How much does a website cost in 2026? Real prices for a small business

The price of a website depends first on who builds it: you on a builder, a freelancer, a small studio or an agency. Each route has its own upfront price and monthly bill.

A website builder is a hosted service where you pick a template and edit pages in your browser for a monthly fee. Builder prices below are from Wix's pricing guide (updated September 30, 2026), Squarespace and Shopify, billed yearly. Hired-route ranges are from Levitate's February 2026 review.

Each route has a real strength. A good freelancer gives you direct contact with the person doing the work, though the project waits whenever that one person is busy or ill. An agency brings more people and services under one contract. A small studio such as ours puts a team on the work, and our Starter price sits inside Levitate's freelancer range.

Flamcom's three website packages are starting prices, and your written scope sets the final fixed price before work starts.

• Starter, from $2,499: up to 12 pages and 30 days of support.
• Growth, from $5,499: no page cap, with FAQ blocks on every page. A keyword map, a list of the searches your customers make matched to the page that answers each one, sets the page count inside the price.
• Scale, from $9,999: everything in Growth, plus the first 12 articles written and 90 days of SEO work after launch.

Inclusions, payment terms and what each package leaves out are set out in how much a website costs for a small business at Flamcom. Our view: a buyer should know the starting price before getting in touch, which is why we publish ours.

Year one on a DIY builder runs about $200 to $590 for a simple site; a hired build adds a one-off price in the thousands. First-year cost is the build price plus every fee you pay in the first 12 months: plan or hosting, domain, apps and upkeep.

The DIY rows leave out your own hours spent writing, designing and fixing pages. Our starting totals leave out your domain renewal and any SEO retainer. Scale has no total here, because its care plan is priced in its written scope.

In year two, a Wix .com domain renews at $13.35 a year and the builder plan keeps billing. On a Flamcom site, year two is the care plan alone, from $1,800 plus your domain renewal, unless you add SEO.

Six things move website design cost the most: page count, content writing, integrations, e-commerce, custom features and the SEO foundation.

• Pages. Each page needs writing, design and testing. On Growth and Scale the keyword map sets the count inside the package price.
• Content writing. Writing is the slowest part of any site. On a builder it is your job; on our packages we write the copy.
• Integrations. Linking the site to a CRM, booking tool or accounting system adds build and testing time, so we quote each one in writing first.
• E-commerce. Products, checkout, tax and shipping rules add the most work per page, which is why Levitate's e-commerce agency range climbs to $60,000 or more.
• Custom features. Calculators, client portals and dashboards are software, priced by what they have to do. Ours sit under custom development. Built an app yourself first? Read is vibe coding bad?
• SEO foundation. Titles, internal links, structured data (code that tells search engines and AI assistants your business facts) and a page plan built around real searches. Starter gets the basics; Growth and Scale get the full foundation.

Our view: content is the cost owners most often leave out of the budget. A cheap quote where you supply all the text has moved the slowest part of the job onto you.

After launch, a small business website costs $17 to $159 a month on a Wix plan, $50 to $150 a month for freelancer upkeep, or $100 to $1,000 for agency maintenance retainers (Levitate, 2026).

• Domain. A domain is your web address, rented by the year. Wix lists .com renewal at $13.35 a year once the free first year ends.
• Hosting. Hosting is the server space that keeps your site online. A builder plan includes it; a hired build needs a care plan or your own hosting.
• Maintenance. Updates, backups, security fixes and uptime checks. WordPress sites need regular core and plugin updates, while builders handle this for you.
• Plugins and apps. Wix's guide puts paid apps at $3 to $20 or more a month each, and every one adds to the yearly bill.
• SEO. Ranking work after launch is its own monthly cost. Ours is an SEO retainer from $1,499 a month, and our guide to what SEO costs sets out market ranges.

At Flamcom, website maintenance cost is the care plan, from $150 a month (what it covers).

A DIY builder is the right answer when your budget is a few hundred dollars, you are still testing whether people will buy, and you have the time to write the pages yourself.

Builders do some things better than any hired route. The platform patches servers, renews security certificates and keeps the site online, so upkeep is off your list. You can go live within days. Shopify gives a product store its checkout, inventory and payments in one place, which is hard to match at $29 a month.

A builder stops fitting when the site has to win work against competitors in Google and in AI answers. Our view: start on a builder if the business is new, and rebuild once search becomes a main source of customers. When you move, the domain and your written content come with you, so the rebuild starts from what you already have.

Compare website quotes by asking every provider the same questions, in writing, before you sign anything.

1. 01

   Who owns the site, its design, its content and its code, and when does ownership pass to you?

2. 02

   Whose name is the domain registered in?

3. 03

   What does the starting price cover, and what is the fixed price for your scope?

4. 04

   Is there a page cap, and what does each extra page cost?

5. 05

   Who writes the content, and how many rounds of changes are included?

6. 06

   What is left out, such as hosting, domain, apps, plugins, SEO and integrations?

7. 07

   What does the site cost each month after launch, and is there a minimum term?

8. 08

   What is the timeline in writing, and which feedback dates does it depend on?

Our answers for the record. Growth and Scale have no page cap, anything outside the package is quoted before it starts, and every written scope carries a timeline and a fixed price. Ownership is in the FAQ below.

Our view: a quote that cannot answer at least six of these eight questions is not ready to sign. The steps we follow on a website project show where each answer gets fixed in writing.