How much does a small business website cost?

Option one: build it yourself with a website builder

Website builders charge a monthly fee for the tool and the hosting, and you do the design, the writing and the upkeep. Wix's paid website plans start at $17 a month, billed yearly (as of October 2026). Squarespace's website plans start at $19 a month, billed yearly (as of October 2026). GoDaddy lists its Website Builder's Basic plan at $9.99 a month on an annual plan (as of October 2026). Several also have free plans, which are fine for trying the tool but usually put the builder's name in your web address.

The fee is the small part of the cost. The large part is your time: choosing a template, writing every page, taking or finding photos, learning how the editor handles phones, and coming back every few months to fix what has gone stale. If you enjoy that kind of work and have the evenings for it, a builder is the cheapest way to get online, and plenty of good small business sites are made this way.

Option two: hire a freelancer

A freelance designer builds the site for a one-time price, and the range is wide. Upwork says hiring a web designer on its marketplace generally costs $15 to $30 an hour (as of October 2026). Upwork puts a business website of 5 to 10 pages at $1,500 to $5,000 for the project (as of October 2026).

The question to ask a freelancer is not only the price but what happens after launch. Who hosts the site, who renews the domain, who fixes a broken form in a year, and what does each of those cost? A low build price with no plan for the years after can end up as the most expensive choice, because a site nobody looks after slowly stops working.

Option three: hire an agency

An agency brings a team: a designer, a writer, a developer and someone to manage the project. Agency prices vary too much for one honest number, so ask two or three for a written quote with the same list of pages and features, and ask each one what the monthly fee is after launch, because many charge for hosting and changes separately.

An agency is often the right call for a business with a large budget, many locations, custom software or a brand that needs months of work. For a one-location service business that needs a clear, fast site that brings in calls, it is usually more than the job needs.

Option four: a monthly plan where someone else does the work

A growing number of studios, ours included, build the site and then host and look after it for one monthly price. You pay less up front than a freelancer or agency would charge, and more over the years than a builder's fee. What you are buying is the work: the design, the writing, the hosting, the fixes and the updates.

Our plans work like that. Launch is $195 a month, Growth is $295, Signature is $395 and Dominate is $795, each on a 12-month agreement with no setup fee. That covers up to 5 pages at launch on Launch, 8 on Growth and 12 on Signature or Dominate, plus hosting with SSL, monthly care and a customer portal. We are not the only studio that works this way, and the same questions below apply to any of them, us included.

Added up over the first 12 months, the plan payments are Launch $2,340, Growth $3,540, Signature $4,740, Dominate $9,540, plus sales tax where it applies. Paying the year up front or going month to month changes those totals; the pricing page shows every option.

How much does a small business website cost once you count everything?

Whatever you choose, a few costs sit outside the headline price. Put them on the list before you compare anything:

• The domain name, which renews every year wherever it is registered
• Hosting, if the build price does not include it
• Your own time, at whatever an hour of it is worth to your business
• Photos: your own are best, and a photographer costs money; stock photos are cheaper but generic
• Changes after launch: new services, new prices, a new phone number, a holiday notice
• Fixing things that break: forms, plugins, an expired security certificate

How to compare quotes that look nothing alike

Turn every option into the same shape: what it costs over two years, all in, and what you own at the end. A builder at a small monthly fee plus your weekends, a freelancer's build price plus hosting and a few hours of changes a year, and a monthly plan's fee times twenty-four months can then sit side by side.

Then ask the ownership question, because it decides what happens if you ever move on. Do you own the domain? Can you take a copy of the site with you? What does the company keep when you stop paying? A cheap option that keeps your site when you leave is not cheap. Our own answer is that your site, your content and your domain are yours, and our guide to what happens when you cancel covers it in detail.

Which one is right for you

If you have more time than money and like doing it yourself, start with a builder. If you need one site built once and are happy to look after it, a freelancer with a clear plan for hosting makes sense. If you have a large or unusual project, talk to agencies. If you would rather never think about your website again and want someone to answer for it every month, a monthly plan is built for that.

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