How much does a small business website cost in 2026?

A small business website in the US costs anywhere from about $300 a year if you build it yourself to $25,000 or more from an agency. That’s a huge range, and the price you see first is rarely the price you pay. Monthly plans, email, your web address and your own time all add up. And a low price can mean a great deal, or a site you’ll want to replace in a year.

We run a small design studio that builds websites for small businesses, so we checked the published prices of the main options on October 2, 2026, and added them up over three years, because that’s about how long a small business keeps a website before a refresh. Every total below includes a .com address and one business email account. When a company doesn’t publish its prices, we say so and link to the independent review the figure comes from.

The short answer

Sources for every figure are linked in the sections below. If you only remember one thing: multiply any monthly price by 36 before you compare.

Why the same website can cost $500 or $15,000

Most of a website’s price is people’s time: understanding the business, writing the words, designing the pages, building them so they work on every phone, and setting them up for Google. The rest is overhead. An agency pays for account managers, sales and offices. A monthly service pays for the sales team that signed you up, and earns it back over the contract. A marketplace seller competes on volume, so the cheapest gigs often reuse the same template for every client.

None of that is wrong. It just means the price tells you little about what you’ll get. The useful questions are who does the work, who checks it, and what happens after launch.

Doing it yourself

Builders like Squarespace and Wix look cheap because the monthly price is small. Squarespace’s Basic plan is $19 a month billed yearly, and Wix’s Light plan is $17.77. A business email address isn’t included on the basic plans: Google Workspace adds $84 a year per person. Over three years, with a domain, that comes to about $930 to $1,360.

The bigger cost is time. One estimate puts building and keeping a site up to date at 40 to 80 hours of your own time, and the result usually looks like the template it started from. If you enjoy that kind of work, it’s a fair deal. If your hours are better spent with customers, it isn’t.

GoDaddy’s builder is cheaper in the first year, but its introductory prices go up on renewal, and it doesn’t publish the renewal rates.

Freelancers and marketplaces

On Fiverr and Upwork, a one-page site runs from $50 to $500 for a template and $500 to $1,500 for a custom design. A US freelancer charges about $1,500 to $5,000 for a five-page site, and the average web design job on Thumbtack is about $1,057.

There are excellent designers on every marketplace. There are also sellers who resell one template to hundreds of clients, leave the writing to you, host the site on their own account, or stop answering after delivery. The profile page won’t tell you which one you found. The questions further down will.

Agencies

A local agency or design studio typically charges $5,000 to $25,000 for a five-page site, plus $100 to $300 a month for hosting and updates. You get strategy, writing, custom design and someone to call. For a restaurant or a two-chair salon, that’s usually more than the job needs.

“Website for $99 a month” services

Subscription website companies charge nothing or little upfront and then $65 to $199 a month. The math changes over time: a $99 plan passes $750 in month 8 and $999 in month 11. Read the terms. Some require a 12-month minimum, and some keep the site’s code if you cancel, so you leave with only your text and photos.

Bundled marketing plans cost more. Thryv’s plan with a professionally designed website is $399 a month.

Platforms made for your kind of business

Many industries have software that includes a website. It can be worth it when you use everything in the bundle. Here’s what each one costs.

• Restaurants. Owner.com is $249 a month plus 5% per order, or $499 a month. Popmenu starts at about $179 a month, and Toast Websites is about $75 a month with online ordering extra. More in our guide to restaurant websites.
• Salons and barbers. Booking apps like GlossGenius ($24 a month) and Vagaro ($30 a month) include a booking page. It’s a good booking tool, not a full website. See salon websites.
• Contractors. Jobber includes a basic site with its $29–$49 plans. Marketing companies such as Scorpion don’t publish prices; reviews report $500 to $2,500 or more a month with 12-month terms. See contractor websites.
• Chiropractors. Online Chiro charges $129 to $588 a month, and ChiroHosting starts at $64.95. See chiropractic websites.

The costs people forget

• Your web address. A .com costs about $10 to $22 a year. Buy it in your own name.
• Email at your domain. About $84 a year per person with Google or Microsoft, unless it’s included.
• Changes after launch. New hours, prices or photos. Freelancers charge $50 to $150 an hour for small updates.
• Photos. Good phone photos in daylight work. Licensed stock photos are fine to start.
• Order and booking fees. Some platforms charge per order or per booking on top of the monthly price.

Seven questions to ask before you pay anyone

1. Can I see three sites you built? Real businesses or real samples, not a template gallery. Open them on your phone.
2. Who writes the words? If the answer is “you send us the text”, add your own time to the price.
3. Who owns the domain and the site? The web address should be in your name, and you should be able to take the site with you.
4. Where is it hosted, and what does it cost after year one? Get the yearly price in writing.
5. Is business email included? hello@yourbusiness.com looks more trustworthy than a free address.
6. What happens when I need a change? Ask the price, and how fast.
7. Is there a contract? How long, and what happens if you cancel.

What ours cost, and why it isn’t cheap work

We build websites for small businesses at two fixed prices. A landing page is $750 and goes live in three business days. A full website of up to five pages is $999 and takes seven. Both include the design, the writing, setup for Google, an email address at your domain and the first year of hosting. After that it’s $5 a month, billed yearly. Over three years, that’s $915 or $1,164, and you can split the payment in two.

The price is low because of how we work, not because we cut corners:

• A senior designer checks every site. My co-founder, Ben Oyola, has designed for more than 20 years, for brands like Salesforce, Google and DataStax. He reviews every page before it goes live: type, spacing, photos, colors, and how it looks on a small phone. A neighborhood restaurant gets the same eye as a pitch deck for a global brand.
• Every site is designed for that business. We don’t reuse a look from one client to the next. A restaurant, a contractor and a salon each get their own layout, colors and type. You can see it in our four sample sites.
• We built the routine parts once. Speed, phone layouts, forms, Google setup and accessibility come from a system we built and test on every site, so your time and money go into your design and your words. Our sample sites score 96 to 100 on Google’s Lighthouse performance test.
• No sales team and no contract. You talk to the two people doing the work. No account managers, no 12-month term, and the site and the domain are yours.

To be fair about it: a do-it-yourself plan costs less than we do in the first two years, and GoDaddy’s introductory prices stay cheaper for about three. Against monthly website services and platforms that charge $65 or more a month, our landing page costs less within the first year.

How to choose

• You have more time than money, and you like tinkering: a do-it-yourself builder.
• You need a big custom site with strategy and lots of pages: an agency.
• You use your industry’s software for everything and love it: its website may be enough.
• You want a site that looks like your business, written and set up for you, without a monthly bill: that’s what we do. See the packages and sample sites, or tell us about your business and we’ll tell you honestly which option fits.