What a Small Business Website Should Cost in 2026
The honest line-item math: builder plan, domain, business email, what's optional — and the point where a $1,500 professional build starts earning its keep.
Small business website cost is a fog of intro pricing, first-year freebies, and quotes that run anywhere from $100 to $30,000 — so let's burn the fog off. A working small business website has exactly three mandatory line items: a builder plan, a domain, and business email. Everything else is optional. Priced honestly, the whole thing comes to $25–40 a month if you build it yourself, and every number behind that figure is below.
Line item one: the builder plan
On annual billing, the plans a service business would actually buy run from about $10 to $29 a month. Wix Light is $17 — charged as a full $204 up front, and it can't take online payments; add $12 a month for the $29 Core plan the moment money changes hands on the site. Squarespace Basic is $19 ($228 a year) after the price rise it pushed through in July 2026. GoDaddy Basic is $9.99 in year one, with GoDaddy's own fine print warning that intro pricing lasts only the first term — expect something near its $16.99 list rate after that. Hostinger's famous $2.99 headline means prepaying $143.52 for four years, then renewing at $10.99; its bookings-capable Unlimited tier is $3.99 intro. Durable Launch is a flat $22.
The number to plan around is the renewal price, not the promo. Builders make their margin in year two, when the site is live, the domain is theirs, and moving feels like more work than paying. Hostinger's arc is the cleanest example — $2.99 becomes $10.99 when the four prepaid years end, about 3.7 times the intro rate — and GoDaddy's Premium goes from $14.99 toward a $29.99 list rate at the time of checking.
Line item two: the domain
A .com costs registrars $10.26 a year wholesale — rising about 7% to $10.97 this November — so an honest retail price is $10–15 a year. At-cost registrars prove it: Cloudflare charges about $10.44 and Porkbun $11.08, registration and renewal alike. First-year promos of $5–7 are real but temporary. The builders' free-domain offers follow the same script: free for year one on annual billing, then $20 a year at Squarespace, $19.99 at Hostinger, and $22.99 at GoDaddy — the most expensive mainstream renewal there is. Wix will only commit to a range of $7.90 to $44.90 a year.
Our advice is boring and firm: register the domain yourself at an at-cost registrar, point it at whatever builder you choose, and budget about a dollar a month for it forever. A domain you control is also your exit ticket if you ever switch platforms — the one part of a website that genuinely moves with you.
Line item three: business email
An address like [email protected] costs about $7 a month per person on Google Workspace's Business Starter plan with an annual commitment, or $8.40 month-to-month. Two builders soften this: Hostinger includes mailboxes free for the first year, and GoDaddy bundles professional email in year one — then auto-renews it at full rate unless you cancel. Either way, matching email is the cheapest credibility money buys; quotes sent from a personal address cost you jobs you never hear about.
What's optional — and what's free
Booking software is built into most builders at some tier — Wix from its Core plan, Hostinger on Unlimited, GoDaddy with recurring appointments on Premium, Durable on Launch — but Squarespace charges separately for it: Acuity Scheduling starts at $16 a month. Email marketing can wait until you actually have a list; free tiers exist (Wix includes 200 branded sends a month), with paid tiers from around $8–10 a month at the time of checking. And a Google Business Profile is completely free to create, verify, and manage — do it this week regardless of what else you buy.
| Item | Typical cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Builder plan | $10–29/mo | Renewal pricing on annual billing; intro rates run lower |
| Domain (.com) | $10–15/yr | Wholesale is $10.26; $5–7 first-year promos exist; GoDaddy renews at $22.99 |
| Business email | $7/user/mo | Google Workspace Business Starter; Hostinger and GoDaddy bundle year one free |
| Booking software | $0–16/mo | Built into most builders at some tier; Squarespace needs Acuity, from $16/mo |
| Email marketing | $0–10/mo to start | Free tiers exist (Wix: 200 sends/mo); paid tiers scale with volume |
| Google Business Profile | Free | Create, verify, and manage at no cost — do it regardless |
The DIY total, per month
Add it up: a builder plan at $10–29 on renewal pricing, a domain at roughly a dollar a month, and email at $7. That's $18–37 a month — call it $25–40 once a booking tool or a paid form upgrade sneaks in, or roughly $300–480 a year. For that you get a five-page site you can edit on a Tuesday night, forms that land in your inbox, and no invoice for changing your opening hours. Which plan earns that money is the whole subject of our ranking of the best website builder for small business.
What hiring it out costs
The published 2026 ranges are wide because 'a website' is wide: an established pricing guide puts a small-business site anywhere from $100 to $5,000, freelancer design at $500 to $10,000-plus, and agency work at $3,000 to $30,000-plus, while a major business publication's guide says hiring a professional usually starts around $1,500. And that's the build alone — the plan, domain, and email line items above still land on your card every month afterward. We run the five-year math on both paths in website builder vs hiring a designer.
Where paying more is justified
Paying professional money makes sense in three cases. The site is the storefront — you're selling online at a scale where checkout details are revenue, not decoration. You need things builders genuinely don't do, like custom integrations with your trade software. Or you simply know you won't finish it yourself — a half-built site earns nothing, and $1,500 spent on a finished one beats $204 spent on a Wix plan that never leaves draft. For everyone else — the plumber, the salon, the cafe — a $25-a-month builder site does the job the customer actually cares about: it comes up in the search, it loads, and there's a big button that says Book or Call.