How Much Does a Small Business Website Cost in 2026? Four Paths, Priced Honestly
A small business website costs anywhere from $0 a month to several thousand dollars up front. Where you land depends on one choice: who does the work. By the end of this guide you'll know what each of the four common paths really costs, what the sticker price leaves out, and how to pick one based on the hours you actually have.
We sell one of these options, so we'll show our work. Every price below links to the vendor's own page or a published survey, checked in September 2026. Our own prices are in the table too, with the same trade-offs stated.
The short answer
| Path | Up front | Monthly | Who does the work |
|---|---|---|---|
| DIY builder (Wix, Squarespace) | $0 | about $17 to $159 | You build it and keep it up |
| AI builder (Durable, Tilazo and others) | $0 | about $0 to $99 | AI drafts it, you review, you keep it up |
| Done-for-you service (B12 and similar) | often a setup fee, e.g. $1,999 | about $169 to $399 at B12 | Their team builds it, you request changes |
| Freelancer or agency | from a few hundred to $10,000+ | hosting, care plans, SEO retainers | They build it, then it depends on your contract |
Here is where those numbers come from, and what they don't include.
DIY builders: the sticker price vs the real price (your weekends)
DIY builders give you templates and a drag-and-drop editor. You pick a design, write the words, add the photos and publish.
The sticker prices are low and public. Wix lists Light at $17, Core at $29, Business at $39 and Business Elite at $159 a month, billed yearly [VERIFY: US prices from a US IP; our fetch returned a GST-inclusive locale]. Squarespace lists Basic at $19, Core at $29, Plus at $49 and Advanced at $99 a month when you pay for the year, or $25 to $139 if you pay month to month. Both have strong templates, big app stores and good support. For a lot of owners they are a fine choice.
The real price is your time. Nobody publishes how many hours an owner spends on a DIY site, so we won't invent a number. Here's a simple way to price it yourself:
- Guess the hours to build it: picking a template, writing every page, finding photos, fixing how it looks on a phone.
- Guess the hours per month to keep it current: new prices, new services, holiday hours, a broken form.
- Multiply both by what an hour of your time is worth on the job.
If you'd bill a customer $80 an hour and the build takes you 20 hours, that "free" weekend cost $1,600. That math is the number most cost guides leave out.
One more thing to know before you commit: some builders don't let you take the site with you. Wix's own help center says you can't export a Wix site to another host. That isn't a cost today. It becomes one if you ever want to leave. We cover this in more detail in Do you actually own your website?
AI builders: cheap and fast, and what the $22 a month doesn't include
AI builders ask you a few questions about your business and draft a whole site for you to edit. The speed is real. Durable's pricing page promises you can "get online in 30 seconds".
Durable's prices are a good example of this group: a free plan, Launch at $22 a month and Grow at $41 a month when billed yearly ($25 and $49 month to month). The paid plans include hosting, a CRM and bookings. Grow adds a one-on-one onboarding call.
This is also the group Tilazo sits in. Our plans are Free at $0 (it publishes a live site), Build at $49 a month (adds scheduling and a CRM) and Growth at $99 a month (adds an AI concierge, a chat on your site that answers questions, books appointments and captures leads). No setup fee, no contract, cancel anytime. Our AI drafts pages from your own business information, and nothing publishes until you've reviewed it. You own your site and your domain.
What the monthly price usually doesn't include:
- Your review time. An AI draft is a first draft. You still need to check every price, service and claim, because it's your name on it.
- Your update time. Once it's live, keeping it accurate is your job, the same as with a DIY builder.
- Real photos. Stock and AI images fill space. Photos of your crew, your shop and your work do the selling.
Where AI builders differ most is what happens after a visitor lands. Some stop at a nice page and a contact form. Others, including ours, try to turn the visit into a booked job and a customer record you can follow up with. That difference is worth more than a few dollars a month, so compare what happens to a lead, not just the page.
Done-for-you services: what you're paying for at $169 to $399 a month
A done-for-you service means a team of people builds the site for you and makes changes when you ask. You trade money for hours.
B12 is one of the few that publishes its prices. Its do-it-for-you plans are Professional at $199 a month and Advanced at $399 a month, each with a one-time $1,999 setup fee ($169 and $339 a month if you pay yearly). Professional includes design and copy update requests. Advanced adds SEO support with monthly blog posts sent to you for review. B12 notes these plans are only for US service businesses.
Many other done-for-you providers don't publish prices at all. Townsquare Interactive's pricing page is a quote form. That's not wrong, but it makes comparing hard. Ask any quote-only provider three questions before you sign:
- What's the total for the first year, setup included?
- How long is the contract, and what does it cost to leave early?
- If I cancel, do I keep the site and the domain?
When it's worth it: you have more money than time, you don't want to touch the site at all, and you're happy to pay monthly for someone to be on the hook.
