Small Business Website Cost in 2026: DIY Builder, Freelancer, Agency and Theo Compared

How much does a small business website cost

The spread is wide because the four paths sell different things. A builder sells software and leaves the work to you. A freelancer sells a finished site, and an agency sells a team and a process. Theo sells the site and the hosting for one monthly price, and on Starter and Pro the work after launch as well. A launch quote is only the start: the number to compare is what the site costs over the years you keep it, and what it brings in over the same years.

For your own number, the calculator just below runs the same four paths with your page count, the years to compare and what an hour of your time is worth, and shows each path's average cost per month. Its own page, the website cost calculator, explains how each figure is worked out.

Small business website cost by path

Gruffy Goat publishes the ranges below on its own cost guide, updated September 19, 2026. The Theo row uses the prices on Theo's pricing page. Upfront is paid before the site is live, and the per-month cost keeps it live and current afterward. The last column is the one most quotes skip: who does the work once the site is up.

The six parts of a website's cost, and who charges for each

Every quote, whatever the path, is made of the same six parts. A low quote is usually low because it leaves some of them out, not because the work is cheaper. The table shows who pays for each part on each path and how Theo handles it.

DIY website builder: $17 to $50 a month plus your hours

A builder is the lowest cash price and the only path where the owner supplies all of the labor. Wix, Squarespace and GoDaddy charge a monthly fee for the software and hosting. The words, photos, updates and search work are the owner's job.

Cheap software is not the same as a site that brings in customers. In Theo's audit of 6,861 small business websites, 47 percent of the 4,633 sites with search data got an estimated zero visitors a month from Google search. Among builder-hosted sites with search data the zero-traffic share was 50 percent on Wix (312 sites), 49 percent on Squarespace (219) and 58 percent on GoDaddy Website Builder (172), per The State of Small Business Websites 2026. The audited sites are the ones whose owners chose to run the free audit, so this is not a random sample. Still, the pattern holds: the plan fee buys a place on the internet, not visitors to it.

• Copy: you write it, or pay extra for help.
• Upkeep: you make the updates, fix what stops working and keep hours and services current.
• Being found: you do the keyword research, the new pages and the Search Console work yourself. Search Console is Google's free report on how your builder site does in search.
• Where Theo fits: a monthly price, as with a builder, but with the work done. Basic is priced like a builder plan, with the pages written, hosted and secured. Starter adds the search work the builder leaves to you.

What a builder plan costs once the owner's hours are counted

In cash, a builder plan is $17 to $50 a month in Gruffy Goat's range, and Basic, at $29.99, sits inside it. The builder's full cost is that number plus the owner's hours, which no plan page lists. To put a figure on them for your own business, count the hours the site will take in its first month: writing five pages, finding photos, laying out each page and checking it on a phone. Then add the hours each later month takes for updates, a new page now and then, and the search work. Multiply the total by what an hour of your work earns the business, and set the result against a plan that does the work.

The gap between a builder plan and Theo Starter is $20 to $53 a month ($69.99 against $17 to $50). If the site will take more than an hour or two of your month, that gap buys back the hours and adds the weekly pages, posts and fixes you would otherwise not get to.

• One offer and a handful of pages: Basic builds and hosts the site with the words written, and every later change is a line typed in chat.
• Several services or locations, a store, searches competitors already rank for, or a month that is already full: Starter adds the weekly pages, posts and fixes aimed at those searches. A Shopify or Wix store connects on every plan.

Freelancer: $1,500 to $8,000 upfront

A freelancer delivers a finished site built to a brief, and you have a single person to talk to. The result depends heavily on the person, the brief and what the proposal says happens after launch. Two quotes at the same price can include very different things.

Read the after-launch lines before the design lines. The build price is the headline, but the price per new page, the hourly rate for edits and the maintenance plan decide what the second and third years cost. A proposal that lists none of them covers the launch and leaves the years after it unpriced.

