# What a small business website should actually cost

> Real numbers, not a $10 to $100,000 range. What a small business website costs up front, what it costs every year, and how to read a quote.

Published 4 August 2026 by noboringsites. https://noboringsites.com/blog/what-a-small-business-website-should-actually-cost/

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Buy a finished template and you pay **US$249 to US$899**, once, and you can be live today. Have one drawn around your business and you pay **from A$1,500**, with most jobs landing between **A$2,900 and A$4,900**. After launch, a .com costs **US$10.26 a year** at registry cost and the certificate is free. Everything else is a choice.

Those first two numbers are ours. They are [printed on our pricing page](/pricing/), they are what you pay at checkout, and you can go and check them right now. That is the whole methodology. We are not quoting you a survey we cannot show you.

## How much does a website cost? Why every answer you have read is useless

The most-linked page in this category opens by telling you a website costs [$10 to $100,000+](https://www.webfx.com/web-design/pricing/website-costs/). Four orders of magnitude. That is not an answer, it is a hedge with a calculator bolted to it.

It gets worse when you follow the numbers back. HubSpot runs the biggest marketing blog on the internet. Its [website cost article](https://blog.hubspot.com/website/website-design-cost) sources its builder range to DesignRush, its freelancer range to Clutch, and its agency range to WebFX, which is an agency. None of the three are linked. The largest publisher in the category has no price data of its own and points at a competitor's page for it.

So the ranges you have read are mostly three pages quoting each other. Nobody who publishes a price range in this category sells at a published price, which is the tell. A studio that will not print its own numbers is telling you the number depends on how much it thinks you have.

Here is the version with real numbers in it.

## The five ways to get a website, scored the same way

Five paths. Same four questions for each, so you can read across instead of down.

### 1. Do it yourself on a website builder

**What you get:** a template on a platform, edited in your browser, hosted by the platform.
**Up front:** your time. Realistically a full weekend to a bad first version, and a second weekend to something you would show a customer.
**Each year:** a subscription, forever. It is rent.
**When it is right:** you have more time than money, the site is a business card, and you would rather learn than delegate. This is a perfectly good answer and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

We are not printing a Wix or Squarespace price here. They change them, they vary by country, and half the articles quoting them are quoting a number from two years ago. Open the vendor's own pricing page. Then check which plan actually removes the ads and connects your domain, because it is never the cheapest one on the list.

### 2. Buy a finished template

**What you get:** the actual source code of a finished site, drawn for one trade, delivered as a download.
**Up front:** US$249 for a complete build, US$349 with scroll motion through it, US$499 for the ones people stop on, US$899 for real 3D.
**Each year:** the licence is perpetual and there is no recurring fee on the template itself. You pay for a domain and somewhere to host it.
**When it is right:** you know what your business says, you want it live this week, and you would rather spend the difference on photography.

The catch is honest: you are buying a finished thing. It is designed for a trade, not for you specifically. If your business is genuinely unusual, a template will fight you.

### 3. Have one built for you by a studio

**What you get:** a site drawn around your business from a brief, with your copy, your photographs and your structure.
**Up front:** from A$1,500 for a sharp single-purpose site, from A$2,900 when it needs more pages and more art direction, from A$4,900 for the full job including identity work, and from A$9,900 for anything past that.
**Each year:** the domain, the hosting, and whatever you spend keeping it current.
**When it is right:** the site has to sell something specific, or you have tried a template and it did not fit.

### 4. Hire an agency

**What you get:** a team, a process, and account management.
**Up front:** we genuinely cannot tell you, and neither can anyone publishing a range. There is no survey. There are three pages citing each other.
**Each year:** usually a retainer, and usually the real revenue.
**When it is right:** you need integrations into systems you already run, a procurement process, and a supplier who will still be there in five years.

### 5. An AI builder

**What you get:** you describe the site and agents build it.
**Up front:** unknown.
**Each year:** unknown.
**When it is right:** not yet.

This lane is real and it is coming. Ours is not open, the price is not set, and we are not going to invent one. Worth noticing: the biggest website builder on earth ships an AI builder and links it from a three word button in the middle of its own cost article without pricing it anywhere in the body. Nobody in this category will put a number on AI-built. Treat every number you do see as marketing until someone shows you a checkout.

