What a small business website should cost
People ask me this first, and the honest answer is that it depends on what the site has to do. A bakery that needs hours, a menu and a phone number is a different job from a shop selling 200 products.
Where the money goes
The cheapest route is doing it yourself on a builder like Wix or Squarespace. You pay a monthly plan and you pay with your own time. For a lot of small businesses that's a fine start.
Next is a freelancer or small studio building it for you. You pay once for the design and build, then a smaller amount for hosting and changes. Most of that price is time. Someone has to learn your business, fix the copy, design the pages, make them work on a phone and get them live.
Bigger agencies charge more because they have more people and more process. That makes sense for a company with a marketing team. It's usually more than a local business needs.
What changes the price
Page count matters less than people think. What changes the price is how much has to be figured out. These are the things that add real work:
- Online booking or payments
- A shop with lots of products
- Writing all the copy from scratch
- Photos that still need to be taken
- Moving an old site without losing what Google already knows about it
A simple site with five pages and good photos you already have is a small job. A site with a store, a booking system and no copy yet is a bigger one.
The part people forget
The build is one cost. Keeping it running is another. There's hosting, the domain, small edits when your hours change and fixes when something breaks. Ask anyone you hire what happens after launch and what it costs per month or per edit. If they can't answer clearly, that's worth noticing.
Also ask who owns the site. You should own your domain and be able to leave with your content. Some setups make that hard on purpose.
A rough way to decide
If you're just starting and money is tight, use a builder and keep it simple. One clear page beats five messy ones.
If people already find you and the site is the first thing they see, paying someone is usually worth it. A site that looks cared for tells people the business is cared for too.
Get a quote that lists what's included and compare a couple. Cheap and expensive quotes both exist for real reasons. The right price is the one that matches the job.