How much does a small business website cost in 2026?

Almost every answer you will find, from a search engine or a friend, offers three roads: build it yourself on a site builder, hire a freelancer, or hire an agency. There is a fourth now, and it is the one we run: the site is built for you from a short description or your Google listing, a designer checks it, and you pay a flat monthly fee only once it is live.

Each road costs money in a different place. Builders charge little and ask for your evenings. Freelancers and agencies charge for their hours up front. A built-for-you plan spreads a smaller cost across the months the site is actually working for you. The right answer depends on which of those you have more of: time, cash or patience.

The builders publish their prices, so you can check them yourself. When we read Squarespace's pricing page on October 29, 2026, its plans ran from $19 a month billed yearly (Basic) to $139 a month billed monthly (Advanced), with Basic at $25 if you pay month to month. Wix's plans page showed paid plans from $17.77 to $159.77 a month, billed yearly, and said its USD prices are shown for reference only.

That fee buys the tools, the hosting and usually a domain for the first year. It does not buy the design, the words or the photos. You choose a template, replace every block of placeholder text, and keep it current. For someone who enjoys that work, it is the cheapest good option. For a plumber who gets home at seven, the true cost is the weekends it takes, and the jobs a half-finished site loses in the meantime.

Freelancers and agencies quote per project, so there is no public price list to read. Quotes vary with the number of pages, whether they write the copy, whether you need booking or a shop, and how many rounds of changes are included. An app or a larger custom build from an agency often runs to $10,000 or more.

When you collect quotes, ask what happens after launch. Many projects are priced to deliver the site and stop. Changes are then billed by the hour or on a retainer, and hosting is a separate bill. A cheap build with every later change billed by the hour can cost more in its second year than in its first.

A good freelancer or agency is worth that money when the project is large or unusual: a site with a custom booking system, a catalogue of hundreds of products, or a brand being built from nothing. We run a custom studio for exactly those projects, with builds from $3,250 to a fixed scope and a fixed price agreed before any work starts.

Seeing it costs nothing. You type a sentence about your business, or attach your Google listing, and we build the site in about 20 minutes. A designer checks it before you see it. No card is asked for.

If you want it live, there are three ways to pay for the same site:

• Website: $99 a month. Your domain registered and renewed for you, hosting and security handled, and changes whenever you email. No contract.
• Website, yearly: $990 a year, which is two months free.
• Website, owned: $1,499 once. The domain and the files are yours outright, with one free revision. Hosting and updates afterwards are optional, at $175 a year.

Every plan is listed on the pricing page, and the same numbers are what checkout charges. Taking card payments on the site and ad tracking are custom builds, not part of these plans.

The sticker price is rarely the whole bill. Before you compare options, add these up for the first two years:

• The domain renewal, every year after the first.
• Hosting, if the builder or agency does not include it.
• Changes: new prices, new hours, a new service, a new photo. Who makes them, and what each one costs.
• Your own time, at what an hour of your work is worth.
• Paid apps and add-ons: booking, forms, a shop, an email list.

On our monthly plan the first four are inside the $99. On the owned plan the domain and the files are yours, and hosting and updates are the optional $175 a year.

Over two years, a monthly plan at $99 comes to 24 payments, and the owned site is one payment of $1,499 plus $175 a year if you want us to host and update it. A builder plan is cheaper in cash if your own hours cost nothing. A freelancer or agency site usually costs more up front and less per month, and the monthly side depends on how often you need changes.

A simple rule: if you will change the site often and would rather not touch it, pay monthly and let someone else make the changes. If the site will barely change, owning it outright is cheaper after the first year or so. If you love design tools, use a builder. If the project is big and bespoke, get proper quotes.

Only if it does its job. A small business site has three jobs: show you are real, say clearly what you do and where, and make it easy to call, book or buy. A site that loads slowly on a phone, buries the phone number, or still shows last year's prices costs you customers, whatever it cost to build.

So judge a quote on what you get at the end: is it fast on a phone, are the words yours, is your real work in the photos, and who fixes it when something changes? We built our plans around those questions, and you can see your own site free before you pay anything.