Ask five people what a website costs and you'll hear five numbers. A nephew who knows some design will do it for $300. A local agency quotes $12,000. A template site costs $16 a month and your Saturday. All three can be the right answer, which is exactly why the question is so hard to answer for yourself.
So instead of a range, here's a specific price and what it buys. Ours is $1,500 to build and $100 a month after that. I'll walk through what's in that number, what isn't, and what you'd be paying for if someone quotes you five times as much.
What the $1,500 covers
A website for a service business has one job. Someone lands on it, decides you're the right people, and calls or fills out the form. Everything in the build should serve that job.
- Five pages written for your business. Home, services, about, reviews and contact. The words are written for you, from what you tell us about your customers, so you aren't staring at an empty box trying to describe yourself.
- A design you pick from three. You see your own business in three different modern designs and choose the one that feels like you.
- Built for a phone first. Most people who find a service business are holding a phone, often with one hand. Buttons are big, the number is one tap away, and the page loads fast on a weak signal.
- Motion that doesn't cost speed. The animations load after the page is usable and switch off on slow phones, so the site feels current without making anyone wait.
- A contact form that actually reaches you. Every enquiry arrives right away, with where the person came from attached.
You can pay all of it up front, or half to start and half before it goes live. The second half is due before launch, so you've seen the finished site before you pay the rest.
What the $100 a month is for
A website isn't a one time purchase in the way a brochure is. It sits on a server that has to stay up, stay secure and keep its certificate current, or browsers start warning people away from it. The monthly fee covers hosting, security, keeping it running, and up to two small edits a month. New hours, a new service, a price change, a fresh photo.
That last part matters more than it sounds. Most small business sites go stale because changing them is a hassle. When a change is one message away, the site stays true.
Where a $5,000 or $15,000 quote goes
Bigger quotes aren't automatically padded. They usually pay for things a lot of service businesses don't need yet.
- Custom photography and video. A crew at your shop for a day. Worth it for some brands, and something you can add later.
- A lot more pages. A page for every service in every city, built for search. Useful at scale, and a big writing job.
- Software built into the site. Online booking that talks to your scheduling system, quotes that price themselves, customer logins.
- Brand work. A new logo, colors and a style guide before the site is even started.
If a quote is five times higher, ask which of these you're getting. If the answer is none of them, you're paying for the agency's overhead.
Questions to ask before you pay anyone
- Do I own the domain? The web address should be registered in your name. If the person building the site owns it, leaving them gets messy.
- What happens if I leave? You should get a copy of your pages and images, and the hand-off shouldn't depend on whether you owe anything.
- Who writes the words? Plenty of builds hand you an empty template and call it a website.
- How do enquiries reach me? If the answer is "check the inbox on the site", that's a lead you'll find three days late.
A website doesn't need to be expensive. It needs to make calling you the easiest thing on the page.
If you want to see what $1,500 looks like before you decide anything, click through one of our sample sites. It's a full site for a made-up business, built the same way we'd build yours.