You asked around about getting a website. One person said you could do it yourself for a few dollars a month. A freelancer quoted a couple of thousand. An agency sent a PDF with a five-figure number and a monthly retainer. Your cousin says AI does it for free now.
All of them can be telling the truth, because they’re not selling the same thing. This article sorts out what each option actually is, what it costs over a few years rather than on the first invoice, and what to ask before paying anyone, including me.
A word on the numbers. Prices for websites vary enormously by region, by what the site has to do, and by who’s doing it. The ranges below are rough and typical, as of October 2026, from what’s commonly advertised and quoted. They are not a survey. Treat them as a sense of scale, not a price list.
Why the quotes are so far apart
When you pay for a website, you’re paying for some mix of four things:
- A tool. Software that hosts the site and lets you edit it.
- Time. Someone’s hours spent designing, writing, building and setting it up.
- Process. Meetings, strategy, revisions, project management, a team.
- Upkeep. Someone keeping it working, patched and current after launch.
A website builder sells you mostly the tool. A freelancer sells mostly time. An agency sells time plus a lot of process. A cheap quote and an expensive one are often both fair prices for different mixes. The mistake is comparing them as if they were the same product.
The costs you pay whichever way you go
Some costs come with every option:
A domain name. Your address, like yourbusiness.com. Typically somewhere around $10 to $20 a year for a .com, as of October 2026, though first-year deals are often cheaper and renewals more expensive. Read the renewal price, not the headline price.
Email at your domain. Optional, but “you@yourbusiness.com” looks more established than a free address. Usually a small monthly fee per person, separate from the website.
Your own time. Every option needs you to supply what only you know: what you do, what you charge, where you work, photos of real work. Whoever builds the site, budget a few hours for this. Plenty of site projects stall waiting for the owner’s words and photos rather than anything technical.
Doing it yourself with a website builder
What it is: A service like Squarespace, Wix, Shopify (for stores) or similar, where you pick a template and fill it in.
Typical cost: Tens of dollars a month, as of October 2026, more for online stores or higher plans. Plans and prices change often, so check the current page and the renewal terms.
What you get: Something live quickly, a visual editor, hosting and security handled for you, and no one to wait on.
What you give up: Your evenings, mostly. The template makes it look finished, but the hard part, what to say and how to arrange it so people call, is still yours to work out. You also pay the monthly fee for as long as the site exists. And most builders don’t let you move the site itself to another host: you can take your words and photos, but the site is rebuilt from scratch if you leave. Builder pages also tend to be heavy, because the platform loads code for features you may not use, and that shows up on slow phone connections.
Good fit if: You enjoy this kind of thing, have the time, and your needs are simple. Plenty of businesses run well on a builder for years.
Hiring a freelancer
What it is: One person who designs and builds your site, often on WordPress or a builder, sometimes with custom code.
Typical cost: Very wide. Often somewhere in the low thousands of dollars for a small business site, as of October 2026, with plenty of quotes below and above that. Rates depend heavily on location and experience.
What you get: A real person who listens to you, a site that fits your business, usually help with the writing, and someone to call.
What you give up: You’re depending on one person. If they get busy, change careers or disappear, your site can be stranded, especially if the accounts are in their name. Ask about upkeep before you start: a WordPress site needs regular updates, and an unmaintained one tends to break or get hacked eventually. Many freelancers charge a monthly fee for that, which is reasonable, but it should be clear up front.
Good fit if: You want a person, you’ve seen work they’ve done that you like, and you’re careful about who owns what.
Hiring an agency
What it is: A company with designers, developers, writers and project managers.
Typical cost: Often five figures for a small business site, as of October 2026, sometimes with an ongoing retainer for updates and marketing.
What you get: A process. Research, strategy, several rounds of design, professional copywriting, testing, and a team that doesn’t vanish if one person leaves.
What you give up: Money, mostly, and some speed. For a site with five pages, a phone number and opening hours, much of what you’re paying for is process the project doesn’t need. Agencies also sometimes build on their own platform or keep accounts in their name, which makes leaving harder.
Good fit if: Your site has real complexity (lots of products, integrations with other systems, several locations, a brand being built from scratch) and the budget to match.
A template plus some help
What it is: A ready-made design, often a WordPress theme or a builder template, set up by someone cheaply. Sometimes a freelancer, sometimes a friend or relative who “does websites.”
Typical cost: Low, often a few hundred dollars or a favor, plus hosting.
What you get: A decent-looking site, fast and cheap.
What you give up: Usually the things you can’t see. Speed (themes are often built to do everything, so they’re heavy), accessibility (many themes have problems a screen reader user will hit right away), and upkeep (the person who set it up may not be around when a plugin breaks in two years). This route works out fine for a lot of people. When it goes wrong, it’s usually because nobody was responsible after launch.
The new route: AI-built sites
What it is: Two quite different things share this label. One is AI features inside website builders, where you describe your business and it generates a first draft. The other is someone using AI coding tools to build a site properly, which is much faster than it was a couple of years ago.
