A small business website in the US costs anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars a year to fifteen thousand dollars before it launches, and both numbers can be fair. The spread comes from four different ways of buying one, each with its own shape of cost: a builder you run yourself, a freelancer, an agency, or a monthly plan. The price on the quote is rarely the price of the first two years.
The ranges below come from US providers’ published prices and pricing guides in October 2026. They are what is charged, not what is fair, and they move.
Do it yourself on a builder: $200–600 a year
Wix, Squarespace and GoDaddy sell monthly plans that host the site, keep the software patched and give you templates to fill in. Billed annually, the plans a business would use come to roughly $200 to $600 a year, with Shopify’s Basic plan near the top of that range for a site that sells online. Paying month to month costs more than paying for the year.
Three things push the real number up. Most builders include a domain free for the first year only, then renew it at the standard rate. Booking, ordering and email marketing are often apps with their own monthly fees. And the work is yours: picking a template, writing the pages, sizing the photos, and coming back every time a price or an opening hour changes. Count those hours at what an hour of your time is worth to the business, because that is the part of a builder’s cost that never appears on a card statement.
A builder is the right answer for plenty of businesses, particularly at the start. It is the wrong one for an owner who will never open it again after launch week.
A freelancer: $1,000–5,000 to build
A freelance web designer typically quotes $1,000 to $5,000 for a small business site of five to ten pages, usually on WordPress or on one of the builders above. Where a quote falls in that range depends mostly on who writes the words, whether the design starts from a template, and whether anything has to be moved from an old site.
The build is a one-off payment. What it does not cover is the next year. A WordPress site needs hosting, a domain, software updates and backups, and it needs somebody to make the changes. Some freelancers sell that as a care plan; some hand over the logins and move on, which is fine until a plugin breaks.
An agency: $5,000–15,000 and up
An agency charges more because more people touch the work: a designer, a developer, often a copywriter and a project manager. For a small business, quotes from $5,000 to $15,000 are common, and a site with online ordering, a booking system or a lot of pages goes well past that. Agencies usually sell their own hosting and a monthly retainer as well.
The extra money buys custom design and someone to manage the project. Whether that is worth it depends on how much of your business is won on the site. For a plumber who gets most of their work from Google Business Profile and repeat customers, it rarely is. For a restaurant group or a practice with several locations, it can be.
Hosting, the domain and the care plan
These are the costs that come back every year, whichever way the site was built.
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Hosting
Hosting for a small WordPress site runs from a few dollars a month on shared hosting to several times that on managed hosting that handles updates and backups. Together with a domain, $100 to $250 a year covers most small sites. Watch for introductory prices: many hosts charge much less for the first term than for every renewal after it.
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The domain
The domain is the cheapest line and the one that does the most damage when it lapses. Verisign, which runs .com, raises its wholesale fee to $10.97 a year on November 1, 2026, and registrars add their own margin on top, so the renewal price is what to compare, not the first-year offer.
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A care plan
A care plan is a monthly fee for someone else to keep the site patched, backed up and changed. Published plans for a small site run from about $50 to $150 a month, $600 to $1,800 a year. Ask how many changes a month are included and what an extra one costs, because a cheap plan that bills every edit by the hour can cost more in a busy year than a pricier plan that does not.
Pay-monthly website plans: $78–199 a month to start
A pay-monthly plan, sometimes sold as a website subscription, folds the build, hosting, domain and changes into one monthly fee. Among five US studios we looked at in October 2026, published entry tiers ran from about $78 to $199 a month, with higher tiers for more pages, online booking or a shop.
The prices compare at a glance. The terms do not, and they matter more:
- Minimum term. Several require 12 months; some longer. Cancelling early can mean paying out the rest of the term.
- Setup fee. Some charge one on top of the monthly, some do not.
- Exit fees and buyouts. Some charge to leave, or to take the site with you.
- Ownership. At least one keeps ownership of the site rather than handing it over. Others hand it over after a set number of months.
- The domain. Whose name it is registered in decides whether the web address leaves with you.
- Price rises. Whether the monthly can go up, and with how much notice.
The model works well for a business that wants one bill and one person to email, and badly for one that signs without reading the term. A $99 plan that keeps the site and the domain when you leave costs more than its price says.
Two years, side by side
One year flatters a builder and punishes a build. Two years puts the four routes on the same footing. These totals use the ranges above and leave out your own time.
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Builders
Builders cost $400–1,200 over two years, plus the hours you spend on the site and any apps you add.
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Freelancers
Freelancers cost $1,200–5,500 for the build plus two years of hosting and a domain, with nobody looking after it. Add a care plan and it is $2,400–9,100.
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Agencies
Agencies cost $5,200–15,500 with hosting and nothing else, and $6,400–19,100 or more with a care plan.
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Pay-monthly
Pay-monthly plans cost $1,872–4,776 over two years at an entry tier, plus any setup fee, with the ownership question still to answer.
Ask what you own if you stop paying in month 13. Every total above assumes you stay two years. A freelance build is usually yours once it is paid for. A plan that keeps the site, or registers the domain in its own name, can leave you starting from nothing, and that is the cost no quote prints.
What a quote leaves out
The number of pages matters less than people expect. These matter more, and each one is a line to ask about if it is missing:
- The words. Most quotes assume you supply them. Writing five pages well is days of work.
- Photos. Your own photos of real work beat stock, and somebody has to take them.
- Moving an old site. Pages Google already knows need redirecting to their new addresses, or you lose the search traffic you had.
- Business email. Usually a separate bill per mailbox per month, and a job of its own to set up.
- Booking, ordering and payments. Often a third party’s monthly fee, plus card processing on every sale.
- Accessibility. A site that fails WCAG 2.1 AA is a site that can draw an ADA demand letter, which is covered in ADA website lawsuits and small businesses.
- Changes after launch. Whether they are included, capped or billed by the hour.
How to compare two quotes
- Add up two years, not one. A low build fee with a high monthly and a high build fee with nothing after are different shapes of cost. Only a total compares them.
- Write down what is not included. Domain renewal, email, changes, apps. Price them and add them to the total.
- Price your own time. If you are doing the work on a builder, count the hours.
- Read the exit terms. What you keep if you leave in month six, and what you keep if you leave in year three.
- Ignore any promise of a Google ranking. Nobody can sell you a position. What a supplier can commit to is the work, and evidence that it was done.
We sell pay-monthly plans, so we are one of the routes above rather than a neutral observer. Essential is $35 a month with nothing up front; the site, and a domain we register for you, are ours until the 24th monthly payment and yours from then, and you can cancel in any month owing nothing more. A domain you already own stays yours throughout. The plans and the full term are on the pricing page.
