What Does a Small Business Website Actually Cost?
The honest answer is that it costs whatever the person quoting you thinks you will pay, because “a website” describes both five pages of text and a booking system with stock control. This page gives the real brackets, the recurring costs that rarely appear in a quote, and the cases where the right answer is to spend nothing at all.
Free, no email, no account: describe your business in one sentence at sitebuilder.adcreator-ai.com and a complete site for it is built and shown to you in about 60 seconds. You only give an address if you want it kept.
The three brackets, with real numbers
Do it yourself on a builder — roughly $15–$80 a month. You choose a template and type in your own words. The fee covers hosting, the editor and usually a domain for the first year. The cost that does not appear on the pricing page is the evening or three it takes to write the copy and choose the photos, which is the part most people stall on.
Pay somebody once — roughly $500–$5,000. For a local trade with a handful of pages, quotes cluster near the bottom of that. It rises quickly with anything that has logic behind it: online payment, bookings, stock, accounts. A one-off build still leaves you a recurring hosting bill, and usually an hourly rate for changes afterwards.
Free — genuinely $0, plus a compromise. Most builders have a free tier and
they are not a trick. The compromise is nearly always the address: you get
yourbusiness.someplatform.com, which is awkward to say down the phone and reads as
temporary on a van or an invoice. For a business testing whether a site brings work at all, that
compromise is often worth making for a few months.
The costs nobody puts in the quote
- The domain — $10–$20 a year. Register it yourself, in your own name. It is the one part of this that is genuinely portable, and the one part people most often let somebody else own.
- Email on your own domain — about $6 per person per month. Optional, but name@yourbusiness.com on a quote reads differently from a generic free address.
- Taking payment — about 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction. Only if you sell online, and it is charged by the payment processor, not the website.
- Changes. The real one. Either you can edit it yourself, or every price change and new opening hour is a small invoice. Ask this before you commit, not after.
How to compare two quotes that look nothing alike
A $600 quote and a $6,000 quote are usually answering different questions. Before you compare them, write down what actually has to happen on the site:
- A customer can find what I do and where I do it
- A customer can phone or message me without hunting
- …and only then: bookings, payment, stock, accounts
Hand that exact list to each quote and ask them to price it. The gap usually collapses, and where it does not, you can finally see what the extra money is for.
When the right answer is to spend nothing
If your customers find you on a Google Business Profile and then phone you, a website is not urgent — and we have measured that this is more common than the industry admits. In our own sample of local trades, 47% of upholstery and mobile mechanic businesses had no website at all, and appliance repair was 44%. These are working businesses; one in our sample had over 1,100 reviews and no site. That guide covers when a listing genuinely is enough.
What a site adds, when it adds anything, is the part a listing cannot do: explain work that needs explaining, show it, and be somewhere to send someone who asks “do you have a website?” Judge the spend against that, not against a feeling that everyone has one.
What we charge, plainly
So you can place us on the scale rather than guess: generating a site and looking at it is free and needs no account. Hosting it with a custom domain is $49 a month. $79 removes our branding and adds the advanced pieces. If you would rather not touch it at all, $297 has us build it for you within 24 hours, and $497 is the same day.
The thing we would want to know in your position: you get the generated code, so if you stop paying you still have the work. Why that matters more than it sounds.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a small business website cost in 2026?
Three honest brackets. A hosted builder you fill in yourself runs about $15 to $80 a month. Paying somebody to build it once is usually $500 to $5,000 for a small local business, and higher if it sells online. Doing it yourself on free tools costs nothing but your time, and time is the part people underestimate by the largest margin.
What are the costs nobody quotes you?
The domain, about $10 to $20 a year, which you should register yourself. Email on your own domain, roughly $6 a user per month if you want name@yourbusiness.com. Payment processing if you sell, around 2.9% plus 30¢ a transaction. And changes: whoever built it either charges for edits or you learn to make them, and nobody mentions this at the quoting stage.
Is a free website good enough for a small business?
For a lot of trades, yes, at least to begin with. If customers find you through a Google Business Profile and phone you, a single clear page with your services, area, hours and a phone number does most of the work. What free tiers usually cost you is the address: you get a name like yourbusiness.platform.com, which is harder to say aloud and looks provisional on a van or an invoice.
Why are agency quotes so different from each other?
Because the word website covers everything from five pages of text to a booking system with stock control. A $600 quote and a $6,000 quote are usually answering different questions. Before comparing, write down what has to happen on the site — be phoned, take a booking, sell twelve products — and ask each quote to price that exact list.
What should I refuse to pay for?
Anything that leaves you unable to change your own opening hours. Anyone registering the domain in their own name rather than yours. And a monthly fee with no clear statement of what happens to the site if you stop paying. That last one is the question most worth asking, and a vague answer is itself the answer.