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How Much Does It Cost to Build a Website for a Small Business
10 min read
In my 20+ years of experience in building websites, things have evolved big time and prices went up… and not just because of inflation.
In todays market, building a simple website for a small business typically costs between $3,000 and $5,000 (view our web design plans for small businesses).
However, if you’re looking for a website that is SEO optimized (this means that it has the technical SEO optimization to rank well on Google), then the cost increases to between $7,500 and $10,000, depending on additional features.
Let’s analyze this more in depth.
Average Cost of Website Design for Small Business
The cost of designing a website can vary significantly based on the complexity (features and requirements) and the level of customization needed.
For a small business, the cost typically falls into two categories: basic template customizations and fully custom designs.
- Template-Based Designs
Using pre-made templates (Jupiter Theme is a great example) and customizing them is the more affordable option, with costs ranging from $1,000 to $3,000.
Templates are ideal for businesses looking for a quick and cost-effective solution, as they offer predefined layouts with features that can be slightly customized with your branding and content.
However, the downside is that YOU need to adapt to these themes, and not the theme adapts to you (which is achieved by a custom design).
- Custom Website Designs
A custom design gives you full control over how your website looks and functions, tailored specifically to your brand. As mentioned before, the design will adapt to your needs in this case.
Of course, this level of personalization comes at a higher cost, usually between $3,000 and $10,000, depending on the complexity and the quality of the professionals or the agency.
A custom design is the best option for businesses that require a unique look, special features, or advanced functionality.
It ensures your website stands out from competitors and, most importantly, that your websites targets your ideal client profile.
In both cases, it’s important to consider that design is more than just appearance, it’s also about user experience (UX), user interface (UI), technical SEO ranking factors, and conversion rate optimization.
Looking for professional web design tailored to your business needs? Explore our web design services for hair salons.
Factors Influencing Website Costs for Small Businesses
As mentioned above, the cost of a website for a small business is between $3,000 to up to $10,000..
Several factors play a crucial role in determining the cost.
Understanding these factors will help you estimate a budget that aligns with your business capabilities.
Here are the main elements that influence website development costs:
- Website Complexity and Key Features
The complexity and key features of your website are one of the two most significant factors affecting cost.
A simple, informative website with basic pages (Home, About, Contact) will be less expensive to develop a site with advanced functionalities such as e-commerce, booking systems, or user-generated content.
It’s obvious: the more features and interactivity you need, so does the time and effort required to develop them.
- Custom Design vs. Templates
As mentioned previously, custom designs are tailored specifically to your brand and ideal client, which requires more development time and resources.
On the other hand, using pre-built templates is a more affordable option, as they come with pre-designed layouts that require only minor adjustments.
While templates are less expensive, a fully custom design allows for more unique branding and functionality, which can be essential for some businesses.
- Content Management System (CMS)
In my 20+ years of experience, back in the old days, all the Content Management Systems were tailor-made. Then appeared Joomla, WordPress, and others… and this made everything much more affordable.
The one that I recommend the most, is WordPress, by far.
Reasons:- Simplicity and speed in installation.
- An endless array of professional templates for all tastes.
- A wide variety of plugins and add-ons to cover all your feature or integration needs.
- Mobile first
Everything you design or copywrite should be made thinking in mobile, not desktop. I can assure you, that 80% of your traffic will be using a mobile, so think EVERYTHING (design, copywriting, campaigns, etc.) mobile first.
- Security and Compliance Requirements
If your website needs to handle sensitive data, such as customer information or payment details, or extra security measures like SSL certificates, encryption, and compliance with regulations (such as GDPR), or CBD products… can increase significantly the development costs.
For sure this is going to depend on your industry or your niche… but they usually have a big impact on costs, as they require specialized professionals.
- Integrations with Third-Party Tools
Many websites require integrations with external tools like CRMs, marketing automation platforms, social media feeds, payment gateways, and so much more.
