A business website costs $0 to $15,000 or more. That spread is not a quality gradient. It is a question of who does the work. Build it yourself on a template and you are buying software. Hire it out and you are buying hours. Those are different products with different failure modes, and most first-time owners choose badly because they price the launch and ignore the next three years.
Quick Cost Summary
| Approach | Setup Cost | Ongoing Cost | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| DIY site builder | $0 - $500 | $16 - $99/month | Solo founders, service and brochure sites, launching in a weekend |
| WordPress + freelance developer | $1,000 - $5,000 | $20 - $60/month hosting, plus maintenance | Owners who want control without paying for a custom build |
| Custom development (agency or dev team) | $5,000 - $15,000+ | $50 - $300/month | Complex functionality, e-commerce at scale, or brand requirements a template cannot meet |
Detailed Cost Breakdown
DIY site builder: $0 - $500 to launch
The monthly fee is the real price. Squarespace runs $16/month to $99/month billed annually (Squarespace, 2026). Wix starts at $17/month billed annually (Wix, 2026). Shopify is the outlier, because it is a store rather than a website: Basic is $39/month and Advanced is $399/month (Shopify, 2026).
Setup cost is mostly your own time. Cash leaves your account only for a domain, and sometimes a premium template ($50 - $200) or a few hundred dollars to have someone else do the initial configuration. A service business with five pages and a contact form can genuinely launch for the cost of the domain.
Two things people miss. First, e-commerce plans charge transaction fees on top of your payment processor unless you use the platform's own checkout, so a store doing real volume pays more than the sticker. Second, you do not own the platform. Migrating off a builder later means rebuilding, not exporting.
If a builder is the right call, Squarespace is the default for service businesses that need a site to look credible and do nothing clever.
WordPress plus a freelance developer: $1,000 - $5,000 to launch
This range is arithmetic, not a price list. Freelancers bill hours. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median annual wage for web developers at $90,930 (BLS, May 2024), roughly $44 an hour as an employee. Independent developers quote $75 - $150 an hour because that rate has to cover unbilled time, self-employment tax, software, and the gaps between clients. A straightforward five to ten page site with a custom theme is 20 to 50 hours. Multiply it out and you land at $1,500 to $7,500, which is where the quoted range comes from.
Ongoing, you pay for hosting ($20 - $60/month for managed WordPress), plugin licenses ($0 - $300/year), and someone to apply security updates. That last one is a real cost even when it is unpriced: an unmaintained WordPress install is the single most common way a small business site gets defaced.
Custom development: $5,000 - $15,000 and up
You are paying for software that does not exist yet. Booking systems tied to your calendar, customer portals, inventory that syncs to a warehouse, an e-commerce experience that a template cannot express. Below roughly $5,000 you are not buying custom development, you are buying a template with the serial numbers filed off.
Ongoing runs $50 - $300/month for hosting, monitoring, and the maintenance that any codebase requires. Budget for a retainer or an hourly relationship with whoever built it. Custom software with no maintainer is a liability with a countdown timer.
What Most People Forget
| Item | Typical Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Domain name | $10 - $20/year | Renewal price often exceeds the first-year promo price |
| SSL certificate | $0 | Bundled free by every major host and builder. Do not pay for one. |
| Business email | $6 - $12/user/month | Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. A gmail.com address on your invoices costs you deals. |
| Photography | $200 - $1,500 | Stock licenses at the low end, a half-day shoot at the high end |
| Copywriting | $500 - $3,000 | Only if hired out |
| Maintenance and updates | $50 - $200/month | WordPress and custom builds. Builders include it in the subscription. |
Add these up and a "$0" DIY site is realistically $300 to $500 in year one once you have a domain, business email, and photographs that are not obviously stock.
When to Upgrade From DIY
Three triggers, and none of them is "the site looks dated."
Bookings. When you need appointments written into your actual calendar with deposits attached, builder plugins start to fight you.
Checkout at volume. Platform transaction fees are trivial at $2,000/month in sales and material at $50,000/month. Run the number before you assume you have outgrown the tool.
A system the builder cannot support natively. Membership tiers, a customer portal, an integration with the software that actually runs your business.
When one of those is true, the move to WordPress or custom development usually pays for itself inside a year, because the thing you are buying is not a website. It is the removal of manual work.
How to Start for Less
Launch on a builder. Write the copy yourself, badly, and fix it once you have heard how customers describe what you do. Photograph your own work with a phone in daylight, which beats stock photography of strangers in a stock office. Buy the domain for a year, not ten. Skip the logo designer until you have revenue.
The website is rarely the constraint on a new business. Spend the $4,000 you did not spend here on whatever gets you your first ten customers, then come back and build the thing you now know you need.
Comparing Startup Costs
- How much to save before starting a business - where the website sits against your other launch costs
- Total budget planner - build the full capital plan, not a line item
- Monthly business operating costs - the hosting and subscription costs that recur forever
- Startup costs by industry - what a website costs relative to everything else in your sector
- Cost to start a web design business - the other side of this transaction, if you are the one building sites
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does a business website cost in 2026?
Between $0 and $15,000 or more, depending entirely on who builds it. A DIY site builder costs $0 to $500 to set up and $16 to $99 a month to run. WordPress with a freelance developer runs $1,000 to $5,000 up front. Custom development from an agency starts around $5,000 and climbs past $15,000. Most new service businesses should start on a builder.
Do I need to pay for an SSL certificate?
No. Every major host and site builder now bundles SSL at no cost. If someone quotes you a line item for it, that is a signal about the rest of the quote.
Why do freelance developers charge $75 to $150 an hour?
Because the hourly rate is not a salary. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median annual wage for web developers at $90,930 (BLS, May 2024), which is about $44 an hour as an employee. An independent developer covers self-employment tax, software, unbilled sales and admin time, and the weeks between contracts out of that same rate. The multiple is roughly two, and it is not a markup.
Is Shopify more expensive than Squarespace?
Yes, and it should be. Shopify Basic is $39/month against Squarespace at $16/month (Shopify and Squarespace, 2026). You are buying inventory management, multi-channel selling, and a checkout built for volume. If you sell fewer than a handful of products, you are paying for capability you will not use.
When should I move off a website builder?
When you need bookings written to a real calendar, when platform transaction fees on your sales volume exceed the cost of the migration, or when your business depends on a system the builder cannot support natively. Not because the design feels stale.