How Much Should a Small Business Website Cost?

It's the first question almost every business owner asks. A template you fill in yourself might cost a few hundred dollars; a large custom build can run into tens of thousands. The price depends on what you need the site to do.

Here's how to work out where your project actually sits.

What you're actually paying for

Design is usually the smallest part of the invoice. The cost is driven by four things:

Number of pages. Five pages is a different job from twenty-five. Each page needs structure, copy, and testing.
Functionality. A brochure site is straightforward. Bookings, payments, logins, or a product catalogue each add real engineering.
Who writes the copy. If you write it, you save money and spend time. If the studio writes it, expect it to be a meaningful line item — and usually a worthwhile one, because copy does more conversion work than design does.
What happens after launch. Hosting, updates, and search visibility are ongoing costs whether or not anyone tells you upfront.

The three realistic tiers

DIY builder — $0 to a few hundred

Squarespace, Wix, or Shopify with a stock template. Genuinely fine for validating an idea or for a business that gets all its work by referral. The limits show up when you want something the template doesn't do, or when you need to rank for anything competitive.

Freelancer or small studio — roughly $750 to $7,500+

A custom design, written copy, and a build shaped around what your business actually needs to happen. This is where most small businesses get the best return, because the site is designed around your specific customer rather than a generic layout.

Agency — $10,000 upwards

Larger teams, longer timelines, more process. Appropriate for complex builds or organisations that need lots of stakeholder management. For a business with under twenty staff, it's usually more overhead than value.

A useful reframe: don't ask what a website costs. Ask what one new customer is worth to you, and how many the site needs to bring in before it has paid for itself.

Tell us how many pages you need, what the site should do, and who’s writing the copy. We can point you to a sensible tier.

Discuss My Project See Pricing

The questions that actually protect you

Is this a fixed price or an estimate? An estimate can move. A fixed price can't.
What's explicitly not included? Domains, stock photography, premium plugins, and hosting are commonly billed separately.
How many rounds of revisions? "Unlimited" usually isn't, and vagueness here is where projects go wrong.
Who owns the site at the end? You should. Get it in writing.
What happens if I want a change in six months? Ask for the hourly or retainer rate now, not later.

The real mistake

The most expensive outcome isn't overpaying. It's paying a reasonable amount for a site that doesn't bring in work — because then you've spent the money and you still need a website. A cheap site that generates nothing costs more than a considered one that generates steadily.

If you want a sense of concrete numbers, our pricing page lists what each tier includes, and every project is quoted as a fixed price before any work starts.