## The number nobody adds up: what it costs every year

Every article in this category lists eight to fourteen recurring costs across three separate sections and never sums them. Here is the sum.

**The floor, for a site you host yourself:**

| Line | Per year |
|---|---|
| .com domain, at registry cost | US$10.26 |
| TLS certificate | US$0 |
| Static hosting on a free tier | US$0 |
| **Floor total** | **US$10.26** |

That domain number is not an estimate. US$10.26 per domain per year is the registry fee in [ICANN's published .com fee schedule](https://itp.cdn.icann.org/en/files/registry-agreements/com/com-fees-01-09-2024-en.pdf), effective 1 September 2024. It is what the registry charges. Anything above it is your registrar's margin, and some registrars sell at cost with no markup, which [Cloudflare publishes as its policy](https://www.cloudflare.com/products/registrar/). If you are paying $40 a year for a .com, you are paying about $30 for nothing.

The certificate is free because [Let's Encrypt](https://letsencrypt.org/) is a nonprofit certificate authority that gives them away. Any host still charging you a line item for SSL is charging you for water.

**What actually moves your number:**

| Line | Realistic range |
|---|---|
| Business email on your own domain | a few dollars per mailbox per month |
| A booking, quoting or scheduling tool | varies wildly, and it is usually the biggest line |
| Someone to keep it alive | zero if you do it, a retainer if you do not |
| Platform subscription, if you rent | the whole cost, forever |

So the honest answer to "what does it cost to run" is: the site itself is close to free, and everything bolted to it is not. When a supplier quotes you $200 a month for hosting, ask what is in it. If the answer is hosting, you are being charged a retainer under a different name.

We run a plan that covers hosting, your database, the integrations wired into your build, and domains at cost. It is being repriced and it is not on sale yet, so we are not putting a number on it here either.

## What it costs by what you do

| Business | What it needs | Sensible path |
|---|---|---|
| Sole trader trade | Five pages, a quote form, proof you are real | Template at US$249 to US$349, or a build from A$1,500 |
| Cafe or restaurant | Menu, hours, location, a booking link | Template. Spend the difference on a photographer |
| Clinic or practice | Multiple practitioners, services, real booking | A build from A$2,900, because the booking tool has to fit |
| Studio, agency or portfolio | The work is the product, and motion sells it | Showpiece template at US$499, or a build from A$4,900 |
| Shop with real stock | Inventory, payments, shipping, tax, returns | **Not us.** Use Shopify |

That last row is not modesty. If you are selling a hundred products with variants and shipping rules, a commerce platform's app ecosystem is worth more to you than a bespoke build, and any studio that tells you otherwise is quoting for a job it wants rather than the one you have.

## The costs that are not on the invoice

These are the lines that turn a $2,900 project into a $5,000 one, and none of them are the builder's fault.

**Photographs.** The single biggest difference between a site that looks expensive and one that does not. Stock photography reads as stock photography instantly. Budget for a half day with a photographer before you budget for anything else.

**Words.** Somebody has to write what your business actually does. If it is you, that is a real week. If it is not you, it is a real invoice.

**Accessibility.** This one appears as a cost line on almost no page in this category, and it is the one with hard evidence behind it. WebAIM tested the home pages of the top one million websites in February 2026 and found detectable WCAG failures on [95.9% of them](https://webaim.org/projects/million/), up from 94.8% the year before, averaging 56.1 errors per page. The most common failure was low contrast text, on 83.9% of pages. Half of all pages had form inputs with no label, which means half the web has a contact form a screen reader user cannot fill in. Fixing that after launch costs more than building it in.

**Weight.** The median mobile page was [2,362 KB in July 2025](https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2025/page-weight), against 845 KB ten years earlier, per the HTTP Archive's Web Almanac. Images alone were 911 KB and JavaScript 632 KB. Every one of those kilobytes is somebody's data plan on a bad connection outside your shop. Weight is a cost, it is just billed to your customer.

**Renewals.** Domains, tools, plugins. Put the dates in a calendar the day you launch, because the expensive version of forgetting a domain renewal is somebody else buying it.

