Short answer: in 2026, a professionally built small business website usually costs somewhere between $100 and $2,500 to build with a lean agency like ours, plus roughly $150 to $700 a year to keep it online, secure and up to date. A custom web app or a full growth system costs more. Most of the real cost isn’t the build fee. It’s the stuff nobody mentions in the first quote.
We’ve built websites for more than 100 businesses and individuals over the past 4+ years at Evolz Digital. Mostly WordPress and other CMS platforms, plus custom PHP/Laravel builds when a project needs it. So instead of giving you another vague “it depends” article, we’re going to show you our actual prices, what real clients paid, and where people tend to waste money.
If you just want the numbers, the table below has them. If you want to avoid paying twice for the same website (it happens more than you’d think), keep reading.
Small Business Website Costs in 2026 at a Glance
Here’s what different types of websites cost when built by our team, based on real projects. Yearly costs assume you’re paying for hosting, domain and basic tools yourself.
| Type of website | Build cost (one-time) | Typical yearly running cost | Good fit for |
| 1-page starter site | $100 | $100 to $250 | New businesses, solo service providers, landing pages |
| 5-page business site | $350 to $500 | $100 to $250 | Local service businesses, consultants, contractors |
| 8 to 10 page site with ecommerce | $750 | $200 to $450 | Small stores, growing service businesses |
| 20+ page custom rebuild | $2,000+ | $500+ | Course platforms, established brands, content-heavy sites |
| Platform migration (e.g. Squarespace to Shopify) | $1,000+ | Around $300+ (Shopify plan) | Businesses that outgrew their DIY builder |
| Custom PHP/Laravel web app | $35/hr, scoped per project | Higher, ongoing developer time | Portals, booking apps, custom tools |
| Website + marketing growth system | $799 to $2,499+/month | Included in the monthly fee | Businesses that want leads, not just a site |
For context, plenty of US agencies quote several thousand dollars for the same 5-page site. Higher prices don’t automatically mean a better website, and lower prices don’t automatically mean a worse one. What matters is what’s included, who owns it, and what it costs you after launch.
What We Actually Charge (No “Contact Us for a Quote” Games)
We publish our prices because we think you deserve to know the ballpark before you get on a call. These are our standard WordPress and CMS website packages:
| Package | Price | Pages | What’s included | Delivery |
| Starter Website | $100 | 1 | Forms, unique design, mobile responsive, SEO setup, unlimited revisions | 3 days |
| Medium-Sized (Best Value) | $350 | 5 | Forms, unique design, mobile responsive, SEO setup, unlimited revisions | 5 days |
| Large Website | $750 | 8 to 10 | Forms, custom design, mobile responsive, SEO setup, ecommerce, unlimited revisions | 14 days |
| Custom PHP/Laravel | $35/hr | Scoped per project | Custom functionality, web apps, portals | Depends on scope |
A few things worth knowing about these numbers:
- We use our own custom-built theme and free plugins. That keeps your yearly costs low because you’re not stuck renewing five premium plugin licenses every year just to keep your site working.
- Unlimited revisions is real. We’d rather go back and forth a few more times than hand over something you don’t love.
- The Medium package is where most small businesses land. Home, About, Services, Contact plus one extra page covers what most local businesses actually need.
Custom Laravel builds are a different animal. If you need a booking portal, a client dashboard or something no CMS can do cleanly, we scope it hour by hour. That’s also why the price range is wide.
The Costs That Show up After the Quote
The build fee is rarely the full bill. These are the extra costs our clients usually run into, and what they typically pay:
| Cost | Typical price | One-time or recurring |
| Domain and hosting | $100 to $150 | Every year |
| Website copywriting | $200 to $500, depending on page length | One-time |
| Premium SEO plugin | Around $100 | Every year |
| Licensed stock images | $20 to $50 | One-time |
| Website maintenance (optional, but read the section below) | $50/month with us | Monthly |
What a 5-Page Website Really Costs in Year One
Let’s take our most popular package and add the extras most businesses end up needing:
- Medium website build: $350
- Domain and hosting: $100 to $150
- Copywriting: $200 to $500
- Premium SEO plugin: $100
- Stock images: $20 to $50
Year one total: roughly $770 to $1,150. Add maintenance and you’re looking at about $1,370 to $1,750.
From year two onward, if nothing else changes, you’re mostly paying for hosting, the SEO plugin and maintenance. That’s somewhere around $200 to $850 a year.
Our advice? Budget for the full first year, not just the build. A $350 website you can’t afford to host, write content for or keep updated is a website that quietly stops working for you.
