Why nobody will give you a number
Ask five web designers what a small business website costs and you will get five ranges and no numbers, because the honest answer depends on how many pages and how much writing. That is true, and it is also used as cover. Here is roughly what things cost, what moves the price, and the questions that protect you.
Roughly what the market looks like
Under $100 a month, locked platform
A template, a subdomain or an address you do not own, and changes that go through them. Cheap monthly, expensive over five years, and you cannot take it with you. Fine for a business that genuinely never changes; a trap for one that grows.
A few hundred to a few thousand, one-off
Where most small business work sits, ours included: rebuilds from $400 and new sites from $600. You own it, you pay hosting at cost, and there is no monthly fee for the site itself.
Five figures and up, agency
Real work for businesses with real complexity: many services, several locations, bookings, stock, a brand to build from nothing. If you are a two-van operation, you are paying for process you will not use.
What actually moves the price
The number of pages, obviously
Four to six pages is a normal small business site. Twenty is a different job. Services worth their own page usually pay for themselves in search, so this is often money well spent rather than padding.
Who writes the words
This is the hidden cost in nearly every quote. If you supply the text, a site is quicker and cheaper. If someone has to interview you and write it, that is real hours. It is also the most common reason projects run late — not the building, the waiting for copy.
Bookings, payments, logins, stock
Each of these is a system rather than a page, and each one roughly doubles the testing. Worth it when you need it, expensive when you were talked into it.
Photography
Real photographs of your real place beat stock images every time, and they cost either money or your afternoon. A phone camera in decent light is usually good enough, which is worth knowing before anyone quotes you for a shoot.
Four questions to ask before you sign
- Who owns the domain? It should be registered in your name, not the designer’s.
- What happens if I leave? You should be able to take the site and the address with you.
- Is the price flat or hourly? Flat means an overrun is their problem, not your invoice.
- What does the monthly fee cover, exactly? Hosting at cost is fair. A monthly fee for a site you supposedly own is not.
What monthly money should be for
Hosting and the domain — yes, at cost
A small site costs a few dollars a month to host and a domain is roughly fifteen dollars a year. You should be paying those to the provider, in your own account.
Ongoing marketing — yes, if you want it
Local SEO or Google Ads management is genuine recurring work and ours is $150 a month, month to month. The test of a fair arrangement is whether you can stop.
The website itself — no
If you are paying monthly to keep a finished site switched on, and you do not own the address, you are renting. Plenty of businesses discover this only when they try to leave.
Our numbers, in public
Everything we charge is on the pricing page, including the parts that cost extra, because a price you have to ring up for is usually a price that depends on how you sound on the phone. Flat quote in writing before anyone starts work, and no hourly billing. Tell us what you need and you will get a number, not a range.