How much does a business website cost? Real prices, line by line

Building it yourself costs about US$17 to US$25 a month on a builder like Wix or Squarespace, or from US$2.99 a month on a long Hostinger plan, plus about US$11 a year for a .com. A small design studio charges a one-off fee for about five pages (US$1,500 to US$2,500 in the US, £499 to £995 + VAT in the UK), plus hosting from about US$30 a month. Agencies start around US$3,000. Budget too for email at your own domain (about US$7 a person a month) and payment fees if you sell online. Over three years, the cheapest route is your own time, and the most expensive is the one you can't keep up to date.

Ask three people what a website costs and you'll get three answers, from “free” to “ten grand”. They're all sort of right, because a website isn't one purchase. It's a plan or a build fee, a domain, email, maybe a payment provider, and the time it takes to keep it current. The price on the front page is only the first line of that list.

I'm a product manager, so I spend a lot of time looking at how software is priced, and website pricing is some of the hardest to compare. So this guide goes line by line, with prices the companies publish on their own websites, checked on 7 October 2026, in US dollars where they publish them and with examples from the UK, Australia and New Zealand in their own currencies. One disclosure first. We build websites at KahuLogic, and Kahu Sites is one of the options below, so I've put its published price next to the others and worked out the three-year cost for all of them, ours included.

Those four numbers are the floor. Everything else in this guide sits on top of them, so it's worth knowing them before anyone quotes you.

Where the money goes over a website's life

Most quotes price one moment: the build. A website costs money at five moments, and the later ones are the ones that surprise people.

The build is the fee or your weekends. Launch adds the domain, email and anything you need to take payments. The first month is when a new site changes most, because you finally see it on your own phone. Renewals arrive every year, often at a higher price than the one you signed up at. And after a few years, most sites get rebuilt. The rest of this guide prices each of those.

The four ways to pay for a website

1. 1Build it yourself: about US$17 to US$25 a monthA builder like Wix or Squarespace, or a long Hostinger plan from US$2.99 a month. Nothing up front beyond the plan, and you do the writing and every change yourself. Best if you like tinkering and have a spare weekend.
2. 2A small design studio: about US$1,500 to US$2,500 once, plus hostingThe designer builds it from your notes, then charges for hosting or a care plan, about US$30 to US$75 a month in our US examples. Changes later are an email, and sometimes a fee. Best if you want it done once and won't change it much.
3. 3An agency: US$3,000 to US$10,000 or moreThat's Wix's own estimate for a fully customised site, and most agencies add a retainer, quoted per client. Best if you need custom features or a brand built from scratch.
4. 4Kahu Sites: US$179 a month, or US$149 billed yearlyNothing up front, with a free 7-day trial and no card needed. Kahu writes the site in your own words from what you tell it, and you ask for changes in chat; nothing goes live until you say so. Best if you'd rather never open an editor.

Building it yourself: the plan price is only the start

Website builders publish their prices, which makes them the easiest to compare. On 7 October 2026, before tax, Wix charged US$17 a month for Light, US$29 for Core and US$39 for Business, all billed yearly and paid up front. Light can't take payments, so if you want to sell anything or take deposits online, Core at US$29 is the real starting price.

Squarespace's Basic plan was US$19 a month billed yearly, or US$25 month to month, and it takes a 2% transaction fee on store sales; Core, at US$29 a month yearly, doesn't. If you're mainly a shop, Shopify's Basic plan was US$29 a month billed yearly or US$39 monthly. Wix, Squarespace and Hostinger all include a free domain for the first year on their yearly or longer plans. After that year, you pay to renew it at whatever the builder charges.

Hostinger is upfront about this. Its website builder is US$2.99 a month on a 48-month plan, which is US$143.52 paid in one go, and it renews at US$10.99 a month. That's still cheap, but it's nearly four times the price you signed up at. Do your sums on the renewal price, because that's the one you'll pay for longest.

Your domain name: about US$11 a year

A domain is your address on the web, like yourbusiness.com. On 7 October 2026 Porkbun, a domain registrar, charged US$11.08 a year for a .com, the same price to register and to renew. Other registrars sell the first year cheaply and charge more after, so check the renewal price before you buy.

Country endings (.co.uk, .com.au, .ca, .co.nz) cost a similar amount, and some come with rules. A .com.au, for example, needs an Australian business or company number. If you serve one country, its ending tells customers you're local. If you can get a short .com as well, buy both and point them at the same site.

Email at your own domain: the line people forget

An address like hello@yourbusiness.com looks more trustworthy than a free webmail one, and it's charged per person, every month. Google Workspace Business Starter is US$7 a user a month on a yearly plan, and when we checked, Google was offering it to new customers at US$5.60 for the first 12 months. Microsoft 365 Business Basic is also US$7 a user a month, paid yearly.

For a team of three, that's about US$250 a year. That's more than the domain, and on some plans more than the website itself, which is why I'd put it in the budget before you choose anything else.

