A small business website in 2026 typically costs about $200 to $600 a year if you build it yourself on a website builder, roughly $1,000 to $6,000 if a freelancer builds a simple site, and $5,000 to $25,000 or more from an agency. On top of that, expect running costs of a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a year for the domain, hosting, email, booking software and upkeep. The builder prices below are verified from each platform's pricing page as of October 2026; the labor ranges are typical US ranges, not quotes.
The build price is the number everyone compares, and it's often the least important one. What a site costs over three or four years depends far more on the subscriptions stacked on top of it, who owns the accounts, and whether the next redesign starts from scratch. This guide breaks down every line, with the hidden costs and the quote red flags we see when we audit other people's sites.
- DIY builders cost about $17 to $49 a month on their entry and mid plans (billed yearly), as of October 2026. Monthly billing costs more.
- Paying someone to build it is mostly paying for planning, writing and setup. Typical ranges are wide because the scope varies.
- Budget for running costs every year: domain, hosting, email per user, booking software, premium plugins and maintenance.
- The expensive surprises are app subscriptions, renewals at full price, redesigns that start over, and lost search traffic from a careless move.
- If a quote puts your domain in the agency's name or builds on a system you can't take with you, keep looking.
Small business website costs at a glance
Use this as a starting budget. The platform and software rows are published prices as of October 2026. The labor rows are typical ranges, not quotes, and your real number depends on scope.
| Cost | One-time | Yearly |
|---|---|---|
| Website builder plan (Wix, Squarespace) | None | About $200 to $600 on entry and mid plans |
| Freelancer build, simple 5 to 10 page site (typical) | $1,000 to $6,000 | None |
| Agency build (typical) | $5,000 to $25,000+ | None |
| Domain name (.com, typical) | None | $10 to $25 |
| Hosting (if not on a builder) | None | $0 to $600+ |
| Business email | None | From $84 per user (Google Workspace Starter) |
| Booking software | None | $0 to $120+ per staff calendar |
| Premium plugins or apps (typical) | None | $50 to $500+ |
| Maintenance and changes (typical) | None | $0 to several thousand |
What website builders cost in 2026: Wix, Squarespace and Shopify
If you build the site yourself, the platform plan is most of the bill. Here's what the three big builders charge, checked on their pricing pages in October 2026. Prices are per month, billed yearly unless noted.
| Platform | Plans and monthly price | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Squarespace | Basic $19, Core $29, Plus $49, Advanced $99 (monthly billing: $25, $39, $65, $139) | Basic charges a 2% fee on store sales. Annual plans include one free year of domain registration |
| Wix | Light about $18, Core about $30, Business about $40, Business Elite about $160 | The free domain voucher is for the first year, on a first-time purchase, and can't be used for renewals |
| Shopify | Basic $29, Grow $79, Advanced $299 (monthly billing: $39, $105, $399) | Online card rates from 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic, plus a 2% fee if you use a third-party payment provider |
Two things change the real number. First, the free domain is only free for year one; after that you pay the renewal. Second, if you sell anything, payment processing takes a percentage of every sale, which on a busy store can cost more than the plan.
DIY is the right answer more often than agencies admit. A one-location service business with a clear offer, decent photos and an owner who can write can launch a good site on Squarespace or Wix for well under $1,000 a year. What you're trading is your time, and the risk that the site looks fine but doesn't bring in calls or bookings.
Freelancer vs agency: what you're actually paying for
For context, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median pay for web developers and digital designers at $47.85 an hour as of May 2025. That's what employees earn. Freelancers and agencies charge more per hour than that because they pay their own overhead, software, insurance and unbilled sales time.
The build itself (putting pages into a template) is the cheap part. The money goes into everything around it:
- Planning: what pages you need, what each should rank for, and how a visitor gets to Book or Call.
- Writing: most small business sites are slowed down by missing copy, not missing code.
- Setup: booking, forms, analytics, conversion tracking, Google Business Profile and email records.
- Moving the old site: keeping URLs, setting redirects and checking nothing broke.
When a freelancer is the better fit
A good freelancer is often the best value for a simple brochure site with a clear scope. The risks are availability (one person, one inbox), and handover if they move on. Make sure every account is in your name from day one.
When an agency is worth it
An agency makes sense when the site is tied to ads, email, booking and search, and you want one team accountable for all of it. You pay more for coordination and continuity. You shouldn't pay more for lock-in.
The running costs nobody puts in the quote
Domain
A .com typically costs $10 to $25 a year, depending on the registrar. Watch for a cheap first year followed by a much higher renewal, and for add-ons sold by default. Put it on auto-renew with a card that won't expire.
Hosting
Builders include hosting in the plan. A static or lightweight site can host for free on a service like Netlify. Managed WordPress hosting typically starts in the $20s to $30s a month for one small site and goes up with traffic and features. Cheap shared hosting exists, but slow, crowded servers cost you in other ways.
Business email is priced per person. Google Workspace starts at $7 per user per month on an annual commitment, and $14 for Business Standard, as of October 2026. Five staff on Starter is $420 a year before anyone opens the website.
Booking software
If customers book online, the booking tool is a separate subscription. Calendly has a free plan, with paid plans from $10 per seat per month billed yearly. Square Appointments has a free plan for solo providers. Salon and med spa systems with payments, memberships and charting cost considerably more, priced per location or per provider.
