Priced in public by Willis Aybar How Much Does a Website Cost for a Small Business?
Bought as a one-time project, a small business website usually runs $3,000 to $10,000. What the big ranges leave out is that it goes on costing you long after the project ends.
I don't sell it that way, so here's my number up front. Plans run $800 to $3,500 a month, and the website gets made inside the plan, so you never see a separate invoice for it.
Plan prices, published
Two new pages a month
$800 a month
Four new pages a month
$1,550 a month
Ten new pages a month
$3,500 a month
The rate per page $400 a page at two, $350 at ten
The whole answer, up front.
- A one-time small business website usually runs $3,000 to $10,000
- Marketplace gigs start around $150 and buy you a template, not a way of being found
- Doing it yourself on a builder costs the platform's subscription, plus every hour you spend on it
- My plans are $800, $1,550 and $3,500 a month, with the website inside them
- Three months minimum to cover the foundational work, then month to month, with no long contract
- The hosting under any of these is nearly free, so that is never where your money is really going
- The number that decides your price is how many services you sell, because that's how many real pages you need
Why Does Every Answer Come Back as a Range?
Search this question and you'll get eleven results that mostly land in the same place: a range wide enough to cover a filled-in template and a fully custom website, then an itemized list of domain, hosting, SSL, design, page count, functionality and a content system.
Roughly half of those pages belong to the website platforms themselves, so the company answering the question is also the company selling you the website. None of them publishes what they charge.
The ranges aren't wrong, they're just no help to you. A number that wide is really asking you to name your budget first, and I'd rather hand you mine and let you decide whether it fits.
The One-Time Price Is the Wrong Number to Compare
Almost every cost article treats the launch price as the number and the ongoing cost as a footnote, and the ongoing cost is the one you live with for years. A site that cost $6,000 once and then sat untouched for three years didn't cost you $6,000. It cost you $6,000 and three years of not showing up for anything you sell.
| How you buy it | Up front | What recurs | Who works on it after launch |
|---|---|---|---|
| A marketplace gig | Listed from about $150 on Fiverr | Nothing, and nothing changes | Nobody, once it's delivered |
| Do it yourself on a builder | Whatever the builder charges to start | The platform's subscription | You, on Sunday nights |
| One-time project | $3,000 to $10,000 | A care plan, quoted case by case | Nobody, unless you call and pay again |
| A monthly plan, the way I do it | Nothing separate for the website | $800 to $3,500 a month | Me, every month, adding pages |
Start with the marketplace row, because $150 is the number people quote at me most. You can buy a website on Fiverr from about $150, and for $150 you get a template filled in, usually in a couple of days. What you don't get is anybody who knows what your customers type into Google, a page for each thing you sell, or a person to call in March when your hours change. It's a real option and I'd rather you knew what it buys you. A website, and nobody working on it once it's up.
Run the year-one math and the two land closer than they look. A $6,000 one-time site is $6,000, and then nothing happens for the rest of the year. My entry plan at $800 a month is $9,600 in year one, and that buys twenty-four new pages, the Google Business Profile work, the review replies, the reporting and the website itself.
Which one suits you comes down to a single question: does your business need a brochure, or does it need to be found? A wedding photographer with a full calendar and a referral network needs a brochure, and should pay once for a good one. A contractor competing against nine other contractors for the same searches needs to be found, and a site that stopped growing at launch will never do it. I went through what that costs a trade specifically, service page by service page, on websites for painters, collision shops and the trades.
A website that never changes is a business card that costs more.
Not sure which of those two your business is? That's a 30 minute conversation.
Grab 30 minutes with WillisWhat I Charge for a Small Business Website
The whole curve is published, from two new pages a month up to ten. The price moves with the output, so you're never paying for a tier you don't use.
Whatever rate you land on, all of this is included:
- Google Business Profile management and optimization
- A Google Business Profile post with every new page
- Citation publishing across the directories that matter
- AI search optimization (AEO and GEO) on every page
- Conversion optimization that turns SEO traffic into calls
- A custom built website on your brand that loads fast
- Automatic replies to your Google reviews, handled for you
- A custom built analytics dashboard you can open any time
- A monthly video walkthrough of the work, in plain English
- A direct line to me for strategy and operations help
Now you're into a real growth phase, month over month.