## What do you own, and what does it cost to leave

Nobody in this category answers this, and the reason is structural: the platforms cannot answer it honestly and the agencies would rather you did not ask.

Ask it anyway, because it is the question that reframes every price on this page. A $500 site you cannot take with you is more expensive than a $3,000 site you can.

Our template licence is public, so here is exactly what it says. One purchase covers one production website, on one primary domain. It is perpetual and there is no recurring licence fee on the template itself. You can modify anything: code, styles, structure, content, images. You can deploy that site anywhere you like, on any host. There is no attribution requirement, so no "built by" link in your footer. If you are an agency, the Extended licence is three times the price and covers three sites for three clients. What you cannot do is resell the source or build a second site off one licence, which is the only limit that matters.

Read whatever you are about to buy for the same four things: can you take the files, can you host them anywhere, does the licence expire, and whose name is on the domain.

## Five questions that tell you if a quote is fair

1. **Who owns the domain, and whose name is on the registrar account?** If it is theirs, your business address is rented from your supplier.
2. **If I leave, what exactly do I get?** A zip of source files is an answer. "We will export your content" is not.
3. **Is this a fixed quote or an estimate, and what triggers a variation?** Get the trigger in writing before you sign anything.
4. **What happens to my site if I stop paying you?** With a subscription platform the honest answer is that it goes offline. That is a fair deal if you know you are making it.
5. **Show me a site you built that is still live and still current two years later.** Anyone can show a launch. Very few can show a survivor.

The answer that should end the conversation: "we host it, the files stay with us, and the domain is in our account." That is not a website, that is a hostage.

## When not to buy from us

We sell templates and we sell builds, so treat everything above with the suspicion it deserves and check the numbers, all of which are linked. Here is where we are the wrong call.

If you have almost no budget and some time, use a free builder tier and put every dollar into photographs instead. You will end up further ahead than buying anything from anyone.

If you are running real inventory, use a commerce platform.

If five people need to edit the site every day without asking anyone, buy a platform with a proper editor, not a build.

And if you do not yet know what your business says to a stranger in one sentence, no site at any price fixes that. Sort the sentence first. It is free and it is the part that actually sells.

## FAQ

**How much should a small business website cost in total?**
For most small businesses, US$249 to US$899 once for a finished template, or A$1,500 to A$4,900 for a build, plus around US$10 a year for the domain and whatever your tools cost. If someone quotes you five figures, ask what specifically costs that much.

**Why do quotes for the same site vary so much?**
Because most quotes are priced off what you appear able to pay, not off the work. Published prices are the fix. Ask for a fixed quote against a written scope and the range collapses.

**Is a template worse than a custom site?**
No, it is less specific. A good template built for your trade beats a bad bespoke build every time. A bespoke build wins when your business does something a template was never drawn for.

**What does website hosting cost for a small business?**
Very little for a small site, and free on several credible tiers. If you are being charged more than a few dollars a month for hosting alone, you are paying for something else and it is worth asking what.

**How much is a domain name?**
The registry fee for a .com is US$10.26 a year. Registrars add margin on top and some add none at all. Renewals are where the markup hides, so check the renewal price, not the first year price.

**Do I need to pay for an SSL certificate?**
No. Let's Encrypt issues them free and most hosts install them automatically. A separate SSL line item on a quote is a flag.

**How long does a small business website take?**
A template is live the day you buy it, assuming your copy and photographs are ready. A build runs on the brief. The honest constraint is almost never the build, it is how long it takes you to send the photographs.

**What ongoing costs should I expect after launch?**
Domain renewal, email, whichever tools you booked or quoted with, and someone's time. Write them in one list on launch day with renewal dates against them. Almost nobody does this and it is why the second year always feels like a surprise.

## What to do next

Buying a template? Look for the one drawn for your trade, not the one that looks nicest. Having one built? Have your photographs and your one sentence ready before you ask anyone for a price, because it changes the quote. Still deciding? Price both and compare the five year cost, not the sticker.

Answer a short brief and your exact price comes back before you pay anything.

**[Get a price for your site](/start/)**