How Much Does a Small Business Website Cost in 2026?

Ask three people what a website costs and you get three answers that are all technically true: "ten grand", "twenty bucks a month", and "basically free".

That is because there are three different ways to get one, and they are not really the same product. Here are the real numbers for each, and the costs that do not show up on the price tag.

Route 1: hire an agency

Upfront: $2,000 to $10,000. Then hosting on top.

An agency builds you a custom site. Done well, it is good work. The catch is not the build. The catch is everything after the build.

• The quote covers the launch, not the life of the site. Hosting is a separate bill.
• Most sites go stale after handoff. New service? New prices? New reviews? Usually nobody's job.
• The gap between a $2,000 build and a $10,000 build is hard to see from the outside, which is why the quotes feel like guesswork.

An agency site is a project. Websites are not projects. They are the thing that is supposed to be current when someone checks you out at 9pm on a Tuesday.

Route 2: do it yourself

$17 to $46 a month on Wix. Plus your hours.

Site builders are genuinely cheap, and the subscription is the smallest cost involved. The real price is that you do all the work:

• You write every page. Most owners get the homepage done and stop, which is how one-page sites happen.
• You keep it updated. New hours, new prices, new photos, forever, on top of running the business.
• You figure out what Google needs from a page. That is a real skill, and the builders do not teach it.

If you enjoy this kind of work, DIY can be right. Most owners do not enjoy it, which is why so many DIY sites still say "Happy Holidays" in March.

Route 3: done for you, monthly

$49.99 a month with us. Nothing upfront.

This is the route we sell, so judge it with that in mind. The idea: the build, the hosting, your domain connected, and the upkeep are one flat price, and the work is ours.

For $49.99 a month, 30 Second Sites builds the site from your Google listing, your reviews, and your current site if you have one. Then it keeps working on it:

• Hours, phone and services follow your Google listing the same day you change them.
• New reviews land on the site as they come in.
• New service pages, area pages and articles get added when there is something worth adding. You approve each one with one tap from an email.
• No setup fee, no hourly bill for changes, cancel anytime.

Here is a finished one. AP Nail Lab in Kendall had a Weebly site. The rebuild came from their Google listing, their 94 reviews, and their booking menu:

Every service on that booking menu ended up on a service page with its real price on it, from gel manicures to Russian manicures, and nobody at the salon wrote a word.

The costs nobody puts on the price tag

Whichever route you pick, budget for these:

• A domain name: $10 to $20 a year. You buy it from a registrar and you should own it yourself, whoever builds the site. It is your address on the internet. Never let a vendor own it for you.
• Hosting. Included in DIY plans and in our price. Extra with most agency builds.
• Changes. The forgotten line item. A website that cannot change cheaply becomes a website that never changes.

How to pick, in three questions

• Do you have thousands upfront, and a very specific vision only custom work can hit? That is the honest case for an agency. Get the maintenance plan in writing before you sign, and keep the domain in your own name.
• Do you actually enjoy building and updating web pages, and have the hours? Then DIY is the cheapest route by far, because your labor is the product.
• Do you mainly want it done, correct, and kept current while you run the business? That is the done-for-you case. You are not buying a website so much as retiring a job.

Most owners we talk to are in the third group. They did not want a website project. They wanted the website handled.

The comparison in one place

• Agency: $2,000 to $10,000 upfront, hosting extra, they do the work once, usually nobody keeps it current.
• DIY: $17 to $46 a month, you do all the work, current only if you keep making it current.
• 30 Second Sites: $0 upfront, $49.99 a month, we do the work, kept current from your Google listing.

If you are still weighing whether you need a site at all, start with whether a Google listing alone is enough. And if part of the point is getting found when people ask AI for recommendations, read how ChatGPT picks the businesses it names, because that is where the cheap routes quietly fall short.

See the done-for-you version, free

Type your business name at 30secondsites.com and look at the site we would build from your Google listing. It takes about 30 seconds, and nothing is charged until you have seen your finished site and said keep it.

Looking is free. No card, no login, no email until you want to keep it.