Quotes for the same site range from nothing to twenty thousand dollars. The spread is not about quality — it is about who is doing the work and who keeps doing it after launch.
The four models
- 1.Do it yourself on a site builder: $20–$40 a month, plus every hour you spend on it instead of running jobs. The site is only as good as the weekend you gave it.
- 2.A freelancer: $2,000–$6,000 up front. Good ones are excellent. The risk is what happens in month seven when they have moved on and you need a page changed.
- 3.A local agency: $5,000–$20,000 up front, then $100–$300 a month for hosting, then $95–$150 an hour for changes. The up-front number is not the number.
- 4.A subscription build-and-run: a flat monthly fee that includes the build, hosting and changes.
The hidden cost is change
Every business we audit has the same story: the site was fine at launch, then the hours changed, then a service was added, then a photo needed swapping — and each one was a quote and a two-week wait, so eventually nobody bothered. Three years later the site advertises a service you stopped offering and lists a technician who left.
Price the changes, not the build. That is where the money and the decay actually are.
What we charge, and why we publish it
$99 a month for a single-location business up to ten pages, $199 a month for multi-location or heavier service-area builds, annual prepay at $990 and $1,990. Those are launch prices against a list of $119 and $239, and whoever signs up at them keeps them. No build fee. Hosting, SSL and unlimited changes included. The plan is assigned by the shape of your business, not negotiated, which means the person who asks for a discount and the person who does not pay the same price.
Questions worth asking anyone you hire
- What does a change cost, and how long does it take?
- Who owns the domain and the content if we part ways?
- What is the mobile PageSpeed score you will deliver, in writing?
- Will there be a page per service and a page per town, or one of each?
