The four ways to get a business website — and what each really costs
Every business website comes from one of four places. The sticker price is only part of the story; the real cost includes your time, the hosting and tooling bills that follow, and what happens when something needs to change.
1. DIY website builders (Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy)
Typically $15–$50 per month for the platform, plus your evenings and weekends. The software is cheap; the build is on you. Most owners spend dozens of hours getting to “okay,” and the result usually looks like what it is — a template with your name dropped in. Ongoing changes are your job forever.
2. A freelancer
Commonly a few hundred to a few thousand dollars for the build. Quality varies enormously, and the recurring problem is what happens after launch: hosting is left in your lap, and when the freelancer moves on, so does everyone who understood how your site works.
3. A traditional agency
Custom agency builds routinely run from several thousand to tens of thousands of dollars, with hosting, maintenance, and change requests billed separately — often at hourly rates. You get craftsmanship, but every text change can turn into a ticket and an invoice.
4. A turn-key package (the model we build on)
A turn-key website bundles the design, the build, the hosting, the SSL, the lead capture, and the maintenance into one package with one accountable team. You pay for a finished, working presence — not a pile of parts. And with an owner editor included, everyday content changes cost you nothing, because you make them yourself in minutes.
The hidden costs nobody puts on the quote
- Hosting and SSL — someone has to run and secure the site, renew certificates, and keep backups.
- Change requests — the $50/hour “can you update our hours?” emails add up faster than the build cost.
- Broken-site risk — DIY edits on a fragile template can take a page down at the worst moment.
- Your own hours — time spent fighting a website builder is time not spent running the business.
What actually matters when you compare quotes
Ask every provider these four questions: Who hosts it? Who fixes it? What does a content change cost me? And does it actually capture leads — or is it a brochure? A cheap site that never rings your phone is the most expensive option on the list.