Pricing guide
How much does a small business website cost in 2026?
Search “cheap website” and you will get three different products pretending to be one price: a monthly builder, a freelancer gig, and an agency pitch. They are not the same thing. Here is what the numbers usually mean in 2026.
| What you buy | Typical money | What you actually get |
|---|---|---|
| DIY builder (Wix, Squarespace, Carrd) | $0–$40 / month | A template you assemble. You are the designer, writer, and IT person. Leave and the site often stays behind. |
| Hosted website | $49/month hosted | A single scroll: who you are, what you do, how to reach you. Enough for a lot of local businesses. |
| Standard marketing site | $500–$2,500 once | Custom layout, your photos, contact path, basic SEO, help going live. Not a store. Not an app. |
| Freelance custom | $1,500–$8,000 | More pages, more brand, more back-and-forth. Quality is the person, not the platform. |
| Agency | $8,000–$35,000+ | Strategy, copy, design system, sometimes ads. Right for a company that already has demand. |
The hidden bill on “free”
Google Sites and free Wix plans are free the way a crate is free. You can stand on it. You cannot put a proper address on it, you often cannot take it with you, and customers can see it is a crate. Paid Wix / Squarespace is usually $16–$40 a month. That is $192–$480 a year, every year, before you count the Saturday you spend fighting the editor.
If you like tinkering, that is a fair deal. If you wanted a site so you can get back to the actual business, the monthly plan is a second job with a subscription attached.
What a marketing website buys (and does not)
That is a marketing website: one long page or a few sections, phone-ready, a form or the buttons you need, title and meta tags, hosting setup, help pointing the domain, one round of changes. Most of those jobs finish in under 72 hours when the brief is clear.
It is not Shopify, a member portal, or a six-week brand film. Those get a separate quote.
How to pick a number without getting played
- If you only need hours, phone, three photos, and a map — start at a $49/month hosted website.
- If you need checkout for 200 products — you need a store platform, not a brochure. Ask for a quote.
- If someone quotes $150 for “SEO + logo + 10 pages + Google ranking” — they are selling a hope, not a site.
Free next step: paste your current URL and see the ten basics a customer notices in the first five seconds.