Small business website cost: what you pay and why

It's a slow Tuesday afternoon and you finally have an hour to deal with the website. You open three tabs. One says you can build a site yourself for less than a pizza a month. One is an agency that wants a call before it will say a number. The third is a cousin's friend who "does websites" and quoted a price with no explanation of what's in it. You close the laptop knowing less about small business website cost than when you started.

This post lays out how much a website costs for a small business in the three ways you can actually buy one. For the do-it-yourself builders, I went to the vendors' own pricing pages on September 28, 2026 and wrote down what they charge. For a custom build, I'll use my own prices, because those are the only ones I can vouch for. Prices change, so check each page again before you pay.

How much does a website cost for a small business?

Among the builders I checked, plans run from free to $139 a month, and that's before your time. A custom build from a studio or freelancer is a one-time fee plus a monthly plan, and the range there is wide because the work is different from job to job. Mine start at $500 one-time, then a flat monthly from $99 after an included run-in period, cancellable.

The number on the pricing page is rarely the number that matters, though. What moves the cost is who does the work, what the site has to do once someone lands on it, and what happens every month after launch.

Do-it-yourself builder prices, checked on the vendors' pages

Here is what two of the big builders publish. I also tried Wix, but its pricing page showed prices for a different country and says prices vary by location, so I left it out rather than guess at the US figures. GoDaddy's page blocked my request, so it's not here either.

Squarespace (pricing page, checked September 28, 2026):

Squarespace includes one year of free domain registration when you pay annually. After that first year the domain renews at its standard rate.

WordPress.com (pricing page, checked September 28, 2026):

WordPress.com also lists lower rates if you prepay two or three years, and an Enterprise plan with no price shown.

On both sites the annual price is the one in big type, and paying month to month costs noticeably more. The plans built for taking payments or running a store also sit near the top of each list.

What a builder plan leaves out

The builder fee covers hosting, templates, and the editor. It doesn't cover the hours. Someone has to write the pages, take or pick the photos, set up the domain and email, and figure out why the contact form sends to an address nobody checks. If that's you, the cost is your evenings.

It also leaves out what happens after a visitor fills in the form. On most builder sites the form sends an email and that's the end of it. Nobody gets a reply until you see the email, and the lead sits in an inbox next to supplier invoices. I wrote about what should happen in the minute after someone hits submit in the lead capture form post, because that's the part where a cheap site gets expensive. A site that looks fine but lets requests go cold costs you jobs, and those never show up on the builder's invoice.

For some businesses a builder is the right call. If you need a page that says who you are, what you do, and how to call you, and the phone is how work comes in, a $19 or $25 plan and a weekend of your time is a reasonable deal.

What drives the price of a custom build

When a studio or freelancer builds the site, the price follows the work. The biggest driver is what a visitor should be able to do. A site people only read about you on is cheap. Booking a time from your real calendar, paying a deposit, or sending a quote request that lands with the right person takes more build.

Page count matters next, along with who writes the pages. A page per service and a page per town you serve helps with local search, but each one needs real copy, and somebody has to write it.

Then there's what the site connects to: your calendar, your invoicing, your CRM or the spreadsheet you actually use. Every connection has to be built and tested.

Last, ownership. Some shops keep the site on their own account, which makes leaving them expensive. Before you sign, ask whose name is on the domain, the hosting, and the code.

Some builders bill by the hour and some sell fixed packages. To compare quotes, ask each one what's included, what costs extra, and what you own when the work is done.

Builder vs custom build at a glance

What the monthly fee covers

This is where quotes get murky, so ask directly. On a builder, the monthly buys hosting, security updates to the platform, and the editor. It doesn't buy anyone looking at your site.

On my builds, the monthly covers monitoring and updates: making sure forms still deliver, bookings still land on the calendar, and payments still record where your books live, and fixing it when something upstream changes. The first stretch after launch is included in the build fee, so the monthly only starts once the site has run for a while and been tuned. You can cancel it, and the site keeps running because you own it. The web design page goes through what's included in more detail.

What stays human

A website doesn't replace the owner. You still decide what you want to be known for, and nobody writes that better than the person who has done the work for years. Photos of your real crew and your real jobs beat stock every time, and only you have them. When a request comes in through the site, the quote, the judgment call on whether to take the job, and the phone call to a nervous customer are still yours. A good site gets those requests to you faster, with the details already filled in, and then you take it from there.

Get a straight number for your site

If you're weighing a builder against a custom build, the free 20 minute process audit is a good place to start. Bring your current site if you have one, or a list of what you want customers to be able to do on it. I'll tell you plainly whether a builder plan is enough for you, and if it isn't, give you a fixed quote. Book the audit here.