Premium plugins and apps
WordPress sites often run on a page builder and a few premium plugins. Yoast SEO Premium is $118.80 a year for one site. Elementor Pro's entry plan starts at $60 for the first year and renews at the regular rate. Shopify stores add apps for reviews, upsells, subscriptions and product options, and each one is a monthly fee.
Maintenance
Someone has to update plugins, renew certificates, fix broken links, change prices and swap out expired offers. Either that's your time, or it's a retainer. Typical small-site retainers run from tens to hundreds of dollars a month. Ask what's included and how fast changes happen.
Hidden costs that show up later
- App subscription creep. Every feature added by app is a monthly fee that never ends. Before adding one, ask whether a small bit of custom code would do the job once. We wrote about doing exactly that for a Shopify product builder without a monthly app.
- Renewals at full price. First-year discounts on hosting, domains and plugins are common. Budget for year two.
- Redesign churn. A site built on a proprietary system you can't export gets rebuilt from scratch every time you change vendors. You pay for the same pages twice.
- Lost search traffic from a careless move. When URLs change without redirects, or an old domain is allowed to lapse, rankings built over years disappear. When we moved Elume Medspa's online store to a new address, 70 of its 71 referring domains were still linking to the old address weeks later. Dropping that old domain would have thrown those links away.
- Paying for things that don't work. Most commonly: a booking tool nobody can find, a tracking tag that no longer collects data, or a builder subscription still billing for a site whose domain isn't connected.
What our scan of 769 med spa websites shows about wasted spend
Our own research shows how often website spend doesn't turn into a working site. We loaded 769 med spa homepages across 9 metros in Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee, as a simulated iPhone. Of the 749 that loaded:
| What we found on a phone | Share of sites |
|---|---|
| Homepage over 3 MB | 37.1% |
| Homepage over 6 MB | 10.3% |
| A single image of 1 MB or more | 13.9% |
| No Book button on the first phone screen | 29.8% |
| No visible Book or Schedule button at all | 10.5% |
| No tap-to-call phone link | 22.8% |
| Broken images | 5.7% |
The median homepage weighed 2.3 MB. And 40 of the 769 sites (5.2%) were down, unreachable or erroring, including parked pages, "domain not connected" pages from website builders, and expired builder sites. Whatever those sites cost, they weren't doing their one job. The full method and numbers are in our med spa website research.
From our work: In a hand-checked list of 100 med spa sites from that scan, 5 had lapsed domains and 3 had been hijacked by gambling or spam redirects. One business with more than 200 Google reviews had let its domain lapse. No build budget fixes that; ownership and renewals do.
What drives website cost up or down
| Pushes cost up | Keeps cost down |
|---|---|
| Many unique page layouts | A few well-built templates reused |
| Copy written from scratch by the vendor | You supply accurate copy and real photos |
| Online store, memberships or custom booking logic | Linking to the booking tool you already use |
| Moving a large old site with many URLs | A small site with clean URLs |
| Integrations: CRM, email platform, ads conversion tracking | Standard analytics only |
| Custom features built as plugins or apps | Using what the platform already does |
| Rush timelines and many review rounds | One decision-maker and a clear brief |
Red flags in a website quote
- The agency registers the domain in its own name or account. Your domain should be registered to your business, in an account you log in to. See who owns your website for how to check in five minutes.
- A proprietary builder. If the site runs on the agency's own system, you can't take it with you. Ask: "If we part ways, what exactly do I get, and in what format?"
- No admin login for you. You should have your own administrator account on the site, hosting, analytics and ad accounts.
- Hosting bundled into a long contract with no export at the end.
- No mention of redirects when replacing an existing site.
- "SEO included" with no specifics. Ask which pages target which searches, and what's set up in Search Console.
- Ad accounts in the agency's name. The account history and conversion data belong to your business.
How we price websites
We don't publish a price list, because a five-page site for a new business and a rebuild of a 100-page site with booking, a store and years of search traffic aren't the same job. We start with a free audit of your current site and setup (domain, DNS, hosting, email, booking and tracking), then quote a fixed price for what it actually needs. Whatever the price, you own the domain, the site and every account, and leaving is free. If the honest answer is that a builder plan and a weekend will do, we'll say so. See our website design service for how it works.
Frequently asked questions
Is $500 enough for a small business website?
It's enough for a year of a website builder plan plus a domain if you build the site yourself. It's rarely enough to pay someone else to plan, write and build a site that brings in business, unless it's a single page or a template with your text dropped in.
How much should website maintenance cost per month?
For a small brochure site, typical maintenance runs from nothing (you update a builder site yourself) to a few hundred dollars a month for a managed WordPress site with updates, backups, monitoring and content changes. Ask exactly what's included, how fast changes are made, and whether you can leave without penalty.
Is Wix or Squarespace cheaper than WordPress?
Upfront, usually yes, because hosting, security and updates are in the plan price. Over several years a simple WordPress site on modest hosting can cost less, but someone has to keep it updated. The bigger cost difference is usually the labor, not the platform.
Should I pay for a website monthly or as a one-time fee?
A one-time fee suits a site that rarely changes, as long as you get every login and file at the end. A monthly plan suits businesses that change prices, offers or staff often. Avoid monthly plans where you don't own the domain or can't take the site with you.