What it has to earn back
The plan is an investment, so the only question that matters is how many jobs it takes to cover it. Work it out with your own numbers.
Break-even only, at the rate the slider is showing. Anything past that is margin, and a customer who comes back is worth more than the first job suggests.
If none of these numbers work for where the business is right now, tell me on a call. I'd rather put together something smaller that actually fits than lose the conversation over a number.
Ad budget is separate and goes straight to the platform, never through me.
There's no long contract. I ask for three months to cover the foundational work, and after that it's month to month. The full scope sits on the marketing services and pricing page.
The per-page rate goes down, not up
Two pages a month is $800, which works out to $400 a page, and ten pages a month is $3,500, which works out to $350. The rate falls as the volume climbs because the expensive part is the research into how your customers search and the design system the pages get made in, and both of those happen once and then carry everything published after them.
Everything the plan includes rides along at every rate, so a smaller plan buys a slower pace and the same service. At eight pages an AI chatbot for small business comes with it, and at nine and ten there's real backlink spend on top of that.
If you're past the price and into what you'd get, the small business website design page covers the work itself. The Baltimore web design page answers the same question for owners hiring close to home, and the where a website sits in the wider budget guide puts the website next to everything else you spend on.
What would yours cost?
Two lines about what you sell, plus any quote you're already sitting on, and I'll come back with a real figure for your business.
- 450K+ search impressions across the sites we manage
- 5,800+ organic search clicks across the sites we manage
- 600+ leads and booking requests across the sites we manage
Last 90 days, across the sites and Search Console/GA4 accounts Another Monday manages. Figures as of August 2026.
What Moves the Price for a Local Service Business
Cost articles break the price down by line item, so you end up with a list of domain, hosting, SSL and a content system, none of which decides your quote. Four things do, and you can answer all four in about a minute.
How many services you sell
This is the big one. Each thing you sell earns its own page, because that's how somebody searching for it finds you. Three services makes a small site, and nine makes a much bigger one.
Whether the words and photos exist
If you've got real photos of real work and can talk me through what you do, that's most of the raw material right there. The expensive version is the one where somebody has to write it and shoot it from scratch.
Bookings or phone calls
A site that takes calls and form fills is the straightforward version. Once it has to hold a calendar, take deposits or talk to your scheduling software, it's a different job with a different price.
Whether something already exists
Moving a live site means keeping its rankings, mapping every old address to a new one so the traffic you already earn comes with it. I quote that once I've seen what's there.
Two quotes for the same trade can land thousands apart and both be honest, because the four answers sitting behind them aren't the same. When a quote comes back and you don't understand it, ask which of the four is driving the number.
Already have a site and you're weighing whether to spend again? That's a different calculation with a different starting point, and the the real range for a redesign page works through it.
The Hosting Is Nearly Free, and I'd Rather You Heard It From Me
The sites I make run on infrastructure whose free tier covers a local business without breaking a sweat, and the security certificate is issued at no charge. That's true here, and it's true at every web company you'll ever talk to.
Flour costs a bakery pennies, and nobody walks out feeling cheated after paying $6 for the loaf. What you're paying for is a website that loads fast, gets found and keeps working, plus the person who keeps it that way.
What keeps costing you after launch
Your domain renews once a year and is the smallest number on the list. If you stay on Squarespace or Wix, the platform's subscription keeps renewing and the work stays with you, which the what Squarespace SEO can and cannot do guide covers honestly, including where the platform is genuinely fine.
Then there's everything a website gets asked to sit next to. Ads are billed directly by Google or Meta and need about $30 a day at the platform floor before the data means anything, with management from a Google Ads agency in Baltimore priced separately from the website. A CRM like HoneyBook CRM runs $29, $49 or $109 a month billed yearly. Email on your own domain through Google Workspace for small business is $7, $14 or $22 per user per month.
Every one of those is a real bill with a real renewal date, so write the whole list down before you sign anything. Year two is where owners get surprised, and it's almost never the website line that does it.
Is a Website Worth Paying For?
Only if it brings you work, so here are the numbers off the sites and accounts I run. Each one carries what it counts and the window it covers.
The last one is the number I'd want if I were the one writing the check. One in fourteen people who landed on a site I made picked up the phone, filled in a form or asked for a tour. Work out what one customer is worth to you over a year, multiply, and you'll know in about thirty seconds whether any of the prices on this page make sense.
