How much should a small business website cost in 2026?

A small business website costs between $4 and $40 a month on a builder plan, $25 to $149 an hour when a web design company builds it, or a software subscription from $25 a month that builds and hosts it for you. Those are published prices we read on October 2, 2026, not estimates. The number that matters more is the second one: what the site costs every year after launch, which almost no quote shows you.

What the three routes cost in year one

Every website is one of three purchases. You rent a builder and do the work yourself. You pay a person by the hour or the project. Or you pay for software that builds the site, hosts it and keeps writing for it. Here is what each one costs in its first year, using only prices the vendors publish.

The three rows are not the same product. A builder plan is a template and an editor; the pages, the writing and the updates are your evenings. An agency is a finished site and a bill; the updates are another bill. Software sits in between. The rest of this post is what each number buys.

What a DIY builder really costs

The builder price depends on three things: which plan, which billing term, and whether you count the free plan at all.

Prices from each company’s pricing page on October 2, 2026. The next plan up on each: Squarespace Core at $29 a month yearly or $39 month-to-month, Wix Core at $29.77, WordPress.com Business at $25 yearly or $40 monthly, which is the first WordPress.com plan that lets you install plugins. Wix Business is $39.77.

The free plans exist, and they are not for customers. Wix’s own article on the subject says a free site gets a “non-customizable free domain name, e.g., siteprefix.wixsite.com/siteaddress” and “Wix branding (and sometimes ads) on your site.” WordPress.com’s free plan is the same shape: a WordPress.com subdomain, ads shown to visitors, no plugins. A customer who types your name into Google and lands on a page advertising the builder is forming an opinion of your business, not the builder’s.

What the builder price does not include is the part that takes the time: writing a page for each service, a page for each town you serve, and the photos. On a builder, that is you.

Why agency quotes vary so much

Agency and freelancer prices are hourly rates multiplied by hours, and the two sides of that multiplication both vary.

The rate. Clutch, a directory of agencies with client reviews, publishes rate bands from its listings. In its pricing guide updated September 21, 2026, web design companies shortlisted on Clutch in the US, Canada and Australia charge around $100 to $149 an hour. Companies that build on Wix, WordPress, Squarespace, Webflow or Shopify charge $25 to $49 an hour. The gap is the difference between designing from scratch and setting up a template well.

For scale, the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the 2025 median wage for web developers and digital designers at $47.85 an hour, or $99,520 a year. A billed rate sits above the wage because it carries the agency’s overhead, the unbilled hours and the profit, so $100 an hour for a US agency is not a mark-up on a $48 wage; it is roughly what it costs to employ one.

The hours. A five-page service site built on a template is a different number of hours from a custom design with twenty location pages and a booking integration. Clutch says most web design projects reviewed on its site cost less than $10,000. Its average project is $38,105, and the average is that high because large projects pull it up, which is why the “most are under $10,000” line is the one to plan with. WebFX’s survey of 250 US marketing professionals found most of their companies spend $501 to $5,000 a year on web design.

The recurring costs nobody quotes

The build is a one-time number. These are not.

Two notes on the table. The .com figure is the wholesale fee Verisign charges registrars, reported by Domain Name Wire on April 23, 2026; a registrar adds its margin on top, and some registrars price the first year low and the renewal high, which is why Porkbun advertises that its price “is the price you pay, year after year.” And Vercel’s free Hobby plan is for non-commercial use: its fair-use page says “All commercial usage of the platform requires either a Pro or Enterprise plan,” and advertising a service counts. A business site on your own Vercel account is a Pro site at $20 a month.

The costs with no price tag are the biggest ones. Someone has to change the hours when they change, add the new service, write the page for the new town, and post something when the season turns. On a builder that is your time. With an agency it is their hourly rate. With software it is in the subscription. Whichever you choose, price those changes, because the new service and the new town are only found once they have a page, and that takes time after the page is up.

What the money should buy a local business

A price is only high or low against what you get. For a service business, the site has one job: show up when someone nearby searches for what you do, and get them to call. These are the things the money has to buy, on any route.

1. A page for each service you want calls for. Not a list on one page. How many service pages covers the order to build them in.
2. A page for each area you serve, if you drive to customers. Service area pages explains when they help and when they are filler.
3. Your name, address and phone number written the same way as on your Business Profile, on every page.
4. A site that loads on a phone and a form or a tap-to-call number above the fold.
5. Ownership. The domain registered in your name, and the files in your hands when the contract ends.
6. A way to keep adding pages without paying a designer per page.

If a quote covers all six, compare prices. If it covers two, the cheap one is not cheap. And if you are still asking whether you need a site at all when the Business Profile is free, that post answers it before you spend anything.

Software: the middle route

The third column exists because of item six. A builder gives you the tool and leaves the pages to you. An agency builds the pages and charges to add more. Software for local businesses builds the pages, hosts the site and keeps adding to it on a subscription, and the price question becomes what the subscription includes.

Software fits when you have more services and towns than you want to write pages for. If you need a five-page site that will not change for three years, a builder at $19 a month and a weekend is the honest answer.

How to decide in ten minutes

Answer three questions and the route picks itself.

• Will the site change? A menu, a price list, a new location, a blog. If yes, price the updates, not the launch. If no, the cheapest builder plan is fine.
• Who writes the pages? If you will, a builder. If nobody will, an agency with writing in the quote, or software that writes them. A site with empty service pages costs the same to host as a full one and earns nothing.
• Who owns it at the end? On a builder you can export the words but not the site. With an agency, ask in writing. With software, ask where the files live.

Then do the arithmetic for three years, not one: plan price times 36, plus domain renewals, plus email, plus each change. Put the agency’s build price and its hourly rate for changes in the same column. The lowest three-year number that still buys all six things on the list wins.