Why the range is so wide
Almost every honest answer to this question is a range, because a website is not one thing. A single page with your phone number on it and a fifteen-page site with a page per service, written by someone who interviewed you, are both websites. The gap between them is mostly labour.
- Do it yourself on a site builder: roughly 15 to 50 US dollars a month, plus your own time. The time is the real cost and it is usually underestimated.
- A freelancer building a small site: commonly 1,000 to 5,000 US dollars one-off, depending on page count and who writes the copy.
- An agency build: commonly 5,000 to 30,000 US dollars and up, which usually includes strategy, design and copy as separate line items.
- A monthly plan that includes the build: commonly 100 to 500 US dollars a month, with no large payment at the start.
What actually drives the price
- Page count. A page for each service you sell costs more than one page listing them, and it is also what lets you show up for each of those services separately.
- Who writes the words. Copy is usually the single largest hidden cost. If a quote looks cheap, check whether you are expected to supply the text.
- Photography. Real photographs of your work convert better than stock images, and someone has to take them.
- Custom design versus a template. A template is not a failure. For most service businesses it is the sensible choice.
- Anything that has to connect to something else: booking, payments, a CRM, an inventory feed.
The costs that are not on the quote
A build price is not the cost of having a website. The recurring items are small individually and easy to forget together.
- Domain, roughly 10 to 25 US dollars a year.
- Hosting, anywhere from a few dollars a month to a few hundred, depending on how it is built.
- Updates and security, which for most platforms is either a monthly fee or your own time.
- Changes. Most owners want a handful of small edits every month, and the price per edit is where a cheap build often becomes expensive.
One-off build or monthly plan?
A one-off build suits you if you have the cash now and want to own the asset outright with no ongoing relationship. The risk is what happens in month four, when you need three changes and the person who built it has moved on.
A monthly plan suits you if you would rather not pay several thousand dollars at once and you want someone to keep the thing working. The risk is the opposite one: that you are renting, and that leaving means losing the site. That risk is avoidable, and the question to ask is simple. Ask whether the domain, the site and the accounts are in your name, and ask what you keep if you stop paying. Get the answer in writing.
What we charge, since it is only fair to say
Our plan is 500 US dollars a month with no setup fee, month to month. That covers the build, local search work, four social posts a month and a follow-up system that answers missed calls. The domain, the code and the accounts are in your name, and there is a written handover if you leave.
Whether that is good value depends on what you would otherwise pay. If you would have spent 6,000 US dollars on a build and then nothing, a plan costs more over two years. If you would have spent 6,000 and then paid someone hourly for changes and search work, it usually costs less. Do that arithmetic with your own numbers before you sign anything, including with us.
A useful test for any quote: ask what the site is supposed to do that your current one does not, and ask how you will know whether it worked. A quote that cannot answer the second question is a design project, not a marketing one.