Over three years, a first small business website costs about $180 to $830 if you build it yourself, $2,900 to $9,100 with a freelancer, $5,400 to $6,100 on a monthly plan and $10,900 to $19,900 with an agency, domain and upkeep included. The median builder plan lists at $15 a month.
Most answers to this question price the build and stop there. A website keeps billing you after launch, so the build price tells you little about what you will have spent by year three.
We read the guides that rank for this question on 3 November 2026. None we read in full adds up the years, and of the 12 publishers on these queries, 10 sell websites, builders, hosting or freelancers, and one more earns commission on them. So this is the bill for your first 36 months, route by route, with the sums showing so you can swap in your own numbers.
What does a small business website cost over three years?
The low column is the cheapest sensible version of each route. The typical column adds things many businesses pay for, such as business email, written words or a care plan.
| Route | Year one | 3 years, low | 3 years, typical |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build it yourself on a builder | $48 to $264 | $184 | $832 |
| Freelancer or small package, paid once | $2,643 to $6,522 | $2,946 | $9,081 |
| Monthly plan, no build invoice | $1,800 to $2,040 | $5,416 | $6,136 |
| Agency, paid once, plus upkeep | $7,952 to $13,952 | $10,872 | $19,872 |
Our arithmetic from published prices, set out in the next table. Straight multiplication at today’s list prices, before tax, and nothing here is spent on winning customers. These are worked examples, not invoices.
The typical freelancer row costs more over three years than the typical monthly plan, because it adds paid words and a care plan on top of the build. That only holds if the two buy the same thing, which they often do not, and we come back to it below.
How is each total worked out?
| Route and version | What we added up | Total |
|---|---|---|
| Builder, low | $4 plan x 36, plus two domain renewals at $20 | $184 |
| Builder, typical | $15 plan x 36, two domain renewals, one email user at $7 x 36 | $832 |
| Freelancer, low | $2,499 build, hosting at $10.99 x 36, domain $51.81. You do every update. | $2,946 |
| Freelancer, typical | $3,750 build, $1,500 words, hosting at $10.99 x 36, care plan at $94 x 36, domain $51.81 | $9,081 |
| Monthly plan, low | $149 x 36, domain $51.81 | $5,416 |
| Monthly plan, typical | $169 x 36, domain $51.81 | $6,136 |
| Agency, low | $5,000 build, $1,500 words, hosting at $25 x 36, care at $95 x 36, domain $51.81 | $10,872 |
| Agency, typical | $8,000 build, $3,000 words, $1,800 hosting, $7,020 care, domain $51.81 | $19,872 |
Domain: .com medians at 17 registrars, $11.81 the first year and $20 to renew. Builder plans usually include year one, so those rows pay two renewals. Build and monthly figures: our published price samples, where $2,499 is the median package and sits at the budget end of the market. $3,750 is the midpoint of the $2,500 to $5,000 band in the designer survey below. $5,000 is a project size that 84% of the mid-size city agencies we sampled would consider, so it is a floor, not a quote. Monthly low is the entry median from 55 trade web plans. Care plan: 100 published plans, entry median $94. Only 34 of those 100 include hosting, so a few rows may count hosting twice. Half of the trade monthly plans also charge a setup fee, which these rows leave out.
How much does it cost to build a website yourself?
The median plan is $15 a month on yearly billing. We read eight builders on their own pricing pages on 3 November 2026 and picked the cheapest plan on each that lets you use your own domain without showing the platform’s ads. That test rules out some of the lowest prices you will see advertised.
