A professional small business website in 2026 typically falls between two and eight thousand dollars, with the variance driven almost entirely by page count, custom functionality and how much of the content you supply.
Expect roughly $500 to $1,500 for a single page site, $2,000 to $5,000 for a standard five to eight page business site, and $5,000 to $15,000 or more once you add e commerce, booking systems or custom integrations. Content preparation and revision rounds are the two costs most often underestimated.
What you are actually paying for
Design and build time is only part of a quote. A realistic project also includes discovery, information architecture, copy shaping, responsive testing across devices, accessibility checks, performance optimisation, search fundamentals, and a handover. Quotes that look dramatically cheap have usually removed several of these silently.
Typical bands
- Landing page, $500 to $1,500. One page, one purpose, one call to action. Ideal for validating an offer.
- Standard business site, $2,000 to $5,000. Five to eight pages, contact forms, basic search setup. This suits most consultancies and local services.
- Content or commerce site, $5,000 to $15,000. Product catalogues, payments, bookings, member areas or multiple integrations.
- Ongoing care, $100 to $500 per month. Updates, backups, security, small changes.
What genuinely drives cost up
Page count matters less than people expect. What actually moves a quote is custom functionality, bespoke illustration or photography, complex content migration from an old site, and the number of revision rounds. If you can supply finalised copy and images, you remove a meaningful chunk of cost.
Signs of an inflated quote
Be wary of line items you cannot explain back to someone else, vague “strategy” fees without a deliverable attached, mandatory proprietary hosting you cannot leave, and any arrangement where you do not own the final files. Ownership is not a premium feature. It is the baseline.
Signs of a quote that is too cheap
A price far below market usually indicates a template with your logo dropped in, no responsive testing beyond one device, no accessibility consideration, and no support after launch. The rebuild eighteen months later costs more than doing it properly once.
How to compare fairly
Ask every agency for the same three things: a written scope listing what is included and excluded, the number of revision rounds, and confirmation of file ownership at handover. Comparing quotes without those is comparing numbers that describe different work.