Real Projects, Real Prices
Price ranges are useful, but they don’t tell you what you actually get for the money. Here are three recent projects, what each client paid, and what changed for them.
| Client | What we did | Build cost | Yearly costs |
| Ferro FPF (steel pipe supplier, Dubai) | Full WordPress rebuild from a Figma wireframe | $500 | About $100 (hosting and domain) |
| Hennessy Lampworks (handmade lamps, San Francisco) | Squarespace to Shopify migration with SEO and ecommerce | $1,000 | Shopify plan |
| Pediatrics Board Review (online courses for pediatricians) | 20-page custom rebuild on WordPress and Kadence | About $2,000 | About $500 (Kadence, SiteGround hosting, All in One SEO) |
$500: Ferro FPF
Ferro FPF already had a website. The problem was nobody could use it. Visitors couldn’t find product information, and there was no obvious way to ask for a quote, which is a big deal for a B2B supplier.
We mapped out the whole structure in Figma before touching any code, then rebuilt the site on WordPress with simple navigation and a clear “book an estimate” path on every page. Customers can now request estimates directly through the site. The client rated the project 5 stars.
The lesson: you don’t need a big budget to fix a site that isn’t working. Sometimes $500 and a smarter structure is all it takes.
$1,000: Hennessy Lampworks
This one is our favorite example of “cheap now, expensive later.” Hennessy Lampworks makes beautiful handmade lamps, and their Squarespace site looked great. But it couldn’t sell anything, had no real SEO foundation, and Google basically didn’t know it existed.
We moved them to Shopify, rebuilt the site structure for search, set up ecommerce and redesigned the product pages to drive both purchases and trade inquiries. Their target keywords are now indexed and ranking, they can sell online for the first time, and B2B partnership inquiries come in organically with no ad spend.
The lesson: the $1,000 migration fixed the problem, but it was money spent undoing an early platform choice. Picking the right platform from the start would have saved them that cost and months of missed sales.
$2,000: Pediatrics Board Review
Pediatrics Board Review had steady traffic from search and ads, but the site was leaking almost all of it. Bounce rate sat around 95%, people stayed about a minute, and purchases were handled manually after form submissions. Under the hood, the site was running more than 100 plugins.
We rebuilt roughly 20 pages on WordPress with Kadence, cut plugins down to about 20 essentials, fixed mobile, and set up direct checkout with upsells and downsells. The results:
- Bounce rate dropped from about 95% to about 50%
- Time on site doubled from about 1 minute to about 2 minutes
- Conversion rate went from about 2% to about 5%
- Purchases now happen on the site instead of through manual follow-ups
The lesson: a $2,000 website isn’t “expensive” if it more than doubles the sales you get from traffic you’re already paying for.
Which Platform Should You Pick? (Our Honest Take)
The platform you choose affects your costs for years, not just at launch. There’s no single best option. It comes down to your budget, your comfort with tech, and where your business is heading.
| Platform | Choose it if | Watch out for |
| Wix, Squarespace and other DIY builders | You’re fairly tech-savvy and can’t afford ongoing developer fees yet | You’ll likely need to pay to switch to something more scalable once you grow |
| WordPress | Your business is doing well and you can afford a proper build plus ongoing maintenance | It needs regular updates, so skipping maintenance is risky |
| Shopify | You sell products online, full stop | Monthly plan and app costs add up if you install everything you see |
| Custom PHP/Laravel | You need features no CMS can handle, like portals, booking systems or web apps | Higher build budget and much higher ongoing developer costs |
DIY builders are fine for getting started. Just go in with your eyes open. Hennessy Lampworks is a good example of what happens when a business outgrows its builder: a good-looking site that couldn’t sell or rank, and a $1,000 bill to move.
WordPress is our default for growing service businesses. It’s efficient, it scales well, and you’re never locked into one company’s ecosystem.
For ecommerce, we recommend Shopify from day one. Yes, even over WooCommerce. The built-in tools, SEO capabilities and ecommerce features are hard to beat, and at around $25/month it covers hosting and running your whole store. That’s a great deal compared to stitching together plugins and hosting yourself.
Go custom only when you truly need it. A Laravel build makes sense for real web applications and client portals. For a regular business website, it’s usually more money and more maintenance than you need.
Maintenance: The Cost Most Owners Skip (And Regret)
A website isn’t a one-and-done purchase. Our maintenance package is $50/month, and it covers:
- WordPress core, theme and plugin updates
- PHP version updates
- 2 to 3 minor design updates every month
That’s $600 a year. It sounds like a lot until you see what happens without it. Here’s what we see on sites nobody is looking after:
- Security holes. Outdated plugins and themes are an open door for hackers. That can mean a data breach, lost customer information, or in the worst cases, a site that simply disappears.
- A slower site. Sites that don’t get updated gradually get heavier and slower than they should be. Slow sites lose visitors and rankings.
- Broken designs. This one is more common than you’d think. An owner tries to make a “quick change” themselves and ends up breaking the layout on half the site.
If you’re going to skip anything in your website budget, don’t make it this. Fixing a hacked or broken site almost always costs more than a year of maintenance.
What Changed in 2026: People Want a System, Not Just a Website
The biggest shift we’ve seen this year isn’t in what websites cost. It’s in what clients expect.
