If you've asked around, you've probably gotten answers anywhere from "$200" to "$15,000," and both people were telling the truth. The range is wide because "a website" isn't one product. It's more like asking "how much does a car cost." A used sedan and a custom build are both cars.

Here's the real breakdown of where that price actually comes from.

DIY builders (Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy): roughly $15 to $50 a month

You're paying for a template and hosting, and you're doing the actual building yourself. It's the cheapest path, and it works fine if you've got the time to learn the tool and the patience to make it look right. The tradeoff is your time, and most small business owners already don't have much of that to spare.

A freelancer or small studio: roughly $300 to $2,000

This is where a real person builds it for you, using your actual business info, instead of you fighting a drag-and-drop editor at 11pm. The price swings based on how many pages, how custom the design is, and whether booking, e-commerce, or other tools are involved. This is the tier most local businesses, salons, contractors, restaurants, actually need.

An agency: roughly $3,000 to $15,000+

Bigger teams, bigger overhead, often more strategy and marketing baked in around the site itself. Makes sense for a business with a marketing budget to match. Overkill for a lot of local businesses that just need a real, working site that makes them look legitimate and easy to reach.

What actually drives the price, no matter who builds it

  • Number of pages. A single page is simpler than a full multi-page site with services, about, and contact.
  • Booking or e-commerce. Anything that takes payment or schedules appointments adds real setup work.
  • Custom design vs. a template. A site built to fit your actual brand costs more than a template with your logo dropped in.
  • Content. Someone has to write the words and source or shoot the photos. That's real work, whether you do it or pay someone else to.

Where this leaves you

If you've got the time and don't mind a template, a DIY builder is a fine, honest option. If you want something that actually looks like your business and don't want to build it yourself, a freelancer or small studio is usually the right fit for the price. That's the gap we build in. Just know the cheapest option isn't always the cheapest in the long run — a site built without real care can quietly cost you customers you never even know you lost.

Our own pricing sits in that middle range on purpose: $300 for a single page, $500 for a full multi-page site with booking built in, $800 for a more built-out version with extra pages and deeper customization. And you don't have to guess whether it's worth it. We build your actual site first, using your real business info, and you only pay if you want to keep it.