LeadLeakHow much should a local business website cost?
Ask five people what a website costs and you'll get five answers, from "$20 a month" to "$20,000." All five are telling the truth. They're just describing five different things.
Here's the honest map, what actually changes as the price goes up, and the questions that protect you no matter who you hire. Including from us.
The four price brackets, honestly
DIY builders ($20 to $50 a month). Wix, Squarespace and friends. Real websites, and for a brand-new business testing an idea, a fine place to start. The cost isn't the subscription, it's your weekends. You become the designer, the writer and the person who figures out why the menu broke, and the result usually looks like what it is: a template with your logo on it.
Marketplace freelancers ($300 to $1,500). You can get lucky here. You can also get a template stretched over your content by someone you'll never talk to again. The gamble isn't the build, it's what happens in month three when something breaks and the freelancer has moved on.
Small studios ($2,000 to $8,000). Here the money buys custom design, real copywriting and someone who answers the phone. A good studio builds around your business: your customers, your services, your town. This bracket is where most established local businesses belong, and where the difference between "we have a website" and "our website wins us work" gets made.
Agencies ($10,000 and up). Worth it when you have many locations, complex booking or e-commerce systems, or a brand launch riding on it. For a single-location local business, you're mostly paying for meetings.
You're not buying pages. You're buying calls.
A $500 site that brings you nothing costs more than a $4,000 site that brings you two jobs a month. The only number that matters a year from now is how many customers found you, trusted you and reached out.
Five questions to ask anyone, including us
1. Who owns the site when we're done? The answer should be you: the domain, the content, all of it. Walk away from anyone who holds your domain hostage.
2. Is the price flat or "starting at"? A flat price means the builder has done this enough to know what it takes. "Starting at" means the real number arrives later.
3. What happens after launch? Sites need updates, backups and small fixes. Ask what care costs monthly, and whether you can skip it and come back later. Both should be allowed.
4. Will it be written for my customers? Ask who writes the words. Design gets the glance, but the words get the call. If the answer is "you send us the text," you're buying half a website.
5. Can I see real work? Not mockups. Live sites you can click around, on your phone, where the buttons work and the pages load fast.
When you shouldn't spend more
Honestly: if your current site is getting you steady calls, your Google profile is active and your reviews are strong, a rebuild may not be your best dollar. Sometimes the leak is a missing tap-to-call link or an out-of-date profile, and that's a fix, not a project. It's worth finding out before you spend on either.
Where we land, for the record
Our own builds are flat-priced: $2,000 for a standard site and $4,000 for the premium build, one-time, with optional monthly care if you want us to look after it. Once paid in full, you own the finished site and its project-specific code; third-party platforms and assets keep their own licenses. We publish the prices because we'd rather lose a project than start a relationship with a mystery quote.
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