How much does a small business website cost in 2026?

Why we add up three years instead of comparing quotes

A one-time build and a monthly plan can't be compared on the first invoice. One is a big bill now, the other is a small bill forever. Three years is long enough for intro prices to run out and for a few rounds of changes to your services.

Most cost guides stop at ranges, like "$500 to $5,000 for a freelancer." A range doesn't tell you what you'll be paying in year two. So we built each total below line by line from a pricing page, and we label every number we had to assume.

Two related guides cover the pieces we don't repeat here. Website maintenance cost prices the yearly upkeep on its own. Website subscription vs. buying covers contract terms and what you own when you stop paying.

What goes into a 3-year total

Whichever route you take, you pay for the same five things. The routes differ in who does each one.

• The build: someone's hours, or yours.
• The platform or hosting, at its renewal price, since intro prices run out.
• The domain, which is often free for the first year only.
• Edits and updates after launch, like a new service page or a changed phone number.
• Your own time, which never shows up on an invoice.

Small business website cost over 3 years, four ways

Each row is one realistic setup for a small trade business. We name vendors as price examples, not as picks.

Full disclosure: the last row is our own plan. Our Growth plan is $199 a month, which comes to $7,164 over three years plus the domain.

About the $75 rate: it sits between two published numbers. Web developers and digital designers had a median wage of $47.85 an hour in May 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's employee pay, and a freelancer's rate also has to cover their own taxes and slow weeks. Clutch puts web design companies at $100 to $149 an hour.

What the totals tell you

DIY costs by far the least cash. What it costs instead is your time: learning the builder, writing five pages, and taking decent job photos. If you'd lose paid work to do that, count it.

A freelancer build and a $99 subscription finish within $170 of each other at three years. After that they split. In year four, the freelancer route costs about $461. The hosting is already paid through month 48, so you pay only $11.08 for the domain and $450 for six hours of edits. The subscription costs $1,188 plus the domain that year. So the longer you keep the same site, the further a one-time build pulls ahead. That holds only if your freelancer still answers when you need a change.

The freelancer row also leaves WordPress updates unpaid. If your site runs on WordPress, someone has to update the core software, theme and plugins. Either you do it, or you add a plan like WP Buffs Maintain at $89 a month, which adds $3,204 over three years.

Most of the agency total is the care plan: $6,444 of the $12,485. Pay the same agency by the hour for six hours of edits a year instead, and the three years come to about $8,291.

When a DIY builder is enough

Plenty of small trade businesses don't need to pay anyone to build a site. A builder is the right call if most of these fit you:

• You offer a handful of services in one service area.
• Your services and prices change once or twice a year.
• You, or someone on your team, can give it a weekend to write the pages and pick the photos.
• Most of your jobs come from referrals and your Google Business Profile, and the site mostly shows you're a real company.
• A good template looks fine to you.

Squarespace Basic is $19 a month billed yearly, or $25 month to month. Weebly Personal is $13 a month billed yearly, or $16 month to month. Pick a yearly plan if you want the free first-year domain, and register the domain in your business's name.

Know one thing before you start: some builders won't let you take the site with you. Wix says a Wix site has to run on Wix's servers. If you move later, plan on a rebuild.

Pay someone instead if your time costs more than their fee. The same goes if the site keeps falling behind the services you sell, or if nobody on your team will ever log in to it.

What moves a build quote up or down

Two quotes for "a 5-page website" can be thousands of dollars apart because they don't cover the same work. Clutch reports an average web design project cost of $38,105, but says most projects on its site cost less than $10,000. A few large projects pull that average up, so it tells you little about a trade site. These are the things that change the price:

• Who writes the words. Writing a page for every service takes hours, and some quotes assume you send the text.
• Photos. Your own job photos cost nothing. A photo shoot or stock images cost extra.
• Page count. A separate page for each service or each town you cover adds up fast.
• Forms and connections. A basic quote form is simple. Online booking, or sending leads into your job software, takes longer.
• Custom design. A template adjusted to your brand costs less than a design drawn from scratch.

How to get a total you can compare

Ask every provider for the same numbers, then line them up the way our table does.

1. Get the build price in writing, with the page count and who supplies the text and photos.
2. Ask for the hosting or platform price at renewal, not just the first term.
3. Ask what the domain costs after the first year, and whose name it's registered in.
4. Ask how edits are billed, and estimate how many hours you'd use in a year.
5. Multiply each monthly or yearly cost out to 36 months and add the build.

Our website cost calculator runs the upfront and 3-year math for a typical trade site. If hosting is the line you're unsure about, website hosting cost breaks it down by type.