How much does a website cost for a small business?
The range is enormous and the answers online are usually vague. Here is a straight breakdown of what you actually get at each price point.
April 2026 · By Lucas Seifert
DIY website builders: $0 to $50/month
Wix, Squarespace, and similar builders let you get something online fast. Monthly costs are low, usually $15 to $50 depending on the plan. But the real cost is your time and the ceiling you hit.
DIY builders work fine for very simple use cases: a portfolio, a basic landing page, a placeholder. Once you need custom layouts, better performance, or anything beyond a standard template, you start fighting the tool. The output also looks like a template, which affects trust.
Freelancers: $500 to $5,000+
A freelance web designer or developer can build a real custom site. The range is wide because experience, scope, and market all vary. Someone charging $500 is probably using a page builder with a template. Someone charging $3,000 to $5,000 is likely building something more custom with better strategic input.
At Seifert Sites, pricing runs $175 to $250 per page depending on the plan, with $50 per month for ongoing updates. A 4-page Growth site lands around $850 to $1,250 total. You get a custom design, real conversion thinking, and direct communication throughout. Not a template, not a hand-off to a junior developer.
Agencies: $5,000 to $50,000+
Agencies come with account managers, strategy decks, and layered teams. For some businesses that overhead is worth it. For most small local businesses, you are paying for a lot of process that does not improve the output.
If you are a local service business, gym, restaurant, or coach, you rarely need a $20,000 website. You need a $1,000 to $2,500 site built well with a clear strategy behind it.
What affects the price the most
Page count is the biggest driver. More pages means more design time, more content, and more development. After that, custom functionality (booking systems, integrations, e-commerce) adds cost. Rushed timelines and unclear briefs add cost too, because they eat time.
The clearer you are about what you need when you start, the more efficient the process is and the lower the final bill.
The question worth asking
Instead of “what is the cheapest option,” ask: what does a weak site cost me in lost leads, lower close rates, and missed referrals? For most small businesses that number is higher than the cost of a good site.
A $1,200 site that earns trust and converts visitors pays for itself quickly. A $15/month Wix site that looks like a template might technically exist, but it is not working hard for you.