It's the first question almost everybody asks me, and it's a fair one. The trouble is that most answers you'll find online are either "it depends" or a sales pitch. I'll try to do better than that.
Here's an honest look at your options, what moves the price up or down, the costs people forget about, and what I charge at Forged Digital. I'm not going to throw out made-up industry averages. Prices are all over the map, and I'd rather explain why.
Your three main options
1. Build it yourself
Website builders like Wix, Squarespace, and GoDaddy let you put a site together yourself for a monthly subscription. It's usually the cheapest way to get something online, and for some businesses it's a fine place to start.
The real cost is your time. You pick a template, write the words, take the photos, figure out how to get found on Google, and keep it all updated. A lot of the DIY sites I come across were built in a weekend and never touched again. You can usually spot them: leftover template text, an old copyright year, or hours that changed two years ago.
2. Hire a freelancer
A freelancer is one person building your site. Prices vary a lot depending on their experience and what you're asking for, and the good ones are worth every penny. The risk is what happens after launch. If your freelancer moves on or stops answering, you can end up with a site nobody knows how to update, or a domain and hosting account you can't get into.
3. Hire an agency
Agencies have a team: designers, developers, sometimes a marketing person or two. They tend to cost the most, and for a bigger company with a big budget, that can make sense. For a small local shop that needs a solid five-page site, it's often more than you need.
What drives the cost
Whoever builds it, these are the things that move the price:
- Number of pages. A simple site with a home page, services, about, and contact is a lot less work than one with a separate page for every service and every town you cover.
- Custom design vs. template. A design built around your business takes more time than dropping your logo onto a stock template.
- Writing and photos. Somebody has to write the words and gather good photos. If that's on the builder, it's part of the price.
- Features. Online booking, quote forms, photo galleries, online ordering, and online stores all add work. E-commerce is its own animal.
- Search setup. Getting the basics right for Google, like page titles, descriptions, and your Google Business Profile, takes time to do properly.
The costs nobody mentions up front
This is where people get burned. The price to build the site is only part of the bill.
- Domain name. Your web address renews every year or every few years. Miss the renewal and you can lose it. I wrote a whole piece on what happens when your business domain expires.
- Hosting. Your site has to live on a server somewhere, and that's a recurring cost.
- SSL certificate. That's the padlock in the browser bar. Without it, browsers warn visitors that your site isn't secure.
- Updates and security. Software needs updating, and somebody needs to keep an eye on things. Sites that get ignored tend to break or get hacked.
- Changes. Your hours change, your prices change, you add a service. Who makes those edits, and what do they charge?
- Email. A professional email address on your own domain is often a separate cost.
When you compare quotes, ask about every one of these. A cheap build with expensive or unclear upkeep isn't really cheap.
What I charge at Forged Digital
I keep my pricing simple and I post it publicly. You can see the full details on my pricing page, but here's the short version.
Starter: $750 setup + $79/month
For shops, trades, salons, and service businesses that need a solid online home. You get a custom design up to 5 pages, built for phones first, with click-to-call and a contact form. It includes a Google Business Profile check-up, basic local search setup, hosting, SSL, security updates, and small text and photo edits each month.
Growth: $1,500 setup + $129/month
For businesses with several services or locations that want more leads from Google. You get everything in Starter, plus up to 10 pages for your services and the areas you cover, an online booking or quote request form, a photo gallery or project showcase, monthly content or photo updates, a simple monthly traffic report, and priority support.
Custom: quoted per project
Online stores, memberships, client portals, and anything that needs custom development. I'll quote it up front, in writing, before any work starts.
What the monthly fee covers
Hosting, your SSL certificate, security and software updates, backups, and small changes. It's month-to-month with no long-term contract, and you can cancel with 30 days' notice. Your domain is registered in your name and stays yours.
So what should you spend?
Here's my honest advice: figure out what the website needs to do for you. For most local businesses, that's simple. It needs to show up when people search, look trustworthy, and make it dead easy to call you. If that's you, you don't need an agency-sized budget. You need something built right and kept up.
If you're not sure what that looks like for your line of work, take a look at the sample home pages I've built for local businesses like HVAC, plumbing, roofing, and restaurants. And if you're wondering whether you need a site at all when you've already got Facebook, I answered that in do I need a website if I already have a Facebook page?
See it before you spend a dime
Every project starts with a free mockup. Tell me about your business and I'll build a sample homepage so you can see exactly what you'd get. No cost and no obligation. And if you're curious who's behind all this, here's why I started Forged Digital.