If you want to watch it play out on one business, the auto body shop marketing case study follows a shop that moved off Squarespace onto a custom website. Six flat months, then real growth, with the Search Console charts left in.
Why I Price It in Public
Before I ever charged anyone for marketing, I built out an event venue in Baltimore for about $30,000, funded with a $20,000 personal loan and the rest on a credit card. I've signed the scary invoice. I know what it feels like to hand over money for something you can't see yet and hope the person on the other end knows what they're doing.
So the price sits on the page instead of behind a discovery call. You should know whether I fit your budget before you ever speak to me, and if I don't, you've lost nothing and you've still got a real number to hold the next quote against. More about how I got here is on the the background behind the work page.
Got a quote you're not sure about? Send it over and I'll read it with you.
Grab 30 minutes with WillisSmall Business Website Cost Questions
These come up on almost every first call, and the answers here are the same ones you'd get from me sitting across a table.
How much does a website cost for a small business?
A small business website usually runs $3,000 to $10,000 as a one-time project. I price it differently. The website gets made inside a monthly plan that starts at $800 a month, so there's no separate website invoice to find room for, and the site keeps growing after it launches.
How much should a small business website cost per month?
Per month, a small business website costs you either the platform fee or the whole marketing plan, depending on how you buy it. On Squarespace or Wix you're paying the subscription and you're still doing the work yourself. On one of my plans it runs $800 to $3,500 a month, and that number covers the website plus the SEO, the Google Business Profile and the reporting around it.
How much does it cost to maintain a website for a small business?
Maintaining a small business website means three separate jobs: keeping it online, keeping it current, and keeping it competitive. Staying online is the cheap part. Somebody has to edit the site when your services or your hours change, and somebody has to keep publishing new pages and new answers, which is the job most owners never budget for and every owner needs.
How much does it cost to host a website for a small business?
Hosting a small business website costs very little on its own. The sites I make run on infrastructure whose free tier covers a local business comfortably, and the security certificate is issued at no charge. When two quotes come back thousands apart, hosting is never the line that explains the gap.
Why do websites cost so much when the hosting is nearly free?
Websites cost money because you're paying for the thinking, the writing, the design and the upkeep, and none of that is the server. Flour costs a bakery pennies and nobody feels robbed paying for the loaf. Cheap infrastructure is true at every web company on earth, and any one of them charging you real money is charging you for the same work I am.
What makes one website cost so much more than another?
Four things move the price of a website more than anything else: how many services you sell, whether the photos and the copy already exist, whether the site has to take bookings or just take calls, and whether an existing site has to be moved without losing its search history.
How many pages does a small business website need?
Most local service businesses need one real page for each thing they sell, plus a home page, an about page and a contact page. Three services and one location can work at five or six pages. A contractor selling nine services across a metro area needs more, and that's the honest reason two quotes for the same trade come back so far apart.
Is a cheap website worth it for a small business?
A cheap website is worth it when the real choice is between having one and having none, and it stops being worth it the moment you expect it to bring you customers. A template will show up when somebody searches your business name and go quiet for everything else, because there's no page on it about the work you sell.
Do I own the website if an agency makes it?
You should own everything, and with me you do. Your website, your domain, your ad accounts and your data stay yours, and if you ever leave, all of it goes with you. Ask any company you're considering the same question before you sign, and ask what leaving looks like in practice, not just in principle.
How much does it cost to move an existing website onto a new one?
Moving an existing website gets quoted once I've seen it, because the work is in the details: how many pages exist, how much search history is attached to them, and how much of the content survives the move. A site with years of rankings behind it is a real project and gets priced like one.
How long before my small business website is live?
A custom website takes weeks rather than months, and a typical site is live well inside the first 90 days of a plan. Design decisions get made up front so the first pages go up fast, and the site launches once every page passes the speed, SEO and mobile checks. Seven of my own projects with the real dates attached, including five that shipped between 25 and 50 days, are on the page about how long a website takes to build.
How much does an ecommerce website cost for a small business?
An ecommerce website gets priced off product counts, payment flows and inventory systems, and those change the job enough that I don't publish a price for it. Every client I work with is a local service business selling time and expertise. If you're selling products online, say so on the first call and I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right person for it.
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