get built after launch, and nobody misses them.
Need a website, not a guide?
You can do it yourself — that is what the article above is for. If it is easier to hand it over, I build sites and landing pages to order:
Hosting and domain
Server, SSL, email, moving it to your own domain
from $50 1–2 days
Tailored to your business
Your copy, photos, logo and brand colours
from $100 1–3 days
More functionality
Extra sections, forms, calculators, integrations. A shop, payments and user accounts — quoted per project
from $300 from a week
Ads and SEO
Ad campaigns, search optimisation, analytics
from $200 per month
Prices are for the work itself. The ad budget is paid separately: it goes straight to the ad platform, not to me.
The first step is free: tell me what you need and I will say how it is done, how long it takes and what it costs. No strings attached.
What to read next
- Website maintenance: what it is and what it should cost The invoice that arrives every month for work you cannot see — and how to tell whether it is buying anything.
- Ecommerce website: platform or custom build Four ways to sell online with their true running costs, and the question that decides between them before you compare features.
- A website for a gym: the page that sells a membership Three questions every visitor arrives with, and the one habit that quietly sends them to the gym down the road.