What should a small business website cost?

Ask three business owners what a website costs and you'll get three answers that don't overlap. One says free. One says a few hundred dollars. One says they paid a company eight thousand and it still doesn't come up on Google.

All three are telling the truth. They just bought different things.

The three things you pay for

Every website, no matter who builds it, has three costs hiding inside the price.

Building it. Someone has to decide what goes on the page, write the words, lay it out so it works on a phone, and connect it to your domain. That is a one-time cost, and it is where most of the difference between quotes lives.

Keeping it online. A site lives on a server somewhere. The server costs money, the certificate that puts the padlock in the browser has to be renewed, and somebody has to notice when the site goes down. That is a monthly cost, and it lasts as long as the site does.

Changing it. Your hours change. You add a service. A phone number changes. Every one of those is a small edit, and whoever makes it either charges by the hour, charges by the edit, or folds it into a monthly plan.

When a quote looks cheap, one of those three is usually missing. When a quote looks expensive, one of them is usually padded.

The "free" option

The free builders are free until you want your own domain. Then they're $17 to $39 a month, which is reasonable money. The catch isn't the price. The catch is that the building is still on you.

You'll spend a weekend picking a template, another evening fighting the mobile layout, and then it sits half finished because you have a business to run. I've seen a lot of these. They're the ones with "Welcome to our website" still at the top two years later.

The agency option

Agencies build good sites. They also build them for companies with marketing departments, and they price that way. If your quotes come with discovery phases and brand workshops, you're paying for a process a five-page site doesn't need.

What a fair price looks like

For a small business that needs to be found, show what it does, and get the phone to ring, here's what I think is fair. It's also what I charge.

• A simple site, built for you, starting at $500. One time.
• A flat monthly plan to keep it online, backed up, and secure, starting under $30. More if you want me making the edits too.
• No setup fee. No migration fee. No surprise invoices.

The exact numbers live on my pricing page and may move over time, but the shape won't. One fair price to build it, one small flat price to keep it running, and you always know what the next bill is.

The cost that matters

The price of the site isn't the expensive part. The expensive part is the customer who searched for you last Tuesday, found nothing to click, and called the next listing down.

That one is hard to put a number on. It's also the only cost here that compounds.