How Much Does It Cost to Build a Website for a Small Business?
Small business website costs in 2026 run from $0 to more than $30,000, and the route decides the price. Do-it-yourself builders charge $17 to $159 a month on yearly billing (Wix, as of October 2026). Professional design runs $1,000 to $30,000+ on average, according to WebFX's 2026 survey of 250 US marketing professionals.
Aibrify, a software company in Los Angeles, builds a small business site with a Google Business Profile for a fixed $390. The first year of hosting is included, then $5 a month. Larger sites run up to about $3,900.
Those numbers hide the real question: who does the work, and who pays every month after launch. A builder is cheap in cash and expensive in evenings; an agency is the reverse. The fixed-price route sits between them and works like our fixed-price automation: a written scope, a price set before work starts, and code you own.
This guide prices every route with figures taken from vendor pricing pages and published surveys, all checked on October 7, 2026. Where a number is ours, we say so.
| Route | Upfront cost | Cost after launch | Your time | Typical timeline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free builder plan | $0 | $0, with the builder's branding and subdomain | High | Days |
| Paid builder plan | $0 | $17 to $159 a month (Wix) or $19 to $99 a month (Squarespace, annual billing) | High | Days to weeks |
| Freelancer | Hourly or per project; the median wage for web developers is $47.85 an hour | Domain about $11 a year, hosting $120 to $264 a year at renewal prices | Medium | Weeks |
| Agency | $1,000 to $30,000+ | Most businesses spend $501 to $5,000 a year | Low | Weeks to months |
| Aibrify, fixed price | $390 to about $3,900 | $5 a month after the first year | Low | 3 days to 5 weeks |
What Do Website Builders Cost in 2026?
A paid builder plan costs $17 to $159 a month at Wix on yearly billing. Squarespace runs $19 to $99 a month and WordPress.com $4 to $45, also billed yearly. The plan is the whole bill, because hosting, templates and an SSL certificate come with it.
Monthly billing costs more: Squarespace's Basic plan is $25 a month paid monthly and $19 a month paid annually (Squarespace pricing, as of October 2026). The table below uses the yearly rate for every builder.
Builder plans side by side
| Builder | Lowest paid plan | Highest standard plan | Notes from the pricing page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wix | $17 a month (Light) | $159 a month (Business Elite) | Yearly subscriptions paid in full; free domain for one year; Wix notes that prices and currency vary by location |
| Squarespace | $19 a month (Basic, annual) or $25 paid monthly | $99 a month (Advanced, annual) or $139 paid monthly | 14-day free trial; one year of free domain registration on annual plans; 2% fee on online store sales on Basic |
| WordPress.com | $4 a month (Personal, yearly) or $9 paid monthly | $45 a month (Commerce, yearly) or $70 paid monthly | Free plan at $0 with no expiration date; Business plan $25 a month yearly or $40 monthly |
| Shopify | $29 a month (Basic, yearly) or $39 paid monthly | $299 a month (Advanced, yearly) or $399 paid monthly | Online card rate 2.9% plus 30 cents on Basic; Plus starts at $2,300 a month; 3-day free trial, then $1 a month for 3 months |
Three things raise the real cost:
- Yearly rates assume 12 months paid up front; monthly billing adds $6 to $100 a month at Squarespace or Shopify.
- Store plans add transaction fees. Squarespace Basic takes 2% of online store sales.
- Shopify Basic charges 2.9% plus 30 cents per online card payment (Shopify pricing, as of October 2026).
- The free domain lasts one year; after that the registrar's renewal price applies.
What does the free plan actually get you?
Wix and WordPress.com each have a $0 plan. Wix's page lists it with "no credit card required," and WordPress.com's free plan has "no expiration date" (WordPress.com pricing, as of October 2026). A free plan puts the builder's branding and subdomain on your site, which is fine for a test and weak for a business card.
The moment you want your own domain name, you are on a paid plan. That is the point where the three-year arithmetic below starts to matter.
