Updated August 29, 2026 · Lukáš Březina

How much does a small business website cost in 2026?

Short answer: between about $100 and $30,000 — and the number depends almost entirely on who does the work. A do-it-yourself builder runs roughly $120–$360 a year. A freelancer usually quotes $1,500–$8,000 once. An agency starts around $5,000 and climbs. Here's the whole picture, with the fees that don't show up in the headline price.

What each route costs

1. DIY builders — you rent the tool and do the work

2. WebSmoothly — $99 a year, and we do the building

See what your website would look like

3. Doing it yourself on WordPress

WordPress itself is free; running it is not. Shared hosting advertises at $2–$7 a month — but that is the introductory rate, and renewal typically lands somewhere between $10 and $30 a month. Add a premium theme, a couple of paid plugins and the domain, and a realistic all-in figure is $300–$800 a year. You also inherit the maintenance: updates, backups, and the fact that unpatched WordPress sites get found and exploited by bots automatically. Worth it if you enjoy this. Expensive in evenings if you don't.

4. Freelancer — a person who builds it for you

For a straightforward small business site — about us, services, pricing, contact — US freelancers commonly quote $1,500 to $8,000, at hourly rates in the $50–$150 range. On top of that you pay for hosting and the domain yourself, and later changes are billed by the hour or the job. Expect two to six weeks. What you're really buying is judgement: someone who tells you your photos are too dark, that your homepage buries the phone number, and who trains you on the result.

5. Agency — the whole package

Agency quotes for a small business site typically run $5,000 to $30,000, often with a monthly retainer after launch. An agency is not just an expensive freelancer — you're paying for a team: brand identity, copywriting, SEO strategy, analytics, and someone accountable for whether the site actually brings in work. That makes sense for a business where the website is a revenue channel. For a two-person landscaping company it's a mismatch; you'd be buying capacity you can't use.

The costs nobody quotes you

The domain, from year two

A .com runs $10–$22 a year depending on the registrar. Nobody can go much below about $10.50, because that's roughly what Verisign and ICANN charge wholesale — and that wholesale fee rises again on November 1, 2026. Registrars that advertise $1 first-year domains make it back on renewal.

Hosting, from year two

The same trick. The $2.99 intro rate becomes $10.99 or more when the term rolls over, and the renewal price is usually the one you'll pay for years.

Plugins and add-ons

Bookings, forms, a decent SEO plugin, an image optimiser — each is $50–$100 a year and each is billed separately. Three of them and you've doubled your hosting bill.

Your own hours

The biggest one, and the only one that never appears on an invoice. If a builder eats fifteen evenings and your time is worth $50 an hour, that's about $750 of your life spent on something you didn't want to do. Worth counting before you compare subscription prices.

Changes after launch

With a freelancer or agency, the quote covers version one. New photos next spring, a price update, a seasonal banner — each is an email and either an invoice or a wait.

How we checked these numbers

Prices were checked in August 2026. Wix figures come from Wix's own plans page. Squarespace and GoDaddy publish their pricing behind JavaScript we couldn't read directly, so those numbers come from independent price trackers that agreed with each other — treat them as close, not exact, and check the renewal rate on the vendor's own checkout before you sign up. Freelancer and agency ranges are directional: they're drawn from several 2026 industry surveys that broadly agree, not from one authoritative dataset. If you find one of these numbers is out of date, email us and we'll fix the page.

---