What a small business website should actually cost

The honest answer: it depends, but less than the quotes suggest

I've seen a plumber quoted $180 for a website and a cafe quoted $28,000 for one that did less. Both were told that was the going rate. Neither quote was a lie, exactly. They were answering different questions.

Here's the range, roughly, in Australian dollars, for a small business site in 2026:

• $0–300 — you build it yourself on Wix, Squarespace or Shopify, plus $20–50 a month forever. Fine for testing an idea. You'll outgrow the template and the rent adds up.
• $500–1,500 — a freelancer does a one-pager off a template. Reasonable if the person is good and the template is close to what you need.
• $1,500–5,000 — a custom small site: real copywriting, a handful of pages, set up so locals can find you. This is where most established businesses should be.
• $8,000–30,000 — an agency with account managers, a discovery phase, stakeholder meetings, a CMS build. Worth it if you have a marketing team to feed it. Overkill for a five-person business.

What actually drives the number

Three things, in order.

Copy. Writing the words is the slow part. A business that turns up with its text written and its photos sorted can cost a third of one that needs it all drawn out of them. Most need it drawn out of them, which is normal, but that's where the hours go.

Pages. A one-pager and a seven-pager are not the same job. Every page needs a reason to exist, its own words, its own layout decisions. If someone quotes the same for "a few pages" and "however many you like", be suspicious.

Anything that isn't a page. Online bookings, payments, a product catalogue, a members area — each is a small software project bolted onto the site. That's the difference between a $2,000 site and a $6,000 one.

What shouldn't drive the number

• How it's built. Hand-coded or assembled in a builder matters for speed and longevity, but it shouldn't move the price much. Don't pay a premium for buzzwords.
• Ongoing "maintenance". A brochure site doesn't need a monthly retainer. It needs hosting (cheap or free) and an SSL certificate (free). If someone's selling you $150 a month to "keep it running", ask exactly what that covers.

How to work out your number

Ask what the site has to do. Not look like — do.

If the answer is "exist, look professional, give people a way to contact me", that's a one-pager, and done properly it's low four figures. If the answer includes "take bookings" or "sell things", add a few thousand and expect a longer timeline.

Then get the quote as a flat number before anything starts, with the pages and the scope written down. Hourly billing on a small website usually means nobody scoped it, and you're the one paying for that.

That's how I quote. The packages are here, with what's in each, and I'll tell you if you're about to pay for something you don't need.