What Each Price Range Actually Buys.
A template with your logo on it
Someone buys a theme, drops in your name, phone number and a stock photo, and hands it over. It exists at a URL. It is not designed around your business, the copy is usually yours to write, and nobody thought about how people will find it.
The recurring cost is the surprise. These sites almost always sit on a page builder that needs monthly patching, which is either your problem or another bill.
A site built for your business
Where most small business sites should sit, and where ours start at $3,500. Someone sat down with you, worked out who you sell to and what they need to see, wrote the words with you, set up local search properly, and built it fast enough for a phone with two bars of signal.
The domain, hosting and every account are in your name. No plugins to patch, so almost nothing to maintain.
The site does something
Online ordering, booking with payment, a customer login, a product catalog with hundreds of items, integration with the software that runs the business. You are buying software with a website attached, and the price reflects the engineering.
If a quote is up here and the site does not do anything beyond describe you, ask why.
Five Things You Are Paying For.
The visible part, the design, is the middle of the list. The parts that decide whether the site brings in work come before and after it, and they are the parts a cheap quote leaves out.
A website is a salesperson that works overnight, or it is a business card. The price should reflect which one you are buying.
A call or a visit, a look at your competitors, working out what the site has to make happen. The cheap tier skips this, which is why those sites do not bring in work.
A site with good photos and vague copy loses to a plain site that says exactly what you do, for whom, and what to do next. Writing that well takes real time, and most owners underestimate it.
The visible part. Two to three weeks of work for a typical site, more if there are many pages or custom features.
Service pages that match what people type into Google, a properly configured Business Profile, structured data so search engines can read the site. Cheap to include at build time, expensive to bolt on later.
Domain, hosting, email, forms tested, analytics set up and explained. The boring hour that decides whether the site works on day one.
Five Questions That Separate a Fair Quote From a Padded One.
Ask every shop the same five. The answers tell you more than the number does.
- 1
Who owns the domain and the hosting account when we are done?
The only acceptable answer is you.
- 2
What is built in, and what will I pay to keep it running?
A page-builder site has a real monthly upkeep cost. A site built as static pages has almost none.
- 3
Who writes the copy?
If the answer is you, the price should be lower and the timeline will be longer than they are telling you.
- 4
What happens when I need a change?
Get the hourly rate or the care plan price in writing now, not after launch.
- 5
Can I see three sites you built for businesses like mine, and are they still live?
Live is the important word.
Our Numbers, Since You Are Wondering.
We sit in the middle tier. Every site includes the strategy call, the copy written with you, local search set up properly, a fast build with nothing to patch, and the domain and hosting in your name.
Financing over twelve months puts a new site in the range of a monthly software subscription rather than a lump sum. If a refresh of what you have would do the job, we will say that instead.
Get a Fixed QuoteFixed price in writing after a short call. Financing over 12 months available.
Optional. Patching, backups, monitoring and monthly edits after launch.
Always quoted before we start.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do quotes for the same site vary so much?
Because "a website" describes the output, not the work. One quote is a template with your logo. Another includes strategy, copywriting, local search setup and a fast custom build. A third includes software. Ask what is in the number and the range usually explains itself.
Is financing really a good idea for a website?
For most businesses, yes. Spread over twelve months, a new site costs about what one software subscription does, and it usually pays for itself well inside that year if it is built to bring in work. If a shop will not offer it, ask why the risk has to be all on your side.
Should I just use Wix or Squarespace?
Sometimes. If you need a simple presence, have time to build it yourself, and are comfortable with a template, a hosted builder is a fair choice and we will say so. It stops being the right answer when you need to rank locally against established competitors, when the site has to load fast on a phone, or when you want it to do more than describe you.
When should I not buy a new website?
If your current site is on a hosted platform, loads reasonably, says what you do, and the phone rings, you may only need a care plan and a content refresh. A rebuild earns its cost when the site is slow, insecure, impossible to change, or actively losing you work. We tell a fair number of people to keep their money.
What does Phaseable charge?
Websites start at $3,500, with the real number in writing after a short call. Stores, booking and customer logins are quoted separately. A care plan from $79 a month covers upkeep afterward, or changes are $150 an hour, quoted first.