Updated October 8, 2026 · Lukáš Březina
Why a small business website shouldn't cost more than $60 a year
The hard costs of running a small business website (one page or several, with forms and the odd interactive feature) add up to roughly $25 to $35 a year: the domain, hosting, payment fees and the AI that builds and edits it. That is our real bill per customer, shown below. Anything far above about $60 a year for that kind of site pays for something else, like an editor you run yourself, a sales team or a promo price that jumps at renewal.
This is a claim from someone who sells websites for $59 a year, so read it with that in mind. That's why the numbers are here: you can check most of them yourself. Looking for what builders, freelancers and agencies charge? See how much a small business website costs in 2026.
What a small business website actually costs to run
These are our own costs per website, per year, rounded. They are for the kind of site small businesses run with us: one page or several, with services, prices, photos, opening hours, a map and forms for inquiries or bookings. Some go further, like a print shop whose customers preview their T-shirt design right on the site.
That leaves us roughly $25 to $35 a year per site. It pays for my time (answering emails, checking sites, fixing what the AI gets wrong) and for finding new customers. It's a thin margin, and it only works because the expensive part of a website has changed.
$59 a year, all in.
Your .com, hosting and 30 edits. The draft and preview are free, you pay when you go live.
Why websites used to cost more
For twenty years the big cost of a website wasn't the domain or the hosting. It was a person's time. Someone had to write the text, crop the photos, lay out the page and come back every time the opening hours changed. You either paid a designer $1,500 or more, or you paid a builder like Wix or Squarespace about $120 to $360 a year (see our price comparison) and spent your own evenings doing the work.
AI didn't make domains or hosting cheaper. It made the labor cheap. A first version of a small business site now takes minutes of compute, and changing your hours is a sentence and about 30 cents. When the most expensive part of a product drops by that much, the price should follow.
So what are you paying for above $60?
If you pay $200 to $400 a year for a small business site, the money goes to things that aren't the website itself:
- An editor. Builders sell you software to make the site yourself. It's good software, but you're paying for the tool and then doing the work anyway.
- Promo pricing. First-year deals and "free domain" offers are recovered at renewal. The second-year price is the one you'll pay for years.
- Add-ons. Forms, bookings, an SEO app, a second email address. Each is a separate line, and three of them can double the bill.
- Brand and sales. Big builders spend heavily on ads and sponsorships. That's part of every subscription.
None of these are scams. They're just not the cost of a website. If you value the editor, pay for it. If you never open it, you're paying for something you don't use.
When a website should cost more
The $60 ceiling is for a small business website. It's the wrong number when:
- You sell products online. A real store needs inventory, checkout and shipping. Use Shopify or similar and expect $30 a month or more.
- The website is your main source of revenue. Then a designer's or agency's judgement is worth paying for.
- You need customer accounts or logins, or a blog with hundreds of posts.
- You want a person to call. Someone who knows your business and answers the phone costs money, and that's fair.
How to check if you're overpaying
- Look at the renewal price, not the first-year price. That's your real cost.
- Check if the domain is still included after year one.
- Count what you actually use. A few pages and a contact form? You don't need a plan built for a big site and a store.
- Add up the add-ons on your last invoice.
- Ask what changed in the last year. If the answer is "nothing, I haven't touched it", you're paying for an editor you don't use.
Questions people ask
- Isn't this just your price dressed up as advice?
- Partly, yes. We charge $59 because of the math above, and we wrote this because our price looks suspiciously low next to a $240 builder. The costs in the table are the ones we pay. If you can find the same for less, take it.
- Can I get a website for free?
- You can get a free site on a builder's own address (like yourbusiness.wixsite.com), usually with their ads on it. Once you want your own .com, someone has to pay the domain, so the true floor is about $11 a year. More in website without monthly fees.
- Why is $59 enough when others charge $200+?
- Because we don't sell an editor and AI does the building. You describe the business, the site comes back in about 10 minutes, and edits are one sentence. What's left is the domain, hosting, payments and a few dollars of AI.
- Will $59 go up?
- The price stays $59 when you renew. If the .com registry keeps raising its fee, we'll absorb what we can and say so openly if we ever can't.
How we checked these numbers
Domain fees come from the registry's own announced pricing (the .com wholesale price is $10.26 plus a $0.20 ICANN fee until November 1, 2026, then $10.97 plus $0.20). Card fees are the processor's published standard rate. The AI edit costs are measured from our own logs over the two weeks before October 8, 2026. Server and build costs are our own bills, rounded and given as ranges. Builder prices come from our cost comparison, checked in August 2026. If something here is out of date, email hello@websmoothly.com.
If you need a website for your business on your own .com, $59 a year covers the domain, hosting and 30 edits. Previewing it is free.
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