How much does a small business website cost?

A small business website costs anywhere from under $100 a year, if you build it yourself on a website builder, to a one-time bill of several hundred dollars or more if you pay a designer. The launch price is only half of it. Every website also has bills that come back every year, and those are the ones people forget. Here are real prices for each route, and a simple way to work out your own number.

The short answer

The rest of this article explains where those numbers come from and what they leave out.

Building it yourself: the real prices

Website builders sell a monthly plan that includes the hosting, so you do not rent a server separately. WordPress.com is a good example because it shows every price openly. In early January 2026 its plans cost:

Two things to notice. First, paying month to month costs more than twice as much: the Personal plan is $48 a year paid yearly, or $108 a year paid monthly. When you compare builders, check which of the two prices is the big number on the page.

Second, the domain. WordPress.com gives you the first year of a domain free with any yearly plan. After that a .com costs $13 a year there, and it is the same price for a new domain and for a renewal.

Builders now also offer to draft the site for you: WordPress.com lists an AI Website Builder among its products. It saves the blank-page moment. It cannot know your prices, your service area or why customers pick you over the shop down the street, so plan to rewrite most of what it writes.

Hiring a designer: how to estimate a quote

Upwork, the freelance marketplace, publishes what web designers charge on its platform. The median is $15 to $30 an hour. By type of project, its averages are:

• a basic one-page site: $15 to $40 an hour and up
• a design built on WordPress or another content system: $20 to $50 an hour and up
• a fully custom design with its own code: $45 to $75 an hour and up

Upwork adds that a very small design project takes about 10 hours, while a large custom one can take several dozen hours with a few rounds of changes. These are worldwide rates, so a quote from a designer in your own town may well be higher.

Say a designer quotes 20 hours for a five-page site on WordPress at $40 an hour. That is $800 once. The builder plan and the domain still come on top, because the site has to live somewhere.

The bills that come every year

This is where most budgets go wrong. Whichever route you take, these keep coming:

• The builder plan or hosting. It renews every year, or every month.
• The domain. Free in year one with many plans, then a yearly renewal.
• Changes. New prices, new photos, holiday hours. Either your time or a designer's hourly rate.
• Business email, if you want an address at your own domain instead of a free one.

A quick worked example, using the WordPress.com prices above. You build the site yourself on the Premium plan, paid yearly:

Add the designer from the example above and year one becomes $896, while year two stays at $109 plus whatever changes you ask for. Over three years the designer is the biggest cost, but the yearly bills never stop.

Questions to ask before you pay anyone

1. Is the domain registered in my name, with my e-mail address? It should be. If someone else holds it, you depend on them to keep it renewed.
2. Who owns the builder account, and whose card pays for it?
3. Can I change my hours and prices myself, without calling you?
4. How many rounds of changes are included?
5. What does it cost me in year two?
6. Does the site work on a phone? Open it on yours before you pay the last invoice.

Which route fits your business

Build it yourself if you need one or two pages: what you do, where you are, your hours, your phone number and a few photos. A cheap plan, a free first-year domain and a weekend will get you there.

Hire a designer if you need something a template cannot do, such as a custom booking flow, a members area or a design nobody else has.

Plan for a bigger project if you sell products online. A store needs product pages, payments, shipping and returns, and is priced differently from a brochure site.

Whichever you pick, keep the photos you already take for social media. A website with real pictures of your work looks more trustworthy than one built on stock photos.

If you would rather not build it yourself

Our New Website service is a one-time job for $999: up to five pages (home, services, about, gallery and contact), the words written for you, your own photos, a contact form or booking button, click-to-call and directions. Meta Pixel and Google Analytics are set up from day one. It is built on a website builder that you own, so the builder plan and the domain stay in your name and are yours to pay, as in the tables above. Two rounds of changes are included, and online stores are a separate quote.

If you enjoy building things and only need a page or two, a $4-a-month plan and a free weekend will cost you less, and that is a perfectly good choice. If you want it done for you, the details are under one-time services.