What Should a Small Business Website Cost?
Quotes for the same one-page site range from nothing to several thousand dollars. Here is what actually drives the number, and what you should expect at each level.
Ask five people what a small business website costs and you will get five answers between nothing and several thousand dollars, for what sounds like the same thing. The spread is real, and it is not mostly about quality. It is about what you are actually buying.
The costs that exist no matter who builds it
A domain name is roughly ten to fifteen dollars a year for a common extension, and you should own it yourself. Hosting for a simple business site is a few dollars a month, and on many modern platforms a small site is included at no extra charge. Those two are unavoidable and they are small. Everything above that is labour or software.
What drives the price up
Custom design from scratch, rather than a well-chosen template. Original copywriting, which is genuinely skilled work. Photography, which is usually the best money you will spend. Anything transactional, so online payments, bookings, stock, or logins. Ongoing maintenance. And the number of pages, though this one matters far less than people assume.
Most small businesses asking this question need one page, not eight. One page that loads quickly on a phone and answers what you do, who for, roughly what it costs, what customers say, and how to reach you, will outperform a sprawling site with thin content on every measure that matters.
Roughly what to expect at each level
Near zero: you do it yourself with a builder or a generator, and you supply the words and photographs. This is a genuinely reasonable outcome for a single-page business site now, and it was not five years ago. Your time is the real cost, and the quality depends almost entirely on the photographs you bring.
A few hundred dollars: a freelancer sets up a template, moves your content in and hands it over. Perfectly sensible if the handover is clean and you can edit it afterwards. Ask that question specifically, because a cheap build you cannot maintain is more expensive than it looks.
One to three thousand: custom design, written copy, and usually some transactional capability. Worth it when the website is a real sales channel rather than a business card, or when you need bookings and payments working properly.
Above that: you are buying strategy, brand work, integrations with the systems you already run, and a team who will still be reachable next year. Real businesses need this. A salon that wants to be findable does not.
The question that matters more than the price
What does it cost to change a price, add a photograph, or update your opening hours six months from now? A site you cannot edit goes stale, and a stale site actively costs you customers who conclude you have closed down. That ongoing figure, in money and in waiting, is the one most quotes leave out and the one you will feel every month.
Whatever you spend, own your domain, see the result on your own phone before the final payment, and make sure you can change the text yourself.