These integrations add to the complexity of the website and require additional development time, resulting in higher costs.
The more integrations needed, the higher the potential expense.
- Design Complexity
Design complexity plays a significant role in determining the cost of a website.
The more complex the design, the more time, resources, and expertise are required, which drives up the overall cost, obviously.
Here are the key factors that contribute to increased costs due to design complexity:- Custom visual elements.
- Brand-specific customization or needs.
- Special UX needs.
- Custom animations and interactions.
- E-commerce Functionality
As I explained above, back in he old days, all the ecommerces were custom made. Usually took between 6 to 8 months to build up an online store and launching it. It was super slow, but now we have a lot of affordable ecommerce softwares with themes, that make this so much easier. You can now launch an online store in days…
From all the software you can find in the market, I always recommend Shopify: by far, the best.
Or, if you can’t afford it, then go with WordPress and a Plugin called Woocommerce.
- Custom Features
This is a factor that will increase your costs big time. By custom features I mean: having a login for your visitors, with a custom dashboard for example; or having a custom payment form to hire your services, etc.
Everything you need, that is not built up in the software I mentioned (WordPress and Shopify) or their plugins or addons: will increase your costs, for sure.
Cost Comparison: DIY vs. Hiring a Professional
When building a website for your small business, one of the key decisions you’ll face is whether to create it yourself (DIY) using website builders, or hire a professional web developer or a web design agency.
Each option comes with its own set of pros, cons, and, most importantly, costs.
Here you have a visual comparison to clarify this:
| Do it yourself | Hiring a professional or web design agency | |
| Platform | Website Builders Website builders like Wix, Squarespace, and WordPress.com offer small businesses the ability to create a website without requiring extensive technical knowledge. These platforms are known for their ease of use, offering drag-and-drop functionality, pre-built templates, and basic features that can help you launch a site quickly and affordably | Hiring a professional web developer or agency brings a higher level of expertise, allowing for a fully customized, professional-grade website. While the upfront cost is higher, it can be a more strategic investment for businesses that need advanced functionality, custom design, or scalability for future growth |
| Cost | DIY website builders are usually the cheapest option, with monthly subscription fees ranging from $10 to $50, depending on the platform and the features you choose. Additional costs may include purchasing a domain name (around $10 to $20 annually) and any premium plugins or themes you want to integrate. | The cost of hiring a professional can range from $3,000 to $10,000 or more, depending on the complexity of your site, the experience of the developer, and the features you need. For a custom design, more advanced functionality, or ongoing support, these costs can increase |
| Design and Customization | While DIY platforms offer pre-designed templates that can be customized with your branding and content, they are limited in terms of design flexibility. Customization options are generally more constrained, so while you may get a professional-looking website, it might lack the uniqueness that comes with a fully custom design. | Unlike DIY platforms, professional developers can create a fully customized website that aligns perfectly with your brand’s unique identity and goals. Custom designs allow for more flexibility in terms of layout, user experience (UX), and interactivity, which can be especially important for businesses looking to stand out in competitive markets |
| Time Investment | Though DIY builders are user-friendly, they still require time and effort to set up, especially if you’re new to web design. You’ll need to dedicate hours to learning the platform, customizing the site, and adding content, which can take you away from other business responsibilities | Hiring a professional can save you time, as they handle everything from design and development to testing and launching the site. You’ll be able to focus on running your business while the developer takes care of the technical details |
| Functionality | For simple websites, a DIY solution may be sufficient. However, if your business requires advanced functionality—such as e-commerce, membership sites, or integration with third-party systems—these builders can become limiting. Many advanced features require paid add-ons or more technical customization, which may stretch the DIY option beyond its original low-cost appeal | Professional developers can build highly functional websites that go beyond the limitations of DIY platforms. Whether you need a robust e-commerce system, complex integrations, or custom-built features, professionals can create a site tailored to your exact specifications. This level of functionality is especially important for businesses with unique needs or plans for future growth |
| Ongoing Maintenance | With a DIY website, you’re responsible for ongoing maintenance, updates, and troubleshooting. While most platforms offer support, it can be time-consuming to manage everything yourself, especially if technical issues arise | Most professionals or agencies offer ongoing maintenance and support packages. While this adds to the overall cost, it can be highly beneficial, as you’ll have peace of mind knowing that your website is regularly updated and any issues are quickly addressed |
| Total DIY Cost Estimate | Typically, $200 to $1,000 annually, including hosting, premium plugins, and any additional features you may need | $3,000 to $10,000 upfront, plus potential ongoing maintenance fees ranging from $500 to $2,000 annually, depending on the complexity of the website and support requirements |
Key Considerations When Choosing
- Budget
If you’re working with a tight budget and need a simple website, DIY platforms may be the better option. However, if you can afford a higher initial investment, hiring a professional offers a more customized solution with advanced functionality.
