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How much does a website cost?
If you’ve typed “how much does a website cost for a small business” into Google tonight, here’s every real number we could find today, pulled straight from each company’s own pricing page — and a couple we honestly couldn’t verify, so we’re not going to guess at them.
The four ways to get a website
Every small business website cost question collapses into one of four paths. Which one is cheapest depends entirely on what your own time is worth and how much you want someone else to be on the hook for when something breaks.
- A do-it-yourself builder You drag the blocks around yourself on Wix, Squarespace or similar. Cheapest ongoing bill, most of your own hours spent.
- A freelancer One person builds it for you, usually for a flat fee. Price depends entirely on who you find and what you ask for.
- An agency A small team builds and often maintains it. Usually the most expensive path, and the widest-ranging in what it includes.
- A subscription service Someone else builds it and keeps it running for a monthly or yearly fee — what Speedy Sites does. More than a builder costs, less than most freelancers or agencies charge.
What a drag-and-drop builder costs
These prices are exactly what each company shows on its own pricing page as of today. Each of them hosts the site for you, so the number below is the whole monthly bill for the website itself — before a domain.
- Wix: a free plan exists, then paid plans shown as $17 a month (Light), $29 (Core), $39 (Business) and $159 a month (Business Elite). Wix’s own plans page states plainly: “Displayed prices are for yearly subscriptions, paid in full at the time of purchase” — so the real first bill is twelve times the monthly figure, and the page was running a first-term sale the day we checked.
- Squarespace: Basic $25/month (or $19/month paid annually), Core $39/month ($29 annually), Plus $65/month ($49 annually), Advanced $139/month ($99 annually). Squarespace’s own pricing page says “Pay annually to save up to 36%.”
- GoDaddy sells a similar website-builder-plus-hosting bundle. GoDaddy’s pricing page would not load for us while we were writing this, so rather than print a number we could not verify, check GoDaddy’s current plans directly before you compare.
- Google Sites doesn’t charge for the site itself — you sign in with a standard Google Account and start building, and there’s no separate Sites plan or price listed anywhere on Google’s own Sites help pages. You do all the writing, the structure and the photos yourself, and the result looks like what it is: a free page, not a business’s website.
What a freelancer or agency costs
This is the honest, unsatisfying part: published freelancer and agency prices vary far too much to responsibly quote a single figure. We looked for a named survey or a published rate card we could cite the way we cited Wix and Squarespace above, and didn’t find one specific enough to stand behind. What we can tell you is the shape of it: a freelancer building a small service-business site typically charges a flat fee somewhere from a few hundred dollars to several thousand, depending on experience and how much custom work you ask for; an agency usually costs more than a freelancer and often adds an ongoing monthly maintenance fee on top of the build. Ask for a fixed price in writing before you start either way — “it depends” is how a small job turns into a big invoice.
The costs people forget
The sticker price on a plan is rarely the whole bill. Four things catch people out every time:
- Domain renewal. A
.comthrough Porkbun runs $11.08 for the first year and renews at the same $11.08 — but a domain bundled free with a builder plan for “the first year” usually isn’t free the second year. Ask what it renews at before you buy. - The security certificate. Ask whether the plan includes it before you sign up; a site without one shows a browser warning to every visitor.
- Your own hours. A DIY builder is cheap in dollars and expensive in evenings. If you’re the one dragging the blocks around, that time has to come from somewhere.
- Edits after launch. With a freelancer or agency, a small wording change can be a $75 invoice or a two-week wait, depending on who you hired and what they charge for “quick fixes.”
- What happens when you cancel. With a hosted builder the site lives on their servers, so when the plan ends the site does too — only the domain, if you own it outright, is yours to take elsewhere.
What Speedy Sites costs
We build the site first. To see the finished result you add a card, but nothing is charged — the first 90 days are free. After that it’s $99 a month, or $891 a year if you pay yearly, which is twelve months for the price of nine. Cancel any time in the first 90 days and you’re never billed. No contract, no minimum term.
That covers a page for every service and area with all the writing done, tap-to-call on every page, a quote form and a leads inbox, the domain registered for you and renewed, hosting and security kept patched, and the SEO essentials (titles, descriptions, local business markup). Edits you make yourself publish instantly, at no extra charge, for as long as you’re subscribed.
It does not include a business email inbox, someone managing your Google Business Profile, ads or social media, online booking or payment taking, or guaranteed rankings — nobody can honestly promise those. A second website for another business is $49.50 a month. If you ever leave, the domain is transferred to you on request.
Questions people ask
Is a website ever a one-time cost?
Rarely, once you count what keeps it running. A domain renews every year, a security certificate has to stay current, and the software behind the site needs updates — even a site you build yourself in an afternoon carries an ongoing bill, even if it’s a small one.
What’s the cheapest way to get a website online?
A Google Sites page costs nothing beyond a Google Account, which is itself free. But it won’t carry your own domain unless you buy one separately, and it won’t have the service pages or local search markup a service business actually needs. For most service businesses, a paid builder plan or a subscription service is the realistic floor.
Do I have to pay for hosting and a domain separately?
With Wix or Squarespace, hosting is bundled into the plan price — one bill covers both. The domain is sometimes free for the first year and billed separately after that. With Speedy Sites, the domain, hosting and security are all part of the $99 a month and get renewed and kept patched for you.
What does Speedy Sites cost?
$0 today. We build your site first. To view the finished result you add a card, but nothing is charged for the first 90 days. After that it’s $99 a month, or $891 a year if you pay yearly — twelve months for the price of nine. Cancel any time in the first 90 days and you’re never billed.
The website part, handled
We build a page for every service and area, a working quote form, and a phone number that’s tappable on every page — $0 today, the first 90 days free, then $99 a month.
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