The chart shows three-year totals on yearly billing, domain excluded.
| Option | How the total is built | Three-year total |
|---|---|---|
| Aibrify website | $390, first year of hosting included, then 24 months at $5 | $510 |
| WordPress.com Business | 36 months at $25 (yearly billing) | $900 |
| Wix Core | 36 months at $29 (yearly billing) | $1,044 |
| Squarespace Core | 36 months at $29 (annual billing) | $1,044 |
| Shopify Basic | 36 months at $29 (yearly billing) | $1,044 |
| Squarespace Advanced | 36 months at $99 (annual billing) | $3,564 |
| Wix Business Elite | 36 months at $159 (yearly billing) | $5,724 |
The builder totals assume you do all the design, writing and setup yourself. Add your own hours at whatever your time is worth, and the gap widens.
What Does a Freelancer Charge for a Small Business Website?
Freelance quotes vary more than any other route, because they are built from an hourly rate and an estimate of hours. The best public anchor for the rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Web developers and digital designers earned a median $47.85 an hour in 2025, or $99,520 a year (BLS).
A freelancer bills above wage, because the rate has to cover software, taxes, unpaid admin and slow months. Run the arithmetic on your own quote: at the BLS median, a 30-hour build is about $1,435 in labor before any markup. At double the median, the same 30 hours is about $2,870.
Our rule of thumb: a five-page brochure site rarely takes fewer than 20 hours once copy, photos, mobile checks and launch are counted.
Ask four questions before you sign:
- Who owns the domain and the hosting account? Both belong in your name, with the freelancer added as a collaborator.
- Do you get the files or the builder login at the end? Without them, the next person starts over.
- What is the price per change after launch, and how fast is the reply?
- Is the quote fixed, or an estimate that can grow?
What Do Web Design Agencies Charge?
Agency web design costs $1,000 to $30,000+ in 2026 on average, according to WebFX's survey of 250 US marketing professionals. Most businesses in the same survey spend $501 to $5,000 on web design each year. It also notes that larger businesses sometimes spend $100,000 or more.
For a local shop, clinic or trade, the low end of that range is the relevant one. What drives an agency price upward:
- Page count and custom layouts: every unique page design is paid design time.
- Copywriting and photography: agencies either bill for them or leave them to you.
- Integrations: booking, payments, member logins and inventory each add build and test time.
- Retainers: hosting, maintenance and SEO bundles that renew every month.
An agency makes sense when the website is the business, for example an online store with hundreds of products. For a business that needs to be found on Google and get a phone call, most of that spend buys nothing a customer will notice.
What Are the Ongoing Costs: Domain, Hosting, SSL and Maintenance?
After launch, a small business website costs about $11 a year for the domain and $0 for the SSL certificate. Hosting adds $60 to $264 a year, or a builder plan bundles it at $204 to $1,908 a year on Wix's yearly plans.
Those are the only costs that recur on their own. New pages, photo swaps and seasonal menus are work you either do or pay for.
Domain name
A .com domain costs $11.08 a year at Porkbun, with free WHOIS privacy and a free SSL certificate (Porkbun, as of October 2026). The page also states that "the price you see is the price you pay, year after year," so the renewal matches. Cloudflare Registrar says it "does not mark up domain prices at all" and charges what registries and ICANN charge it (Cloudflare Registrar).
Register the domain in your own account, whoever builds the site. It is the one asset that outlives every website you will ever have.
SSL certificate
The padlock in the browser is free: Let's Encrypt, a nonprofit, provides free TLS certificates to more than 700 million websites (Let's Encrypt). Every builder in the table above includes one. A line item for "SSL" on a quote is a question to ask, not a cost to accept.
Hosting
Shared hosting is cheap at signup and pricier at renewal. Bluehost's Starter plan is $3.99 a month on a 36-month term and renews at $9.99 a month (Bluehost pricing, as of October 2026). Its eCommerce Essentials plan is $14.99 a month and renews at $21.99.
That renewal step is where a "$4 a month" website becomes $120 to $264 a year. Aibrify's hosting is included for the first year and then $5 a month. Because you own the code and the accounts, you can also move the site to any host you like.