- Time vs. Money
DIY websites save money but require a significant time investment. If your time is better spent on other aspects of your business, hiring a professional can save you the hassle of building and maintaining the site yourself.
- Scalability
If your business plans to grow and your website will need to scale in terms of functionality, traffic, or content, hiring a professional is a better long-term investment. Custom-built sites are designed with scalability in mind, allowing you to add features and integrations as your business evolves.
- Unique Needs
If your website requires features beyond what a DIY builder can offer (e.g., custom e-commerce solutions, memberships, advanced SEO, etc.), a professional developer is essential for ensuring your website meets these needs.
Let’s answer the following key questions:
What is best: DIY or hiring a web design agency for small businesses?
Hiring a web design agency is the best choice if you are serious about your business and don’t have knowledge or experience building websites.
While DIY platforms are cheaper, an agency provides expert design, advanced functionality, and long-term support, ensuring your website stands out for your ideal clients, scales with your business, and ranks better on search engines.
But not ALL web design agencies, but one dedicated to small businesses.
What is best: hiring a freelancer or a web design agency for small businesses
If your business is profitable, hiring a web design agency is the best choice.
Agencies offer comprehensive expertise, custom solutions, and ongoing support to build a high-quality website that drives growth and reflects your brand.
However, if you’re losing money and need a more budget-friendly option, going with a freelancer can still get you a functional website at a lower cost. The key is to match your choice with your financial situation and long-term goals.
Web Hosting Cost for Small Business Website
Here you have the different types of hosting available in the market:
| Hosting Type | Shared Hosting | VPS Hosting | Dedicated Hosting | Cloud Hosting | Managed Hosting |
| Description | Affordable, beginner-friendly. Your site shares server space with many others. | More control and better performance. Dedicated portion of resources on a shared server. | Complete control and performance with your own server, but expensive. | Reliable and scalable. Spreads your site across multiple servers to handle traffic spikes. | Handles all technical maintenance like updates, security, and backups for you. |
| Estimated Pricing (Per Month) | $3 – $10 | $20 – $60 | $80 – $300+ | $10 – $50+ | $20 – $100+ |
Based on this, let’s answer a few questions:
Which one is best for your business?
The best is to start using Shared hosting, and growth along with your traffic.
The more traffic you receive, the more resources you’ll need.
What is the best hosting for your small business today?
The best hosting, with the best support for you and your agency, is Siteground.
They charge $2.99 per month.
Small Business Website Maintenance Cost
Maintaining a website for a small business website, it can cost from $50 to $2,000, depending if it’s a minimum security maintenance, or if it involves marketing services like SEO, performance monitoring or other.
First of all: why it’s important to keep your website updated?
Keeping your website updated is crucial for several reasons:
- Security
Regular updates help protect your website from vulnerabilities, such as malware and hacking attempts.
Outdated software, plugins, or themes can create security holes that put your business at risk, mainly in popular open-source software such as WordPress.
