Most owners ask what a website costs and get an answer that ranges from free to fifty thousand dollars. Both numbers are real. What matters is which kind of site you need, what you are paying for, and what it will cost to keep running after launch.
The three kinds of small business site
A template site you build yourself on Squarespace or Wix costs your time plus a plan of roughly $20–$50 a month. A designer-built site on the same platforms usually runs $1,500–$3,500 for five to ten pages. An online store or a site with booking, memberships or custom features starts around $3,500, and custom features from about $5,000.
What you are actually paying for
The build itself is often the smaller part. Most of a fair quote goes to planning the pages, writing or editing the words, preparing photos, setting up search basics, and testing on phones. If a quote skips those, it is cheaper because you are doing that work yourself.
The running costs after launch
Budget for the domain ($15–$25 a year for a .com), hosting or a platform plan, a business email ($6–$10 per person per month), and any paid apps. Small updates and fixes are usually billed hourly, often $75–$125 an hour for independent designers.
- Domain renewal date and price
- Platform or hosting plan
- Business email seats
- Paid apps or plugins
- Hours set aside for updates
Where spending more pays off
Spend on the pages that bring in work: the homepage, your main service pages and the contact or booking page. Clear words, real photos and a fast, simple way to get in touch do more for inquiries than extra animation or extra pages.
Red flags in a quote
Be careful with quotes that keep the domain in the designer's name, charge a monthly fee with no clear service behind it, or cannot tell you who owns the finished site. You should own your domain, your content and your logins from day one.
If you cannot log in to your own website, you do not really own it.
A fair price is one where you know what you are getting, what it costs to run, and that it is yours. If you want a number for your own project, the booking page has a short form that gives you a starting estimate.