Maintenance
Maintenance is the loosest word in web pricing: WebFX's survey found most businesses spend $501 to $5,000 a year on web design. That range covers everything from a plan renewal to a redesign. An honest maintenance budget has three lines: domain, hosting, and a fixed price per change.
The chart shows each yearly cost once the site is live, on a log scale.
| Yearly item | Low | High | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| .com domain (Porkbun) | $11.08 | $11.08 | Porkbun .com page |
| WordPress.com plan, yearly billing | $48 (Personal) | $540 (Commerce) | WordPress.com pricing, 12 × monthly rate |
| Aibrify hosting after the first year | $60 | $60 | Aibrify price list, 12 × $5 |
| Shared hosting at renewal (Bluehost) | $120 (Starter) | $264 (eCommerce Essentials) | Bluehost pricing, 12 × renewal rate |
| Wix plan, yearly billing | $204 (Light) | $1,908 (Business Elite) | Wix plans, 12 × monthly rate |
| Squarespace plan, annual billing | $228 (Basic) | $1,188 (Advanced) | Squarespace pricing, 12 × monthly rate |
| Shopify plan, yearly billing | $348 (Basic) | $3,588 (Advanced) | Shopify pricing, 12 × monthly rate |
| Yearly web design spend, most businesses | $501 | $5,000 | WebFX 2026 survey |
What Does a Google Business Profile Add, and What Does It Cost?
The listing itself costs nothing: Google's own page says "creating a Business Profile and listing your business on Google is free" (Google Business Profile). It appears on Google Search and Maps with your hours, photos, reviews and a button to call. For a local business, that is where most first impressions happen.
Most small businesses have neither: BrightLocal surveyed 778 US small and medium business owners and managers in 2025 (BrightLocal SMB Marketing 2025). Only 40% said they have a dedicated website, and only 35% have a Google Business Profile. Cost was holding 36% of them back from investing in marketing channels.
In BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 US adults, 54% of consumers check the business's website after reading positive reviews (Local Consumer Review Survey 2026). Google was the most-used review source at 71%, so the profile gets the click and the website has to earn the call.
Google's ranking guidance is practical (How to improve your local ranking). Businesses "with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results," it says. Reviews count too: "more reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking," and prominence draws on how many websites link to your business.
Our Google Business Profile setup guide walks through the setup step by step. Aibrify's $390 website includes doing it for you.
Rule of thumb: set up the free profile the same week the site goes live. A website nobody can find and a profile that links to nothing are both half a job.
When Is a Bigger or Custom Website Worth It?
A custom website design for a small business earns its price when the site has a job beyond introducing you. That job is taking orders, booking appointments, letting clients log in, or serving two languages. A five-page brochure site does none of those, so pay for function and let the design be clean rather than clever.
Signs you have outgrown the $390 tier:
- Customers want to order online; Shopify's 2.9% plus 30 cents per sale costs less than lost orders.
- Bookings arrive by phone and get lost; a booking page with reminders is a tool, not a page.
- Clients need to see the status of their job, their documents or their account.
- You serve customers in English and Chinese, or English and Spanish, and both versions have to stay in sync.
The next tier is not a bigger brochure but a small application attached to the site. Aibrify's ladder prices a tool with its own page at $300, an application with logins at $1,000, and a multi-role system from $5,000. A website up to about $3,900 covers the biggest brochure and catalog sites; anything with logins is scoped as custom software.
How Do You Keep the Cost Down Without Getting a Bad Site?
The cheapest good website is the one you own outright, with no monthly plan you cannot leave and no file you cannot take. Most expensive mistakes are one of two kinds. Either you pay monthly for something that could have been bought once, or you pay once for something you do not own.
What we tell owners before any quote:
- Register the domain yourself, in your own account, and never let the builder or agency hold it.
- Get a written scope with a fixed price before any work starts, and a page count you actually need.
- Ask where the files live and whether you can move them; a "yes" should come with a demonstration.