Paying a web designer: what small studios charge

Designers' prices are harder to compare, because most don't publish them. These studios do, for a site of about five pages, checked on 7 October 2026:

Read the monthly column as carefully as the build price. A US$1,500 site with US$30 a month of hosting costs more than US$2,500 over three years, and DotGO's £499 package comes with a £45 + VAT monthly fee. Neither is a bad deal, but neither is the number on the front of the package.

Agencies sit above all of this. Wix's own cost guide puts a web design agency at US$3,000 to US$10,000 or more for a fully customised site, and freelance designers and developers at US$50 to US$500 an hour. For most cafés, salons, clinics and trades, that's more than the job needs. It earns its price when you need something unusual, like custom booking or quoting, or a brand built from scratch.

Taking payments online

If customers pay you through the site, every sale has a fee, and some builders add their own on top of the payment provider's.

On a US$100 sale through Stripe, that's US$3.20. It's worth it for the sales you'd otherwise lose, but it belongs in your budget, not as a surprise on the first statement.

What you shouldn't pay for

Some of what gets sold alongside websites is free, or not worth buying.

• An SSL certificate (the padlock in the address bar). Let's Encrypt gives them out at no cost, and builders and decent hosts include one.
• Submitting your site to Google. You do it yourself, free, in Google Search Console. Google's own advice on hiring help warns about anyone who offers to submit your site to “thousands of search engines”.
• Guaranteed rankings. Google says plainly that “no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.” Anyone selling a guarantee is selling something else.
• Premium templates you'll change anyway, and extras added at checkout that you didn't ask for.

The price you see depends on where you're standing

Our team works across New Zealand, Australia and India, and when we opened the Wix and Squarespace pricing pages to check them for this guide, they showed us prices in Australian dollars. To read the US prices, we had to load the pages through a service that browses from the United States.

That matters when you compare quotes. A US$17 plan and an A$-priced plan aren't the same number, and tax may or may not be included. Compare prices in the currency you'll actually pay, check whether tax is on top, and write down the date, because these pages change.

Three years, worked out

A website usually lasts a few years before it needs rebuilding, so the fairest comparison is the total over three. Here's the arithmetic for a five-page site, using the published prices above. It leaves out email, payment fees and domain renewals after any free first year, which you pay whichever route you choose.

Kahu isn't the cheap way to get five pages online, and those numbers show it. If all you want is a site you'll build once and rarely touch, a builder and a free Saturday will do it for a few hundred dollars.

What the builder numbers don't count is your time, and the cost of a site that goes stale. A price list from last year, opening hours that changed in winter, a service you stopped offering: each one costs you an enquiry. What the Kahu fee pays for is having the site written, hosted and changed for you whenever you ask, and the same Growth plan includes Kahu CRM for your enquiries, SEO reports, and Google and Meta ads. If you won't use those, don't pay for them.

One honest note on our own price. Asking Kahu for changes in chat uses credits. Growth includes 1,500 a month, and if you run out, top-ups are US$10 for 100. It's a cost, so it belongs in your sums too.

Launch day isn't the end of the bill

Every quote above prices the build. Almost none of them prices the first month after it, which is when a new site changes most. You see it on your own phone, a customer mentions something, a page doesn't look the way you pictured, and you want it fixed this week, not next month.

Here's what that first stretch can look like, using a sample business in Kahu Sites with example activity. Picture a small business that takes bookings online and has just launched. Over about two weeks, the changes range from the design of its blog to the header, the footer, the spacing at the top of each page and the menu on phones.

That's a lot of change for under two weeks, and it's exactly the stretch most quotes don't price. The question for your budget is what each change costs you. On a builder, each is an evening of your own. With a designer, each is an email and a wait, and depending on the plan, sometimes a fee. On Kahu, each is a sentence in chat, written in the voice saved in the Brand Kit, then a preview to check and an approval, and if a change turns out wrong, the previous version goes back with one button.

Where Kahu fitsKahu SitesPick a design and Kahu writes your site in your own words, hosts it, and changes it whenever you ask: new hours, new prices, a new page.Written in your words, changed by chatHosting, SSL and a free web address includedBring your own domain when you are readySee Kahu Sites →yourbusiness.exampleYour Business · physio, same-week appointmentsBook onlinePricesACC claimsYou approved new Saturday hours in chat · live 2 min ago

How to choose

Start with your hours, not the prices. If you'll enjoy building the site and you'll keep it up to date, a builder is the best value here by a long way, and nothing else on this page comes close for the money.

If you're paying someone, ask every option the same three questions before you compare build prices: what's monthly, what does a small change cost, and what does year two cost once the introductory price and the free domain end? Then add email for everyone who needs an address, and payment fees if you'll sell online.

The answer says more about the real price than the number on the package. A site that's right on launch day and wrong six months later costs more than anything quoted above.

I'm Geeti Anand, product manager at KahuLogic, a New Zealand company with a team across Australia, New Zealand and India. We build and look after websites for small businesses, and these are the numbers I'd want in front of me whether or not you ever use us.

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