Typical cost: For builder AI features, usually part of the normal monthly plan. For a person building with AI, it depends on the person; the building got cheaper, so prices from people who pass that on have come down.
What you get: Speed. A first draft in minutes rather than weeks.
What you give up, if no one checks it: AI-generated sites tend to be generic. The text sounds like every other business’s, because it was written without knowing anything about yours. And AI will produce something that looks right without checking that it is: that the phone link works, that a screen reader can get through it, that the page loads quickly on a bad connection, that the hours are correct. Those are the parts that matter.
What AI made cheap is the building. It didn’t make knowing what to say, or checking that it works, any cheaper. If you go this way, someone (you or whoever you pay) still has to do those two things.
My own model at davis9001.com is one version of this route. The building is done with AI and checked by a person; you see the site, then choose what to pay, starting at $100; upkeep is an optional $9 a month; and the hosting, domain and every login are in your name, so the site stays up if you stop paying. Its limits are the honest ones for this kind of setup: it’s one person rather than a team, and bigger custom work is quoted separately. It’s one option among the others here, and the questions below apply to it too.
The costs that don’t show up on the first invoice
The first price is rarely the expensive part. Over a few years, these are what add up.
Monthly fees, multiplied. A monthly fee looks small. Multiply it out: $30 a month is $1,800 over five years, and $150 a month is $9,000. Neither is necessarily wrong, but compare options on what they cost over the life of the site, not on the setup fee.
Lock-in. Can you take your site and leave? With some platforms and some agencies, the answer is no: you can leave with your words and photos, but the site stays. That’s fine if you know it going in. It’s a problem if you find out when you want to switch.
Changes priced by the hour. Ask what it costs to change your opening hours, add a page or swap a photo. If every small change is an email, a wait and an invoice, the site will drift out of date because updating it is a hassle.
Maintenance nobody mentioned. Websites that run on software (WordPress especially) need updates. Somebody has to do them, or the site gets slower, breaks, or gets hacked. If no one’s job is to update it, plan on paying to fix it later.
Renewal prices. Domains and hosting often come with a cheap first year and a higher renewal. Check the renewal price before you sign.
Paid add-ons. Booking systems, email marketing, extra storage, premium themes and plugins. Each is reasonable on its own. Together they can be more than the site.
Who owns your domain matters more than anything else on this list
Your domain is your address on the internet. Your email, your Google listing, your printed cards and your truck may all point to it. Whoever controls the account it’s registered in controls all of that.
Small business domains often end up registered in a web designer’s account, usually with good intentions: it was easier for them to set it up that way. It becomes a problem when you part ways, the designer retires, or a renewal reminder goes to an email address nobody checks and the domain expires.
The rule: the domain should be registered in an account in your name, with your email address, that you can log into. Your designer can have access. They shouldn’t be the owner. The same goes for the hosting account and anything else the site depends on.
Ten minutes: find out who owns your domain
Do this today.
- Search your email for your domain name plus “renewal” or “invoice.” That usually tells you which company it’s registered with.
- If you find nothing, ICANN’s lookup tool (lookup.icann.org) will show you the registrar for any domain, even when the owner’s details are hidden.
- Go to that registrar’s site and try to log in with your email. Use “forgot password” if needed.
- If you can log in, check the contact email on file is one you read, and turn on auto-renew.
- If you can’t, because it’s in someone else’s account, ask them now, while things are friendly, to transfer it to an account in your name. Registrars have a standard process for this.
If you only do one thing from this article, do this.
Questions to ask before you pay anyone
Whoever you’re considering, these questions sort out most of what matters. A good provider will answer them plainly and won’t mind being asked.
- Whose name are the domain and hosting accounts in? The answer you want is yours.
- If we stop working together, what can I take with me? The whole site, or only the content?
- What’s the total cost over three years, including monthly fees and renewals?
- What does it cost to make a small change, and how fast does it happen?
- Can I change my hours, prices and photos myself?
- Who keeps the site updated and secure after launch, and what does that cost?
- Does it work with a screen reader and a keyboard? If they don’t know what you mean, that’s an answer. WCAG 2.2 is the standard most people point to, and in the US, courts have applied the ADA to websites.
- How fast does it load on a phone? Ask them to show you Google’s PageSpeed Insights results for a site they’ve built.
- Can I see three sites you’ve built, and call one of those owners?
- What do you need from me, and by when?
Anyone who gets cagey about the first two questions is telling you something important.
So what should you pay?
The plain answer is that it depends on what the site needs to do, and anyone who gives you one number without asking hasn’t understood your business.
Some rough guidance. A simple site for a local business (what you do, where, hours, proof, a way to reach you) shouldn’t need five figures. Online booking, a store, or connections to other software reasonably cost more, because they’re more work. And the cheapest option isn’t cheap if it locks you in, needs a paid fix every few months, or doesn’t bring in calls.
Whatever you choose, the things that matter most cost nothing extra: the domain in your name, accounts you can log into, a site you can update yourself, and a clear answer about what happens if you leave. Get those right and the rest is a matter of budget and taste.