- Separate hosting from maintenance in the quote, and put a per-change price on the second.
- Set up the free Google Business Profile the same week, and link it to the site.
- Check the site on your phone before paying the last installment; most of your visitors will see it that way.
Skipping the retainer is the single largest saving. Hosting is $5 to $22 a month in the figures above. Suppose a maintenance plan is $100 a month: it has to justify the other $78 or more every month in changes actually made.
What Does Aibrify Charge for a Small Business Website?
Aibrify's price for a small business website is $390, Google Business Profile included. Hosting is included for the first year and $5 a month after that.
Larger sites run up to about $3,900 and go live in 3 days to 5 weeks by project size. You check the pages on your phone as they come together.
Included at every price:
- A written scope and a fixed price before any work starts; no sales calls, no meetings required.
- Your domain, your hosting account and your code: you own the repository and the accounts from delivery, and hosting with us is optional.
- Anything broken in the delivered scope is fixed free for 90 days.
- After 90 days, changes are quoted at the same fixed prices, or a Care plan covers them.
- Care plans: $49 a month covers 1 hour of changes with a 2-business-day reply; $149 a month covers 4 hours, next business day.
The site can grow into a tool later: a reminder, a form or a report that sends itself is a $100 automation. A booking page or quote sheet with its own page is $300, and a portal with logins is $1,000. Every price is on the pricing page, and the service itself is described on the website design page.
To begin, send a short brief at /start: four questions, no sales call, and a reply within 1 business hour. A text, email or WeChat message works too.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does a small business website cost per month?
On yearly billing, Wix plans run $17 to $159 a month and Squarespace $19 to $99, as of October 2026. A site you own costs about $11 a year in domain fees plus hosting. Hosting is $5 a month with Aibrify or $9.99 to $21.99 a month at Bluehost's renewal prices.
Can I build a small business website for free?
Yes, with limits: Wix and WordPress.com both offer a $0 plan with no credit card required, and WordPress.com's free plan has no expiration date. Free plans put the builder's branding and subdomain on the site, and a custom domain name requires a paid plan. A free Google Business Profile, by contrast, works on its own for a local business.
How much does a domain name cost per year?
Porkbun lists a .com at $11.08 a year as of October 2026, including WHOIS privacy and an SSL certificate. Cloudflare Registrar sells domains at the price registries charge it, with no markup. Wix and Squarespace include the domain for the first year only, so register it in your own account and the business keeps it.
Do I need to pay for an SSL certificate?
No: the nonprofit Let's Encrypt issues free TLS certificates and secures more than 700 million websites. Registrars such as Porkbun and every major website builder include a certificate at no charge. A separate SSL line on a quote is a question to ask the vendor, not a normal cost of running a small business website.
How much does website maintenance cost per year?
Recurring costs are about $11 for the domain and $60 to $264 for hosting, using Aibrify's $5 a month and Bluehost's renewal prices. WebFX surveyed 250 US marketing professionals in 2026 and found most businesses spend $501 to $5,000 a year on web design, redesigns included. Budget the fixed items, then pay for changes as fixed-price jobs.
Is a Google Business Profile free, and do I still need a website?
Google states that creating a Business Profile is free, and the profile appears on Google Search and Maps. A website still matters: in BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 US adults, 54% of consumers check the business's website after reading positive reviews. The profile gets the first look, and the website answers the questions that lead to a call.
How much does custom website design cost for a small business?
WebFX's 2026 pricing survey, based on 250 US marketing professionals, puts web design at $1,000 to $30,000+ on average; the low end covers brochure sites. Aibrify's fixed prices run from $390 for a small business website with a Google Business Profile to about $3,900 for larger sites. Every price is quoted in writing before work starts.
How long does it take to build a small business website?
A builder site can be live in a day if the owner writes the text and supplies photos, but most take evenings over several weeks. Aibrify's sites go live in 3 days to 5 weeks by project size, and agency projects commonly run weeks to months. The owner checks pages on a phone as they come together.