A few years ago, most people asked for “a website.” Now they want the website, the SEO, the lead tracking, the follow-up automation, the CRM and the ads to all work together. Fair enough. A website that gets visitors but doesn’t turn them into leads isn’t doing its job.
AI has changed things too, though maybe not how you’d expect. Our prices haven’t dropped. What has changed is that clients now show up with clearer ideas, often worked out with AI tools beforehand, which makes the development process faster and smoother for everyone.
To meet that demand, we built the Evolve System, monthly packages that combine the website with the marketing around it:
| Package | Starting price | Best for | Highlights |
| Evolve Starter: Social Media Growth | $799/month | Businesses building their social presence before scaling | Monthly social media management, professional reels shooting and editing, DM automation, lead capture setup |
| Evolve Growth: Website + SEO Growth | $1,499/month | Businesses ready to generate leads from search and AI channels | Conversion-focused website (up to 12 pages), Google Business Profile management, SEO content strategy, AI chatbot and follow-ups, performance dashboard |
| Evolve Dominate: Full-Funnel Growth System | $2,499/month | Businesses that want attention turned into booked opportunities | Everything in Growth, plus one paid ads channel, full CRM setup, email/SMS nurture, booking automation, weekly optimization |
All three have a 3-month minimum. If you only need a website, our one-time packages are still the way to go. If you need the website to actually bring in business, a growth package usually gets you there faster than piecing it together yourself.
How to Compare Website Quotes Without Getting Burned
When you’re looking at a $300 quote next to a $5,000 one, the price gap is the least useful thing to compare. Look at what the website is supposed to do for your business.
These are the warning signs we see on sites that come to us for a rebuild:
- Traffic comes in, but conversions are unpredictable
- Pages look disconnected and cluttered
- The design looks okay but has no strategy behind it
- SEO was weak or added as an afterthought
- Leads end up scattered across forms, inboxes and different tools
- Simple website updates feel slow and frustrating
If a quote doesn’t address these things, it doesn’t matter how cheap or expensive it is. Before you pay anyone, ask:
- What exactly is included, and what costs extra after launch?
- Which platform will you use, and why is it right for my business?
- How is SEO built in from the start?
- How will leads reach me, and can it connect to my CRM or forms?
- Who handles updates, security and maintenance after launch, and what does it cost?
- Will I be able to make simple changes myself without breaking anything?
A good web designer will answer all six without hesitating.
Agency vs. In-House vs. Freelancer vs. DIY and AI Tools
You’ve got four realistic ways to get a website built. Here’s how we see them stacking up:
| Agency like Evolz | In-house hire | Freelancer | AI / DIY tools | |
| Speed | Fast turnaround | Slow onboarding | Inconsistent | Fast but shallow |
| Conversion focus | Built in | Depends on the hire | Rare | None |
| Quality control | Process-driven | Varies | Unpredictable | Limited by templates |
| Scalability | Grows with you | Expensive | Fragile | Rigid |
| Cost | Predictable | High overhead | Hidden costs | Opportunity cost |
To be fair, every option has its place. A DIY builder can be the right call when money is tight, and there are excellent freelancers out there. The point is to price in everything: the build, the running costs, the time you’ll spend managing it, and the cost of rebuilding it if it doesn’t work.
FAQ
How much should a small business budget for a website in 2026?
For a solid 5-page site, plan on roughly $770 to $1,150 for the first year, including the build, hosting, copywriting and basic tools. Add about $600 a year if you want professional maintenance.
Can I get a good website for under $500?
Yes. Our Ferro FPF project cost $500 and fixed a site that wasn’t generating inquiries. Cheap only becomes a problem when it means no strategy, no SEO and no plan for after launch.
Is Wix or Squarespace cheaper than WordPress?
At the start, often yes. Over time, maybe not. If your business grows past what the builder can handle, you’ll pay to migrate, like Hennessy Lampworks did.
How much does an ecommerce website cost?
Our Large package with ecommerce starts at $750. If you’re mainly selling products, we’d point you to Shopify, which runs around $25/month for the base plan.
How long does it take to build a small business website?
With us, 3 days for a 1-page site, 5 days for a 5-page site and 14 days for an 8 to 10 page site with ecommerce. Custom builds depend on scope.
Do I really need website maintenance?
If you’re on WordPress, yes. Outdated sites get hacked, slow down and break. $50/month is far cheaper than a rebuild.
Our Take: Spend on the Right Website Once
After 100+ launches, the most expensive website we see isn’t the $2,000 one. It’s the one a business pays for twice, because the first version was built on the wrong platform, skipped SEO, or never had a plan for turning visitors into customers.
So here’s our honest advice. Set a realistic first-year budget, pick a platform that fits where your business is going (not just where it is today), and don’t skip maintenance.
Not sure what your business actually needs? Fill out our quick form and tell us a bit about your business. We’ll get back to you with an honest recommendation and a clear price, whether that’s a $350 website or something bigger.
