What a Small Business Website Actually Costs (and When You Don't Need One Yet)
Revised July 28, 2026
What does a small business website actually cost?
Between about $200 a year and about $35,000 — and that spread is not confusion. “A website” is not one product, it is three: a platform subscription ($17–$49/mo billed yearly), a freelance build ($500–$8,000 once), or an agency build ($5,000–$35,000+). ⚠️ Every result on page one is published by someone who sells one of the three — Wix says $17–$100/mo, Elementor says $10,000–$35,000, both honestly quoting their own product. 💡 The costs nobody quotes: the domain renewal after the free first year, transaction fees, maintenance, and the rebuild when you switch platforms.
Keep reading ↓What does a small business website actually cost?
Somewhere between about $200 a year and about $35,000, and that spread is not because anyone is confused. It is because “a website” is not one product. It is at least three, sold by three different kinds of business, and the price you are quoted tells you which one you are being sold.
- You build it on a platform: roughly $17 to $49 a month, billed yearly, plus your time.
- A freelancer builds it: commonly $500 to $8,000 once, then hosting on top.
- An agency builds it: commonly $5,000 to $35,000 or more, usually with a retainer attached.
All three can be the right answer. None of them is the right answer for everybody, and a good number of small businesses in this metro do not need any of them yet.
Why every number you find is different
Search this question and look at who is answering. Every result on the first page is published by a company that sells websites, sells a tool for building them, or earns a commission when you sign up for one.
Here is what each one says, with its stake in the answer named:
- Wix — $17 to $100 a month. Wix sells website subscriptions.
- GoDaddy — $145 to $640 a year. GoDaddy sells domains, hosting and website subscriptions.
- Forbes Advisor — $0 to $450 do-it-yourself, from around $1,500 professional. Forbes Advisor is an affiliate publisher; the links pay it.
- Agency blogs — $4,000 to $15,000. Agencies sell $4,000 to $15,000 builds.
- Elementor — $10,000 to $35,000, with e-commerce starting at $20,000. Elementor sells a page builder used on large custom projects.
- Development shops — $1,000 to $50,000. The widest range comes from the firms that take work at every point in it.
Google’s own AI summary splits the difference and lands on $16 a month at the low end and $5,000 to $15,000 at the high end — assembled from exactly those sources.
The tell that this is unsettled: a Reddit thread from a decade ago outranks most of the commercial pages. When a ten-year-old forum post beats the professionals on a pricing question, search is telling you it does not trust the professionals on that question.
None of these companies is lying. Each is quoting the honest price of its own product. The problem is that all six answers wear the same label.
You are not buying one thing
Sorting the products apart makes the numbers stop looking random.
A platform subscription
You choose a template, type in your own words, and upload your own photos. Checked directly against their published pricing at the time of writing: Wix runs $17 a month for its Light plan, $29 for Core, $39 for Business and $159 for Business Elite, priced for a year paid up front. Squarespace runs $19, $29, $49 and $99 a month on the same annual basis. Both include a free custom domain for the first year on a paid plan.
What you are actually paying for is hosting, security patching, and the fact that you never have to think about either. What you are not paying for is anyone writing your content or taking your photographs. That is your weekend, and for most owners it is the real cost.
A freelancer
Five hundred to eight thousand dollars, depending less on page count than on how much of the work is genuinely yours: your words, your photos, your services list, your booking flow. A freelancer who hands you a template with your logo dropped in is worth the low end. One who interviews you, writes the copy, shoots the space and sets up the booking is worth the high end and frequently charges the middle.
An agency
Five thousand to thirty-five thousand. At this level you are buying a team — strategy, design, development, content, and usually a monthly retainer afterwards. For a business with several locations, a real e-commerce catalog, or compliance obligations, that is money well spent. For a two-truck HVAC company, it is a truck.
The costs nobody quotes you
The quoted price is the part you can compare. These are the parts that show up later.
The domain after the first year. “Free domain” almost always means free for twelve months. In month thirteen it renews at the registrar’s standard rate, and standard rates vary enormously between registrars for an identical product. Some also sell you WHOIS privacy as an add-on. Cloudflare Registrar, by contrast, publishes at-cost registration and renewal with no add-on fees and includes WHOIS redaction and SSL at no charge. Same domain, different bill, and nobody mentions it during the sale.
Payment processing. If you sell anything through the site, the platform’s cut is separate from the card network’s cut. Squarespace publishes card rates starting at 2.9% plus $0.30 and adds a 2% online store transaction fee on its entry plan, dropping to 0% one tier up. That upgrade can pay for itself long before you notice, which is worth understanding before you sign anything.
Maintenance. On a platform this is included. On a custom build it is not, and a site nobody patches becomes a liability rather than an asset. Ask directly who is responsible for updates and what it costs, and get the answer in writing before the build starts.
The move. Content typed into one platform’s editor does not lift cleanly into another. Changing platforms in three years usually means rebuilding, which is a cost you incur when you are least expecting it.
Renting versus owning
This is the distinction that matters most and gets discussed least.
On a platform subscription you are a tenant. Stop paying and the site goes dark. You keep the domain, because the domain is registered to you, but the pages, the layout and the structure stay behind. That is not a scam — it is what a subscription is — but plenty of owners discover it during a cash-flow squeeze, which is the worst possible moment.
A custom build on your own hosting is yours. So is the responsibility for it: updates, security, backups, and someone to call when it breaks at nine on a Friday night.
Renting is the right call for most small businesses, and there is no shame in it. Just make the choice deliberately, and keep the domain registered in your name and your own account — not your web designer’s. A domain held in a departed contractor’s account is one of the more painful and avoidable problems in small business.
When you honestly do not need one yet
Not every business needs its own website on day one, and a lot of the pressure to build one comes from people who sell them.
