Plan on $400 to $900 for the first year if you build the site yourself, $3,000 to $7,000 for a freelancer build, and $10,000 or more for an agency. Those are real 2026 numbers for a five to ten page small business site. The totals hide a lot, though, so here is the full line-item breakdown.
The fixed costs: domain, hosting, email #
Every site pays these, no matter who builds it.
- Domain name: $12 to $20 per year. The first year is often $1 to $10 as a teaser. Check the renewal price before you buy, and skip paid privacy protection, most registrars include it free now.
- Hosting: $120 to $400 per year. Shared hosting advertises $3 a month, then renews at $10 to $15. Managed WordPress hosting runs $25 to $60 a month and earns it with automatic backups, staging, and support that answers.
- Business email: $72 to $168 per user per year. Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 both start around $6 a month. Email bundled free with cheap hosting tends to land in spam folders.
- SSL certificate: $0. Let’s Encrypt made this free years ago. Any host still charging for basic SSL is telling you something about the rest of their pricing.
Before you commit to a host, run it against this small business hosting checklist so you know exactly what the renewal invoice will include.
Design: the widest range on the sheet #
Design is where quotes swing from $0 to five figures, and any of the three tiers can be the right call.
- Template or theme: $0 to $80 one time. A good premium WordPress theme or a builder template gets you a clean, mobile-ready layout. You trade uniqueness for speed.
- Semi-custom: $500 to $2,000. A freelancer adapts a theme to your brand, colors, and page structure. This is the sweet spot for most local businesses.
- Full custom: $3,000 to $10,000. Discovery calls, mockups, revision rounds, unique layouts per page. Worth it when the site is your main sales channel, overkill when it is a digital business card.
Add $300 to $1,500 if you need a logo and basic brand assets. Add $100 to $300 per page for professional copywriting, a line almost every first-time buyer forgets.
The build itself #
- DIY on a builder: $200 to $600 per year, all-in. Squarespace and Wix run $16 to $49 a month and include hosting and SSL. Budget 20 to 40 hours of your own time for a first site.
- DIY on WordPress: $150 to $500 in cash, 40 to 60 hours in time. Cheapest on paper, most expensive in weekends. Pick this if you also want to learn the platform, because the skill keeps paying after launch.
- Freelancer: $1,500 to $6,000. US rates sit around $50 to $100 an hour in 2026, and a small site takes 30 to 60 hours including revisions and launch.
- Agency: $8,000 to $25,000. You are paying for strategy, copywriting, project management, and accountability on top of the design work.
Upkeep: the budget line nobody writes down #
The build is a one-time cost. These repeat every year the site exists.
- Plugin and theme licenses: $50 to $300 per year. Form builders, SEO tools, backup plugins. Free versions exist, but the paid tiers usually earn their keep.
- Maintenance: $0, or $600 to $1,800 per year. Updates, backups, and security checks take an hour or two a month if you handle them yourself. A care plan from a freelancer runs $50 to $150 a month.
- Content updates: your time, or $75 to $150 an hour. A site that never changes slides down the search results. Budget something here even if it is just your own Friday afternoons.
- Redesign reserve. Most small business sites get rebuilt every four to five years. Divide your build cost by five and treat it as an annual line.
Three sample budgets #
Lean DIY: about $380 per year #
Domain at $15, Squarespace at $23 a month, one Google Workspace inbox at $7 a month. Nothing else. Fine for a service business that gets work by referral and needs a credible home base online.
Freelancer build: about $4,900 in year one #
Semi-custom design and build at $3,500, managed hosting at $300, licenses at $150, care plan at $900. From year two you drop to roughly $1,350 per year. This is the most common setup that actually holds up.
Agency build: about $14,500 in year one #
A $12,000 build plus a $200 monthly retainer. Justified when the site drives real revenue through leads, bookings, or online sales, because a 10 percent lift pays the invoice.
Match the spend to the job. A referral-driven plumber does not need a $12,000 site, and an online store should not run on a $380 budget. Write out your own line items before you request a single quote, and you will negotiate from the numbers instead of the pitch.