| Plan | Billed yearly | Billed monthly | What to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hostinger Premium | $2.49 | Not offered | That price means paying $119.52 up front for 48 months. It then renews at $10.99 a month, 4.41 times as much. |
| WordPress.com Personal | $4 | $9 | Takes 8% of any payments or subscriptions you collect, plus Stripe’s own fee. |
| GoDaddy Airo Starter | $9.99 | $19.99 | Removing the Airo branding is listed as coming soon. |
| Webflow Basic | $15 | $25 | Webflow describes it as for simple sites that do not need a CMS. No domain included. |
| Weebly Professional | $15 | $20 | The $13 plan connects a domain but keeps Square’s ads. This is the first plan that removes them. |
| Wix Light | $17 | Not shown | No payments listed until Core at $29. Wix says its dollar prices vary by location. |
| Squarespace Basic | $19 | $25 | Takes 2% of store sales until Core at $29. Read from a US copy of the page archived on 8 November. |
| Duda Basic | $19 | $25 | Sold to freelancers and agencies building for clients, not to owners. |
Read on each provider’s own pricing page, from outside the US, in the US dollar prices each page displays. Squarespace showed us a regional price, so its row comes from a copy of its US page in the Internet Archive. Shopify is an ecommerce product and is left out. Which builder suits which business is in the best website builder for a small business. Check the live page before you buy, as these change.
Two more things those headline prices hide:
- Billing monthly costs more. On the six plans that show both, it costs 1.32 to 2.25 times the yearly rate, which is $180 to $360 extra over 36 months.
- The free domain lasts a year. Seven of the eight include one for the first year or list it as free, and none of those pricing pages states the renewal price. GoDaddy’s own domain page says $22.99 and Hostinger’s says $19.99.
How many hours does building your own site take?
Nobody has measured it properly. The guides that give a number say anywhere from 20 to 47 hours, and we found none that explains how the number was reached, so treat it as a rough guess.
If you take that range and value your time at $50 an hour, which is only a placeholder for your own rate, it adds $1,000 to $2,350. A builder then costs about $1,184 to $3,182 over three years. It is still usually the cheapest route, but no longer by a wide margin against a low freelancer quote.
Before you price anything, try writing the words for your home page and one service page. Give it a weekend. If they come easily, a builder may be all you need. If they do not, you have found out what you are really shopping for, and it is not software.
And buy the domain yourself, in your own name, before you talk to anyone. It costs about $12. No other purchase in this post protects you as much for so little.
How much do web designers charge?
Anywhere from $15 to over $100 an hour, and the spread comes from who is being counted. Most pages on this question are written for designers setting their own rates, so here it is for the person paying.
| Who is counted | Rate an hour | 40 hours at that rate |
|---|---|---|
| Upwork contracts, worldwide | $15 to $30 | $600 to $1,200 |
| Upwork, United States | $31 to $57 | $1,240 to $2,280 |
| Survey of 208 designers, 60% in the US | $92.75 median | $3,710 |
| 87 US agencies | $100 or more at 89% of them | $4,000 or more |
Forty hours is our assumption for a small custom site. Upwork is a marketplace that sells access to freelancers. The survey is self-reported and recruited from the publisher’s own audience of women web designers, and that publisher coaches designers on pricing, so read it as a direction rather than a market rate. Its median project falls in the $2,500 to $5,000 band.
At 40 hours, the survey’s hourly rate lands inside its own project band, so $2,500 to $5,000 is a reasonable working range for an established US freelancer. A quote far below it is not automatically bad. It usually means a template, fewer hours or someone in a cheaper country, and you should know which.
Government figures do not settle it. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median pay of employed web and digital interface designers at $104,000 a year as of May 2025, but that excludes the self-employed, so it tells you nothing about what a freelancer bills. To test a quote, ask for the hours behind it, along with the other questions worth asking a web designer.
What does a first website need that a redesign does not?