• Copy: often supplied by you, unless writing is priced into the project.
• Upkeep: usually separate, billed by the hour or as a maintenance plan of $50 to $350 a month in Gruffy Goat's range.
• Being found: sometimes included at launch. Ask which tasks continue afterward and at what price.
• Where Theo fits: no build fee and no handover. The pages are written in the build, and an edit is a line typed in chat. On Starter and Pro, new pages and fixes keep arriving at the plan price instead of per quote.

Boutique agency: $6,000 to $35,000 or more

A boutique agency brings a wider team and more process: strategy, design, writing, development, project management, testing and several rounds of review. For a straightforward small business site that can mean paying for more overhead than the job needs.

The team and the process are what an agency sells, and they come with the fee whatever the job. The job might be dozens of pages, a custom application, a client portal or a brand that needs strategy work before any page is designed. It might also be five pages and a contact form. On those five pages, much of the fee pays for meetings and handoffs rather than for the pages themselves, and the ongoing work still arrives as a separate retainer. Theo builds the same five pages with no build fee, and on Starter and Pro new pages are drafted every week for the owner to review.

• Copy: usually handled by a strategist or copywriter.
• Upkeep: through a support or retainer agreement, priced separately.
• Being found: usually a separate ongoing service with its own monthly budget.
• Where Theo fits: the pages without the process. The first build is free before any plan starts, and after launch the Starter and Pro plans take the place of a retainer.

Theo: $29.99 to $129.99 a month with no build fee

Theo builds the site and hosts it for one monthly price, with no upfront build cost. On Starter and Pro it also does the ongoing work to get the business found. There is no drag-and-drop editor and no template to pick. The owner describes the business, looks at a preview, and changes it by typing plain English in a chat.

Basic, at $29.99 a month, covers the build, managed hosting and security. Starter, at $69.99 a month and free for the first 30 days, adds the ongoing SEO and growth work. Chat credits cover the changes the owner asks for in chat, and the growth work never draws on them. Pro, at $129.99, adds more credits, more weekly pages and posts, and read-only access to the site code through GitHub.

The build is the same at every size. 118 118 Money, a consumer lender in the UK named here with permission, is a long-standing customer whose site and growth work run on Theo. Its own Search Console data shows 213,000 clicks from Google search in the 90 days through September 27, 2026, on 10.6 million impressions. A five-page local site gets that same build, and on Starter or Pro the same kind of weekly work.

• Copy: part of the build, and the owner changes any line by asking in chat.
• Upkeep: hosting, security and HTTPS are in every plan. Edits use chat credits (1,500 a month on Basic, 4,500 on Starter, 7,000 on Pro), and top-up credits roll over and never expire.
• Being found: on Starter and Pro the growth work drafts new pages, posts and fixes every week, and its effect builds over months. Each one waits in the Growth tab, which lists every page built and fix made, until the owner publishes it or turns on auto-publish. A weekly email tallies the new posts, updates and landing pages.
• What it links to: a Shopify or Wix store connects for products and checkout, and the site links out to booking, reservation and point-of-sale tools. Theo does not build custom code, payment processing, booking systems or member databases itself.

What the first build looks like, step by step

Because there is no build fee, the cheapest way to price a Theo site is to build one and look at it. Here is what happens at each step, what the screen shows and where the money starts.