- Performance
Website updates can improve speed and functionality. As technology evolves, updates ensure that your website performs optimally across different devices and browsers.
- SEO Benefits
Regularly updating your content, adding new features, and optimizing for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) will help your site rank higher in search engine results.
Search engines prioritize websites that are regularly maintained and offer fresh, relevant content.
- User Experience
Keeping the design and functionality of your website up to date ensures a smooth and enjoyable experience for visitors.
Updating content, fixing broken links, and ensuring mobile responsiveness are all part of regular maintenance that keeps your audience engaged.
Ongoing Maintenance Fees for a small business website
Website maintenance involves a variety of tasks that come with associated costs, depending on the complexity of the site and the level of support required.
You can take a look at our web maintenance service for small businesses.
Here’s an overview of common maintenance services and fees for small business websites:
- Basic Updates (mandatory)
For small websites, basic maintenance such as plugin updates, theme updates, and regular backups can cost between $50 to $100 per month.
These tasks are essential to ensure the site remains secure and functions properly, and you must have monthly, or quarter support at least.
- Content Updates:
If you need regular content updates, such as adding blog posts, updating product listings, or creating new pages, this can add to your monthly costs.
Freelancers or agencies typically charge $25 to $100 per hour, depending on the complexity of the changes, but you can also create a fixed fee for X amount of blog posts or content to update per month.
- Hosting and Security
Ongoing hosting and security costs can range from $10 to $50 per month, depending on the hosting provider.
- Performance Monitoring
Regular monitoring of site performance, uptime, and speed may require additional tools or services, costing anywhere from $100 to $250 per month.
This ensures that your website runs smoothly and identifies potential issues before they become major problems.
- Technical Support
For businesses that need technical support or more in-depth fixes, agencies and developers may offer maintenance plans ranging from $500 to $2,000 per month, which can include more advanced services like troubleshooting, security audits, or even redesigns.
Additional Features and Their Costs
When building a small business website, the base cost covers essential elements such as design, development, and hosting.
However, depending on the needs of your business, you may require additional features to enhance your website’s functionality, your ideal client needs, and/or complex integrations.
These added elements come with their own costs, which vary based on complexity and customization.
Here’s an overview of some of the most common additional features and their associated costs.
| What is it? | Cost | Ongoing fees | |
| E-commerce Functionality | Adding an online store to your website to sell products or services. This includes features like product listings, shopping carts, and payment gateways. | Implementing an e-commerce software typically adds $3,000 to $12,000 to your website, depending on the number of products, payment integration, and the complexity of features like inventory management, shipping options, and sales tracking. | If you choose to use Shopify, then you can start from $19 per month Payment. On the other hand, if you choose Woocommerce, then the ongoing cost if going to be the one for the payment processor. Por example, Stripe charges transaction fees: 2.9% + 30¢ per domestic order… |
| Search Engine Optimization (SEO) | SEO ensures that your website ranks higher in search engine results, making it easier for ideal clients to find you online. Usually, is the channel with the lower Customer Acquisition Cost. | Basic on-site SEO implementation can range from $2,500 to $7,500 upfront, depending on the size of your website. | Ongoing SEO optimization and keyword research, can cost between $1,500 to $6,000 per month. |
| Email Marketing Integration | Integrating email marketing tools like Mailchimp or Klaviyo Contact allows you to collect customer emails, create newsletters, and run marketing campaigns directly to your audience. | Basic email marketing integration can cost $250 to $1,000 upfront. | However, ongoing service fees depend on the size of your email list, flows and email campaigns, with prices starting around $1,000 to $6,000 per month. |
| Custom Development Features | Custom features like booking systems, membership areas, customer portals, or custom forms can make your website more interactive and user-friendly | Depending on the complexity, custom development features can cost $500 to $10,000 or more. A basic booking system or custom form might be on the lower end, while complex systems, such as membership portals with recurring payments, could drive costs up significantly. | Usually, you can include the maintenance cost of this custom developments on your maintenance fee. |
| Multilingual Website | A multilingual website allows you to reach customers in different regions by offering content in multiple languages. | Adding a second language to a simple website can cost between $2,000 and $4,000, while complex multilingual websites can cost up to $8,000 or more, depending on the number of languages and the complexity of content translation. |
How to Budget for a Small Business Website
Usually, money is tight for small businesses.
