How much does a small business website cost?

A small business website can cost nothing, a few hundred dollars a year, or ten thousand, depending on who builds it. Ours is $100 a page, so a one-page site is $100 and five pages is $500, with local SEO at $50 a page on top. Building it yourself on a site builder costs a monthly fee and your evenings. At the top end you're paying an agency for research, custom design and a project manager, which a company with a fleet can use and a company with one truck can't. The price matters less than three other things: whose name the domain is in, whether you get the files, and what it costs every month after the site is live. This is what each price point buys, what's usually left out of the quote, and what to ask before you pay anyone.

1. 01

   Free

   A Facebook page, a Google Business Profile, or the free tier of a site builder. Free is fine for the listing and the page. The free website tier puts the builder's ads on your page and gives you an address that ends in their name, which is the thing customers notice. Whether a Facebook page is enough on its own is its own guide.

2. 02

   $200 to $500 a year, plus your time

   A site builder on a paid plan with your own domain. You pick a template, you drop in the words and photos, and you own the evenings it takes. It works if you like the work and keep at it. The site most people build this way looks like the template, and a lot of them never get finished. Wix, Squarespace or a designer is the honest comparison.

3. 03

   A designer, one time

   Someone who builds trade sites for a living. Prices run wide, from about $100 a page to a couple of thousand dollars for a small site, so get the page count and what's included in writing. Ours is $100 a page and $50 a page for the local SEO. You send the truck photo, the services and the towns; you get a site that loads fast on a phone, with the number at the top and your name on the domain. This is where a shop with one or two trucks belongs.

4. 04

   $3,000 to $10,000 and up

   An agency project: discovery meetings, a strategy deck, custom design in rounds, a content writer, a project manager, and a timeline in months. A company with fifteen vans and a marketing hire gets value from that. A new LLC paying it is buying process it doesn't need yet.

Two quotes for a website can be for different things, so read what's listed. A site needs a domain, somewhere to live, the words on the page, the photos, a logo, and the Google listing pointing at it. Most quotes include the build and leave the rest to you without saying so. Ask about each one by name.

• The domain: about the cost of a lunch a year, and it has to be registered in your name, not theirs
• Hosting: where the site lives, billed monthly or yearly, sometimes bundled and sometimes not
• The copy: the words on the page, and whether they write them or you do
• Photos: yours, from a phone, on a job; stock photos are what a site uses when it has none
• The logo: a separate job, and priced separately
• The Google Business Profile: the Maps listing, which is where most local searches actually end

The build is the one-time cost. After launch there are three that keep going: the domain renews every year, the hosting bills every month, and somebody has to change the hours before a holiday, swap the photo when the new van arrives, and add the service you started offering in March. On a builder you pay the plan and do the edits yourself. With a designer, ask what an edit costs after launch, because a site nobody can afford to change goes stale in a year.

On our sheet that's Afterburn. $50 a month covers hosting, the domain and two edits a month. $75 a month is the same plus more bandwidth and two Google posts. $100 a month is the $75 plan plus the most bandwidth and replies to your Google reviews. It's month to month, you cancel by email, and if you stop, the site is still yours. Ignition includes the first month.

Because the page count is what changes the work. Each page gets written, laid out and checked on a phone, so each one is $100, and local SEO is $50 a page on top. Send the services, the towns and a photo of the truck and we write the words from that; you approve them before anything goes live.

One page covers a company with one or two trucks: the number, the services, the towns, the photos, the reviews link and a short form. Five pages earn their price when a service is big enough to want its own page and its own photos, or when there's a commercial side that needs its own pitch. A blog nobody will write and a gallery with four photos don't earn a page. The plumbing checklist walks through the call for one trade, and the answer is the same for most.

1. 01

   Whose name is the domain in?

   Yours, and it renews on your card. If the web company registers it in their name, they own your address, and if you part ways the site goes with them. This is the most expensive line in any quote and it's usually missing.

2. 02

   Do I get the files and the source?

   The site as it runs and the source it's built from, plus the logo files if they made one. A site you can't move is a site you're renting. What you should own is a short list.

3. 03

   What happens when I stop paying?

   With a builder, the site goes down when the plan lapses. With a retainer, ask whether the site stays up and stays yours. The answer should be yes to both.

A website is $100 a page, so a one-page site is $100 and a five-page site is $500. Local SEO is $50 a page on top. Ignition, at $375, is the logo, the one-page site with its SEO and the Google Business Profile setup together, with the first month of care included, which is usually the right buy for a company with nothing built yet. The domain is registered in your name and billed to you, and you own the files and the site. The price sheet has every line.

WEBSITES ARE $100 A PAGE ON THE SHEET, SEO $50 A PAGE. IGNITION IS $375 WITH THE LOGO AND THE GOOGLE LISTING. AFTERBURN IS $50–100 A MONTH.

The business name as it's registered, the phone number you answer, the towns you work, the list of services you want calls for, whatever logo you have, and six phone photos of the truck and the work. Say whether you want to write the copy or have us write it. The whole thing runs by email, and you get a price and a date back the same day we read it.