1. Describe the business on Theo's start page: what it does, where, and for whom. If there is an existing site, give its address and Theo can match its look. This first build is free, before any trial.
2. Look at the first preview. It is usually ready in minutes: a starting draft of the main pages, written for the business, which you click through before changing anything.
3. Refine it in chat. Type the change in plain English ("Move the fifth section above section two", "Add a page for water heater repair") and Theo makes it. Drag photos into the chat to add them. Small edits use a little credit, a new page more, a redesign the most.
4. Publish. Publishing needs a plan, and Starter's first 30 days are free. The preview becomes the live site, a static site hosted by Theo over HTTPS, on a temporary address until your domain is connected. From here the bill is the monthly plan price, plus any optional extras you choose.
5. Connect the domain. Bring one you already own or buy one inside Theo. Theo walks you through pointing both the root and the www version at the site, turning off forwarding and parking at the registrar, and leaving the email records alone so mail keeps working. Once the registrar's records update, usually within a few hours, the domain answers with the new site. Until then, visitors still reach the old one.
6. Connect Google. Once the domain is active, you sign in with Google once, and Theo handles the Analytics and Search Console setup and submits your sitemap. On Starter and Pro the growth work then switches on: keyword and competitor research, new pages and posts, technical fixes, page speed, and tracking. New pages and fixes wait in the Growth tab until you publish them.

How much does a website cost per month

After launch, the monthly bill depends on the path. On a builder it is the plan fee. On a freelancer or agency site it is hosting plus a maintenance plan or hourly edits, with new pages and search work usually quoted on top. On Theo it is the plan price, with hosting, security and HTTPS included. The paid extras on Theo are top-up credits and a domain name if bought through Theo. Starter and Pro also offer the optional paid directory submission packages listed in the Boost checklist. That checklist comes with those two plans and walks you step by step through listings such as Google Business Profile, Bing Places and Yelp.

The builder and maintenance figures in the table are Gruffy Goat's published ranges. The post on website maintenance cost breaks upkeep down by site type and by provider.

What a small business website costs over three years

The table spreads the launch price over three years of monthly costs for a five-page service business site, much as the calculator above does. The freelancer and agency rows add Gruffy Goat's build range to 36 months of its maintenance range and divide the sum by 36. The DIY row is Gruffy Goat's builder plan fee. Theo has no build fee, so its rows show the plan price, which stays the same each month apart from any optional extras. Hosting on the freelancer and agency paths, domain renewal and the owner's hours are left out, while the Theo rows include hosting.

• In the table below, the DIY figure is the smallest and carries the most unpaid work: every page, edit and search task is the owner's.
• The freelancer and agency figures buy a finished site and its upkeep. Hosting, new pages and search work are extra. The Theo rows include hosting, security and, on Starter and Pro, the weekly pages, posts and fixes.
• If a site is left untouched and later needs a rebuild, the freelancer and agency paths charge a second project fee. The post on website redesign cost gives the published ranges for that work.

A worked example: a five-page plumbing site

Take a plumbing company that needs five pages: home, services, service areas, reviews and contact. It wants the words written for it, sells nothing online, and needs to show up for searches like "water heater repair" in its towns.

Ashbrenner Plumbing, one of the plumbing sites Theo built, shows what a small plumbing site looks like once it is built, with a few pages more than the five. It is a daytime plumbing site for Asheville, North Carolina, with eight pages: a home page, a page each for repairs, water heaters and crawl space repipes, a prices page, an about page, a four-field service request form and a guide to finding the water shutoff. The home page names the six towns it serves and carries three customer quotes, and the phone number and a Request service button sit in the header of every page. See the live site to click through all eight, or see more plumbing website examples.

What the five-page plumbing site costs on each path

• In the table below, the DIY number is the smallest and buys the least, and the agency number buys the most process. Only the Starter number includes the work of being found.
• To run your own version, give the calculator above your page count, the years to compare, what an hour of your time is worth and whether the ongoing search work is in scope. It returns each path's average cost per month over those years, with upfront fees and your hours spread across the months, and Theo's row on the same terms.

Website cost by type of business

The price on every path moves with what the site has to do, and the kind of business sets that. The table lists the pages that drive a quote for each type. They are also the pages Theo builds for it, at the same plan price whatever the type. The third column comes from Theo's audit of 6,861 small business websites: the share of each group's sites with search data that got an estimated zero visitors a month from Google search. More sites Theo built, by industry, are on the examples page.