Agencies and freelancers: when $5,000 makes sense
Hiring a person or a studio to design your site is the most flexible option and the most expensive one up front.
The range is wide. On Upwork, the median web designer rate is $21 an hour, and Upwork says a small project can take around 10 hours while a large custom one takes several dozen. Agencies on Clutch charge around $100 to $149 an hour, and most projects reviewed there cost less than $10,000. Clutch's average is much higher, at $38,105. When most projects cost under $10,000 and the average is nearly four times that, a few very large projects are pulling the average up. A local service site is not one of them.
Custom work makes sense when:
- Your brand is the product, like a salon, tattoo studio or photography studio where the look sells the booking.
- You need something unusual that templates can't do.
- You want one person who knows your business and answers the phone.
The catch is what happens after launch. A designer hands you a finished site. Updates are billed extra or covered by a care plan. SEO is often a separate retainer. Ahrefs surveyed 439 SEO providers and found the most common monthly retainer is $501 to $1,000, with agencies averaging $3,209 a month. Ask for all of it in writing before you start.
The hidden line items nobody quotes
Whatever path you pick, these costs show up sooner or later. Some plans include a few of them. Check before you compare prices.
| Line item | What to expect | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Domain name | Registry price for a .com is $10.26 a year, rising to $10.97 on Nov. 1, 2026, plus the registrar's markup | "Free domain" deals that renew at a higher price in year two |
| Business email | Google Workspace Business Starter is $7 per user per month at regular price | Paying for more mailboxes than people |
| Photos | Your phone and a sunny afternoon, or a local photographer | Stock photos of people who don't work for you |
| Words (copy) | Your time, or a writer | Pages that say "quality service" and nothing about your town |
| Updates | Your time, a care plan, or per-change fees | A $50 fee to change your hours |
| SEO | Built-in basics, or a monthly retainer | Anyone who guarantees you'll be #1 on Google |
| Booking and follow-up | Built in on some plans, a separate app on others | Paying for a site and a booking tool and a CRM that don't talk to each other |
The last row matters more than it looks. A website that gets visits but loses the lead is the most expensive kind. If the plan you're looking at doesn't book appointments or keep a record of who asked, add the price of the tools that will.
For the basics a site should cover to get found locally, our local SEO checklist walks through each one.
How to choose by hours you have, not the budget you imagine
Most owners start with a budget. Start with your hours instead. Be honest about how much time you'll give the website every month once the excitement wears off.
About one hour a month or less, and you'd rather not touch it at all. Look at a done-for-you service or a freelancer with a care plan. Budget for the setup fee and the monthly cost, and get the cancellation terms in writing.
A few hours to set it up, then an hour or two a month. An AI builder fits. The draft saves you the blank page, and you stay in control of what it says. Compare plans on what they do with a lead (booking, follow-up, a customer list), not just on how the homepage looks.
You enjoy the design part and have weekends to spare. A DIY builder gives you the most control for the least money. Pick one you can leave if you need to.
Your look is what customers are buying. Hire a designer. Spend the money on the design, and keep the ongoing costs under control with a clear care plan.
Two checks apply to every path:
- Can you leave with your site and your domain? Platforms do close. Hocoos, an AI website builder, shut down on April 23, 2026 and gave customers 30 days to download a static copy. Forms and booking did not come with it.
- What happens to a lead after the page loads? A pretty site that doesn't answer, book or follow up is a brochure. That can be fine. Just know what you're paying for.
If you're weighing the options side by side, our comparison of AI website builders, web designers and done-for-you services goes deeper on the hours question.
Before you spend anything, see what your current site scores. The demo is free and takes about a minute: enter your website and you'll get a graded report plus a demo site built from your own business information.
Frequently asked questions
Most small businesses can get a solid site for $0 to $99 a month with a DIY or AI builder, plus a domain and email. Done-for-you services like B12 run $169 to $399 a month plus a $1,999 setup fee. Custom design from a freelancer or agency costs more up front. The right number depends on how many hours you can give it, not only your budget.
It can be, if you know what the $500 covers. Ask who writes the words, who makes changes after launch, what hosting costs each month, and whether you keep the site and domain if you leave. A cheap build with expensive updates, or one you can't take with you, often costs more over two years than a monthly plan.
On a DIY or AI builder, maintenance is mostly your own time, since hosting is in the plan. With a designer, expect a care plan or per-change fees. SEO is often a separate retainer: an Ahrefs survey of 439 SEO providers found the most common retainer is $501 to $1,000 a month, and agencies average $3,209.
You're paying for skilled hours. Agencies on Clutch charge about $100 to $149 an hour, and a custom design, written copy and testing add up. Agencies also cover larger company sites, which pull the averages up. Most projects reviewed on Clutch still cost under $10,000. For a local service business, a builder or a freelancer is often enough.