So, you MUST allocate your budget wisely.
Here’s a guide to help you make this happen:
1. Determine Your Website’s Purpose and Goals
The first step in budgeting for a website is to clearly define its purpose and goals.
Ask yourself:
- What do I need visitors to do on my website?
- What special features do I need for that?
- Will I need advanced features like booking systems, membership portals, or custom forms?
- How important is the website for customer acquisition, marketing, and brand building?
The answers to these questions will influence how much you need to spend.
2. Understand the Core Costs
To create a comprehensive budget, you need to understand the core components involved in website development.
The main areas to consider are:
- Design and Development:
If you are like many small businesses owners, don’t jump into DIY.
Just hire a web design agency, or a freelancer.
Check out our Cost Comparison: DIY vs. Hiring a Professional section in which we explain the costs.
ASk, for a t least, 3 quotes from different freelancers or web design agencies. - Web Hosting
As I mentioned in the previous section, start with Sitergound, which is: $2.99 per month. - Domain Name
A domain typically costs $10 to $20 per year, depending on the provider.
In Siteground, you can get it for free. - Ongoing Maintenance
Include this in the quotes you ask.
3. Prioritize Essential Features
When budgeting, it’s important to focus on the features that will provide the most value for your business.
For example, if you run an e-commerce business, features like a secure payment gateway and product catalog are non-negotiable.
For a service business, booking systems and lead capture forms might be essential.
By prioritizing key features, you can allocate your budget more efficiently and avoid unnecessary extras.
The question is: what do you need in order for visitors to achieve what you want them to do on your website?
Do they need to fill out a form? Then, a form builder is mandatory.
Do they need to purchase products? An e-commerce platform, such as Shopify, is mandatory.
Just focus on what you need your visitors to do on the website, and that’s it.
4. Include Ongoing Marketing and SEO Costs
A well-built website is only the beginning.
To ensure your website generates traffic and leads, you’ll need to invest in ongoing marketing efforts, including SEO, content creation, social media marketing and paid ads.
This is especially important if your business depends on organic traffic to attract customers.
- SEO:
Basic SEO services can cost $300 to $1,500 initially, with ongoing monthly costs of $500 to $3,000. - Content Marketing:
Regular blog posts, product descriptions, and other updates may require a content creator or freelance writer. Budget $75 to $250 per post depending on the complexity and length. - Social Media and Email Marketing:
Tools like Mailchimp or Buffer may add $10 to $100 per month to your budget. - Paid Advertising (PPC Ads)
Costs can vary significantly based on competition and your industry.
Expect to budget $500 to $5,000 per month for a small business. Google Ads or Facebook Ads often start with a minimum spend of $1 to $2 per click, but more competitive keywords or industries can drive costs much higher.
The most important metric for this is the maximum Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), which represents the maximum amount you can pay for acquiring a new customer.
5. Set Aside a Contingency Fund
It’s common for unexpected expenses to arise during the development process, such as the need for additional plugins, unforeseen technical issues, or mid-project changes.
Set aside 10% to 15% of your total budget as a contingency fund to cover these costs.
This will ensure you can handle any surprises without derailing your project or exceeding your financial limits.
Building a website for your small business is a significant investment, but it pays off in terms of online visibility, customer engagement, and long-term growth.
If you have any questions, doubts, or suggestions—or if you think I’ve missed something: feel free to leave a comment or reach out.
Your feedback is always appreciated!