• The pattern matters for cost. In the table below, 53 percent of the 532 professional services sites with search data got an estimated zero visitors a month from Google search. A practice that paid an agency fee at the top of Gruffy Goat's range, $35,000 or more, could still be one of them. The price of a site does not decide whether it gets found.
• What decides it is the work after launch, the part most quotes leave out. On a builder that work costs the owner's hours, and on a freelancer or agency site it costs a retainer. On Theo it comes with the Starter and Pro plans.

Website costs that a low quote leaves out

These are the lines that make the first year cost more than the quote. Ask about each one before signing, on any path, and note what happens to it on Theo.

• Hosting and SSL. A built-for-you site needs a host and an HTTPS certificate, billed monthly or yearly and sometimes bundled into a maintenance plan. Ask who hosts it, what it costs and whose name is on the account. On Theo, hosting, security and HTTPS are in every plan.
• Maintenance. Updates, fixes and small edits, at $50 to $350 a month in Gruffy Goat's range or by the hour. Ask what the plan does each month and what happens if you do not buy it. On Theo, edits use the chat credits that come with every plan.
• SEO after launch. New pages, technical fixes, indexing and tracking are a separate retainer on most freelancer and agency proposals. Ask which search tasks continue after launch and at what monthly price. On Theo that work comes with Starter and Pro and never uses credits.
• Accessibility. Alt text, contrast, keyboard use and readable forms are cheaper to build in than to add later. Ask whoever builds it what they do for it, and check the finished site with a keyboard and a phone before signing off.
• Business email. It is not part of a website quote on any path. Email is its own subscription with an email provider, and Theo's domain steps leave the email records alone so mail keeps working.

Questions to ask before paying for a website

Ask these of a freelancer, an agency or a subscription service, including Theo. The answers show whether a quote covers the site for years or only its launch.

• Whose name is on the domain and the hosting account? If the answer is theirs, the site is theirs in every way that matters when you want to leave. On Theo a domain you already have stays where it is registered, and one you buy inside Theo is registered to you and stays yours if you leave. The pages, words and photos are yours too. Your words and images can be saved before you leave, and Pro adds read-only access to the site code on GitHub, which you can copy.
• What happens after launch, and what does each of those tasks cost? The answer decides what the second and third years cost.
• Who writes the copy, and what will a new page cost a year from now? Count on needing new pages. A business that adds a service, a location or a season needs a page for each.
• How long is the term, and what happens to the site at cancellation? Theo has no long-term commitment, and the cancellation confirmation shows the date the subscription ends.
• What search work continues after launch, and who does it? If the answer is nobody, nothing new is added to help the site get found.
• Can I see it before I pay? On the freelancer and agency paths, the answer is usually designs after a deposit. On Theo the first build is free, and the preview is a starting draft of your own site, shown before any plan starts.

How to keep the cost of a website down

Three habits keep the bill close to the quote once the site is live, on any path.

• Every month, check the invoice against what was delivered. A maintenance plan that did nothing this month is a line to question.
• Every quarter, open Search Console or the Growth tab and ask what changed on the site since last quarter. A site that has not gained a page in a quarter is standing still.
• Do not buy a redesign to fix a traffic problem. Find out first whether the site gets visitors from Google. If it does not, the fix is pages that answer searches, not a new look.

What the monthly price buys: one customer's first 90 days

Comparing cost over years, instead of at the quote, matters because the work after launch can change what the site earns. Buy My Lunch, a school lunch ordering service named here with permission, moved to Theo in June 2026. In the 90 days to September 27, 2026, its own Search Console data counts 929 clicks from Google search, against 131 in the 90 days before that. Impressions grew from 7,500 to 61,700 across those two periods, and its average position improved from 13 to 8 while new pages from the growth work went live.

That is one business, and no one can promise another business the same curve. The example shows what a plan with the work included buys and a quote that ends at launch leaves out. New pages keep arriving after the site is live, at no charge beyond the plan.

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