How much does a business website actually cost in 2026?
An honest breakdown of website pricing: from $300 templates to $50,000 builds from scratch. Where the money goes, what each bracket includes, and how to pick the one that fits your business.
Ask three people what a website costs and you will get three different answers: $300, $5,000 and "well, it depends." All three can be true. The spread exists not because contractors are being cagey, but because the word "website" covers completely different things.
Below is a breakdown of how website pricing actually works in 2026, what each bracket includes, and how to work out what your business needs.
3 brackets
Budget: $200–$1,000
This is template territory: Tilda, Wix, Squarespace, ready-made WordPress themes from ThemeForest. The contractor takes a finished design, swaps in your logo and text, points it at your domain. Sometimes that is a freelancer over a weekend, sometimes it is you.
What you get: a working page on the internet you are not embarrassed by, provided the template was chosen carefully.
What you do not get: a recognisable look, fast loading, real SEO groundwork, someone who will fix a breakage 3 months later, or a site that can compete beyond your own neighbourhood.
When this is the right answer: you are testing an idea and want something working by the weekend. A side project. A page for a one-off event.
Warning sign: if someone offers a "company site" or an "online store" for $200, they are counting on a template plus 30 minutes of work. That is fine when you know what you are paying for. It is not fine when it is sold as bespoke development.
Mid-market: $1,000–$7,000
This is where most small companies operate. The design is made for you rather than taken from a template. Development runs on WordPress, OpenCart or modern frameworks such as Next.js. There is real SEO groundwork, mobile adaptation that genuinely works, payment systems and CRM connected, and a support window after launch.
Within this bracket:
- From $500: a landing page built around one offer and for enquiries, fast, ready to plug into advertising.
- From $1,800: a full company site with a blog, service pages, forms, etc.
- From $1,500: a working online store with a catalogue, payments and training on the admin panel.
What you get: a site you own, that opens quickly, looks like a serious company, and lets you update content yourself without going back to a developer over every comma.
What you do not get: support at the level of a large corporation, complex non-standard features (a multi-vendor marketplace, ERP data exchange, catalogues running to tens of thousands of items), or bespoke animation on every user action.
When this is the right answer: you have an established business or a serious launch, you need the trust of customers and partners, and you want a site that will still be right in 2–3 years without a full rebuild.
Built from scratch: $7,000–$50,000 and up
Everything is made individually, often with a dedicated designer. Complex data exchange (ERP, stock across several warehouses, non-standard checkout, several currencies, several languages with separate content workflows), unique interface work, and sometimes internal company tools built alongside the public site.
What you get: something nobody else has, built around your processes.
What you do not get: quick turnaround. These projects run 2–6 months and need a development team working continuously.
When this is the right answer: $50,000–$500,000 of monthly revenue depends on the site, it is your primary sales channel, and you have outgrown off-the-shelf solutions.
Where the money goes
For a $3,000 company site, the hours split roughly like this:
- Brief and discovery, 5–10%: understanding the business, the audience and the goals
- Design, 25–35%: screen structure, Figma layouts, revisions
- Development, 35–45%: building the site, connecting services, testing
- Content, 10–15%: placing and structuring the material you provide
- Checks and launch, 5–10%: different browsers, phones, speed, SEO checks
- Post-launch edits, 5–10%: the first month of small adjustments
When someone quotes $500 for the same scope, they are either cutting most of these stages or planning on 80% template and 20% your logo.
How to pick your bracket
3 honest questions.
1. How important is the site to revenue?
- Marginal, it is just a business card: budget
- Important, it is a real source of enquiries or sales: mid-market
- Critical, it is the main or only revenue channel: built from scratch
2. How long does the site need to last?
- 6 months, testing an idea: budget
- 2–3 years, a normal lifespan: mid-market
- 5 years and more, with room to grow: built from scratch
3. How much content will you be changing?
- Almost never, set it and forget it: any bracket
- Regular updates to services, products, articles: mid-market with a proper admin panel
- Constant catalogue updates with complex product variants: built from scratch or a dedicated commerce platform
What we do
We work in the mid-market. Price and timeline are fixed in the contract before we start, and the work takes from 5 days to 4 weeks. The main formats:
- Landing Page: from $500
- Company Site: from $1,800
- Online Store: from $1,500
- Site Upgrade for an existing site: from $500
We choose the platform (WordPress, OpenCart or a build from scratch on Next.js) by what suits your business, not by what is easier for us to build. We explain the trade-offs plainly, and if your project genuinely belongs in the built-from-scratch bracket, we will say so upfront rather than overpromising.