What a small business website costs
Quotes for a website range from nothing to six figures and all of them say “a website”. The difference is not the price, it is what the price contains. Here is the breakdown, and the three places where people most often pay for the same thing twice.
By Webeas
Ask three people to quote you a website and you get numbers that have nothing to do with each other. Zero, five hundred, fifteen thousand. All three are about a website for a five-person company and all three are defensible, because the word “website” says nothing about what is included.
The breakdown below separates what you pay no matter what from what changes with the route you take.
What you pay whichever way you go
The domain costs the equivalent of a few euros a year, more for a .com. It renews every year and it is the one item that should always be in your own name — it is your address, not the address of whoever built the site.
Hosting or a platform. The site has to run somewhere. With a rented platform it is included; with your own setup you pay for it separately — and the price of hosting includes things now taken for granted: the HTTPS certificate, backups, and someone watching whether the server is alive.
Content. The most expensive item nobody invoices. You either write the texts and take the photos yourself, or you pay for them — copywriting and photography are trades of their own. A site without content is not a finished site, it is an empty template with your logo on it.
What changes with the route
A custom build by an agency. Tens of thousands upwards. For that you get a design nobody else has and someone who answers for the result. The catch comes later: every change afterwards is an order, including a change of opening hours. Ask up front about the hourly rate and about who maintains the site when the agency is busy.
WordPress by yourself. WordPress itself is free, hosting costs a few euros a month, the theme is a one-off. The real cost sits elsewhere: updating the core and the plugins, watching security, and the fact that sooner or later something breaks after an update and someone has to fix it. That someone is either you or a maintainer on a monthly fee.
A rented platform. A monthly fee covering hosting, updates, security and the editor. You pay regularly and less, but without surprises. What these services usually charge extra for: a custom domain, removing the maker’s badge, a shop and advanced features. That is exactly where two seemingly similar offers drift apart the most.
Three places where people pay twice
A domain registered by someone else. When the domain sits in a supplier’s account, you pay them for it — and the moment you want to leave, it turns into a negotiation instead of an administrative task. Register it yourself. It takes ten minutes and costs what the middleman charges anyway.
Maintenance nobody mentioned. With a custom build the conversation is usually only about the build. Ask straight away: what will a text change cost in a year, who does the updates, and what happens when the site goes down on a Friday evening.
A feature nobody uses. A booking system nobody opened in a year was paid for in the build and again in the maintenance. Start with what you need this month and add the rest when someone actually reaches for it.
How to work out which is cheaper for you
Take three years, not the first month. Add up the build, the monthly fees, the domain and an estimate of maintenance — with a custom site count on at least a few hours a year even if only for small things. Only that number is worth comparing.
And add the item that is awkward to put in a table: how long it takes you to fix a typo. When the answer is “I email the supplier and maybe next week”, you are paying for it in something other than money.
Our prices are in the pricing, including what is free and what is not. If you are weighing a move against a fresh start, read the WordPress comparison.
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