Consider holding off if everything below is true of you:
- You do not sell anything online — customers call, book, or walk in.
- You have no storefront to send people to, because you work from home or travel to jobs.
- Your work is found through referrals and search, not through a catalog.
- You cannot yet name what a visitor is supposed to do on the site.
That describes a great many home-based businesses, consultants, freelancers and one-van trades across Missouri and Illinois — real businesses serving a real region without a front door to photograph. For that owner, a claimed Google Business Profile and a complete directory listing cover the same ground a five-page brochure site would: who you are, what you do, where you work, how to reach you, and proof from customers.
Say plainly what that is and is not. It is a genuine, findable presence for a business without one, and it costs a fraction of a build. It is not ownership, it is not a substitute for a real website once you have something to sell, and anyone who tells you a listing replaces a website in every case is selling listings.
When you genuinely do need your own site
Build one, and stop deliberating, if any single item here applies:
- You sell products online. A catalog, a cart and a checkout have to live somewhere you control.
- You take bookings or deposits. Scheduling with money attached needs to be yours.
- You are selling to other businesses. A procurement officer will look for a site, and its absence reads as risk whether that is fair or not.
- You are in a field where people research before they call — legal, medical, financial, anything where a stranger is weighing whether to trust you with something that matters.
- You have content worth publishing. If you are answering customer questions in writing, that work should accumulate on property you own.
What to actually budget
If you are opening a business in this metro and want a number to plan against, here is an honest one.
First year, doing it yourself: roughly $200 to $600. That is a platform plan billed annually, with the domain free for the first twelve months, and your own time on the words and the photographs. This is the correct starting point for most new businesses, and it is easy to underestimate how far it goes.
First year, hiring a freelancer: roughly $1,500 to $5,000 all in. Budget the build, plus about $250 to $600 a year in hosting and domain afterwards, plus something for the changes you will want in month four.
First year, hiring an agency: $8,000 and up, plus a retainer. Justify this with revenue, not ambition. If the site is not going to carry transactions or a real content operation, the money buys more elsewhere.
Fold whichever figure you land on into your wider opening costs rather than treating it as separate — it belongs in the same column as registration, licensing and insurance, and it competes with them for the same dollars.
How to hire without getting taken
Whoever you hire, four questions separate the professionals from the rest, and all four are fair to ask before you pay anything.
- Who owns the domain and the hosting account? The answer must be you. If it is not, walk.
- What happens if we part ways? Ask specifically what you keep. Get it in writing.
- Who writes the words? This is where projects stall for months. If the answer is “you send us the copy,” that is fine — but now you know the real timeline.
- What does year two cost? Hosting, maintenance, updates, and the hourly rate for changes. A vague answer here is the most reliable warning sign there is.
Two red flags worth naming: a quote given before anyone has asked what your business does, and a monthly fee with no stated term. The first means you are getting a template. The second means the meter runs until you notice.
And whichever route you choose, do the free things first. Claim your profile, get your name, address and phone identical everywhere they appear, and get listed where people in your area actually look. Those cost nothing and they work whether or not you ever build a site.
Frequently asked questions
Is a website worth it for a small business?
It is worth it when you can name what a visitor should do there — buy, book, apply, or read something only you can tell them. If you cannot name that action yet, a website will not create it, and the money is better spent on being findable. Revisit the question the moment you start selling or scheduling online.
Is $1500 a good price for a website?
For a freelancer building a small custom site with your own words and photos, $1,500 is a fair market price. It is high for a template with your logo dropped in and low for anything with e-commerce or custom functionality. Judge it by who writes the content and who owns the accounts, not by the page count.
How much does it cost to set up a small website?
Doing it yourself on a platform, roughly $200 to $600 for the first year — a plan billed annually, with the domain usually free for twelve months. Hiring a freelancer, roughly $1,500 to $5,000 all in. The setup is rarely the expensive part; year two, when the free domain renews and changes start costing hourly, is where budgets break.
What can I use instead of a website?
A claimed Google Business Profile plus a complete listing on a local directory covers what a small brochure site covers: who you are, what you do, your service area, contact details, photos and reviews. It works well for home-based businesses and service-area trades. It does not work if you need to sell, schedule with deposits, or publish your own content.
What is a fair price for a website?
Fair depends on which of the three products you are buying. Platform subscriptions are $17 to $49 a month billed yearly. Freelance builds are $500 to $8,000. Agency builds start around $5,000. A price is unfair mainly when it is quoted before anyone has asked what your business does, or when year-two costs are left vague.
Do I need an LLC to run a website?
No. Neither Missouri nor any platform requires a business entity before you can register a domain and publish a site. Forming an LLC is a liability and tax decision that stands on its own, separate from your website — and if you are weighing it, look at how the entity forms actually differ rather than at what a website builder tells you.
Not ready to build a site — but need to be findable now? That is the exact gap a complete local listing fills, and it takes minutes rather than months. Your service area, your hours, your photos and your reviews in one place people already search. Listing your business is the cheapest step on this whole page — $357 a year against the $1,500 to $8,000 a build costs, and it is the one you can do this afternoon.
If the budget question is really a marketing question, start with what small business marketing actually costs here. Setting up in general? See licensing and bookkeeping costs. Or browse local pros on St Louis Near Me Directory.
Hiring out the marketing side too? How to choose an SEO company without getting burned — including what you must own before you sign anything.
Wondering when any of it starts paying off? How long local SEO takes, split into the parts that move in days and the parts that take months.
Written by a dedicated team of St. Louis locals who live, work, and play right here in the St. Louis metro. Founder Lane Forman and team are committed to building the region’s most trusted directory by verifying listings and connecting local businesses with loyal customers across Missouri and Illinois.