How much does a business website cost in 2026?

It's the first question almost everyone asks, and the honest answer is "it depends" — but that's useless on its own. So here's what it actually depends on, with real ranges, so you can tell roughly where your project sits before you talk to anyone.

Why there's no single price

A website isn't one product. A five-page site that tells people what you do and gets them to email you is a different job from a booking system, an online store, or a web app with user logins. Asking "how much does a website cost" is a bit like asking "how much does a vehicle cost" — the answer for a bicycle and a delivery truck are both correct and both unhelpful without knowing which one you need.

So the real drivers of cost are: how many pages, how much custom design, whether you need features beyond "show information" (payments, bookings, accounts, dashboards), and who's writing the content.

Rough ranges, honestly

These are ballpark figures for custom work from a small professional team, not DIY builders. Your mileage will vary by market and scope:

• DIY builder (Wix, Squarespace, WordPress yourself): roughly $0–$500 plus your time. Fine for a first placeholder. You trade money for hours and a ceiling on how custom it can get.
• Simple professional site (3–6 pages, custom design, built to convert): often $800–$3,000. This is where most small businesses actually land.
• Larger marketing site with custom features (blog, multi-language, integrations, lead capture, CMS): commonly $3,000–$10,000.
• Web app / e-commerce / booking platform (user accounts, payments, dashboards): $10,000+, and it scales with complexity from there.

If someone quotes you far below these for custom work, ask what you're actually getting — usually it's a template with your logo dropped in, which is a real option but a different product.

One-off cost vs ongoing cost

The build price is only part of it. A website also has running costs people forget to budget for:

• Domain name — roughly $10–$20 a year.
• Hosting — anywhere from a few dollars a month for a simple site to more for an app with a database.
• Maintenance — updates, fixes, small changes, and keeping things secure. Either your time or a support arrangement.

A cheap build with no plan for upkeep usually costs more within a year or two, because small problems pile up until they need a rebuild.

What actually drives the price up

If you want to control cost, these are the levers:

• Custom design vs template. A design built around your brand costs more than adapting a theme — and for some businesses it's worth it, for others it isn't.
• Features beyond information. Every "can it also…" — payments, logins, bookings, a dashboard — adds real development time.
• Content. Words and images don't write themselves. If you supply them, you save money; if the team writes them, that's part of the scope.
• Integrations. Hooking the site up to your CRM, email tools, or payment provider adds work.

How to get a price you can trust

The most useful thing you can do before asking for a quote is write down, in plain language, what the site needs to do — not what it should look like. "People can book a call and pay a deposit" tells a developer far more than "modern and clean." The clearer you are about the job, the tighter and more honest the quote you'll get back.

The way we handle this: a short discovery call, then a fixed scope, timeline and price agreed before any work starts — so the number you hear at the beginning is the number you pay. No hourly surprises, no scope creep you didn't approve.