Everything a redesign inherits, you have to create. If you are replacing a site you already have, redesign prices are a different calculation.
| What you need | Typical cost | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Domain name | $11.81 first year, $20 to renew | Register it in your own name, at an account you control. |
| Words for every page | $1,000 to $3,000 if bought | Rarely in a build quote unless you ask. Free if you write them, which is the slow part. |
| Hosting, if not on a builder | $3.99 a month, then $10.99 | Median shared hosting intro and renewal rates. Budget on the second number. What hosting costs has the detail. |
| Email on your domain | $6 to $8 per user a month | Often sold separately from the site. |
| Upkeep | From a median $94 a month | Or do the updates yourself. See what maintenance costs. |
We have no reliable price data for photos or a logo, so neither is in the totals. Real photos taken on your phone will usually serve a small service business better than stock images. What to send your web designer lists everything else you will be asked for, and how many pages you need is the biggest driver of the words bill.
Is it cheaper to pay monthly or pay once?
It depends on whether you would otherwise do the upkeep yourself. Monthly plans overtake a bare one-off build fairly quickly, but take years to overtake one that also pays for words and care.
| Paid once | Up front | Then monthly | $169 costs more from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build only, you do the updates | $2,499 | $10.99 | Month 16 |
| Build, words and a care plan | $5,250 | $104.99 | Month 83 |
Our arithmetic. The domain is left out because it costs the same either way. Assumes the prices hold and that the two options buy the same work.
That last assumption often fails, so compare the inclusions as well as the totals. We set them out side by side in website subscription vs paying once.
What can you take with you if you leave?
The guides we read barely touch this, and it changes the real cost of every route. A site you cannot move has to be paid for twice if you ever switch.
| Route | What you can usually take |
|---|---|
| Builder | Your domain and your words. Wix sites cannot be exported at all, and Squarespace exports some content but not the design. |
| Freelancer or agency | Whatever the contract says. Design and code stay with the maker unless a signed assignment transfers them, and only 9 of the 30 provider terms we read give them to the client. |
| Monthly plan | Often not a working site. 7 of 11 monthly providers’ terms end the site when you cancel, and 2 let you take it. |
Get the answer in writing before you pay anyone. What a web design contract should say has the wording to ask for.
Which route should you choose?
| Your situation | Route that fits | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| A few simple pages, little cash, time to spare | Builder | The renewal price, and the fact you may not be able to move it later |
| A clear brief and $2,500 to $5,000 available | Freelancer or a package | Who holds the logins, and who updates it after launch |
| No lump sum, and you want someone else to run it | Monthly plan | Minimum term, setup fee and what happens when you cancel |
| Many pages, custom features or several locations | Agency | Whether words are included, and the agency’s minimum project size |
You should know we sell the monthly route, and ours is not in that table. Foundation is $1,500 a month, which is $54,000 over 36 months, well above every total on this page. It also includes ongoing content, citation and outreach work, so it is a different purchase from a website plan.
If you are starting out and need five pages and a phone number, buy one of the routes above. Come back when the site is live and you want more customers from it.
Common questions
How much does a simple 5 page website cost?
Providers that publish prices for 5 to 8 pages charge a median of $2,499 paid once, or $169 a month. A builder is about $15 a month if you do the work yourself. Written words usually cost extra, at $1,000 to $3,000 if you buy them.
Can I build a website for free?
Yes, but usually not one a business would want to keep. On the free plans at Weebly and Webflow you cannot use your own domain, and WordPress.com’s free sites show its ads to your visitors. Budget for a paid plan and a domain from the start.
What does a website cost per month once it is built?
On a builder, the plan itself, with a median of $15 billed yearly. On your own hosting, about $11 a month at renewal rates, plus a care plan from a median $94 if you do not want to do updates yourself. Add about $20 a year for the domain either way.
Can ChatGPT build my website?
It can draft pages and words, and that lowers the labor. You still need a domain and somewhere to host the site, and someone has to check that the result is accurate and works. We use AI in our own builds, with a person checking the work.
How much should I budget for my first website?
Pick the route first, then budget for 36 months instead of launch day. That means about $830 for a builder with email, or up to about $9,100 for a freelancer build with written words and a care plan. Keep a little back for the costs that come after launch.
Already have a site and replacing it?
A redesign is priced differently. We read 87 agencies and 24 published packages to show what one costs in 2026.