How Much Does a Website Cost in 2026? Honest Numbers

Ask three people what a website costs and you'll get "free," "$500" and "$8,000," and all three are telling the truth. The price depends entirely on which route you take, and the route you should take depends on what your business actually needs. Here are the real 2026 numbers for a small business site, including ours, including what ours doesn't do.

The four real price brackets

1. Do it yourself with a website builder: $15 to $40 a month. You pick a template, replace the content, publish. Hosting, security, updates and usually a domain are part of the fee. That's the entire cost: no setup, no surprise invoices. Two years of a typical builder runs $360 to $960. At 1h1app it's $16/month or $160/year, so $320 over two years on the annual plan.

2. A freelancer: $500 to $2,000. A designer or developer builds it for you, usually on WordPress or a builder, in two to six weeks. You pay once, then you pay for hosting and domain separately ($60 to $200 a year), then you pay for changes. A simple text update is often $50 to $100, or a week's wait.

3. An agency: $2,000 to $10,000 and up. Design, copywriting, sometimes photography, a brand discussion, a project timeline. Plus a monthly maintenance or retainer fee of $100 to $500. This is the right choice when brand is central to what you sell and you have the budget. For a plumber or a café, it's a lot of money for a page that says your hours.

4. "Free" that isn't. Free website plans exist. They put someone else's ads on your page, give you an address like yourname.theirbrand.com, withhold a custom domain, and charge you the moment you need a form or want the ad gone. Free WordPress is a different kind of free: the software costs nothing, but hosting, domain, theme and your evenings do.

The costs nobody mentions upfront

Whatever bracket you pick, these show up later. Budget for them now:

• Domain. $10 to $20 a year for a .com. Included in some builder plans (at 1h1app the first year is free on the annual plan; after that it's a normal renewal).
• Hosting. $5 to $30 a month on WordPress. Included in a builder.
• Maintenance. WordPress needs updates to the core, the theme and every plugin, and sometimes they break each other. Either you do it monthly or you pay $30 to $100 a month for someone to. Builders have no maintenance.
• Changes. "Can you update the price on the menu?" is a $50 invoice or a favor that takes a week if someone else built the site. It's free and takes two minutes if you built it yourself.
• Email forms and bookings. Often a paid plugin on WordPress. Usually included in a builder.
• Your time. The most expensive line. A freelancer saves you the build but not the back-and-forth. A builder costs you one afternoon.

GDPR and privacy costs if you serve EU visitors

If anyone in the EU or the UK can visit your site and fill in a form, GDPR applies to you, wherever you are. The minimum is a legal notice, a privacy policy and, if you set tracking cookies, a cookie policy with a consent banner.

Done wrong, this costs money twice: once when you discover it after launch and pay someone to patch it, and once if you get a complaint. Done by a lawyer from scratch, expect $300 to $1,000. Done by a template generator, $50 to $150 a year.

With 1h1app the legal pages are generated from your business details, written to EU/GDPR standards, and included. Analytics are cookie-free (visits and most-read pages, no personal data), so you don't need a cookie banner for them. Not everyone needs this, but if you have European customers it's worth checking before you commit to any route.

Honest comparison, ours included

What each option actually gives you, with no decoration.

Builder (ours, 1h1app: $16/month or $160/year, €16/€160 in Europe)

• Included: visual editor with live desktop and mobile preview, 30 templates by trade, 60-plus section types (bookings with calendar, map and hours, shop, forms, galleries, FAQ), hosting, legal pages generated from your details, cookie-free analytics, a bilingual site if you need one, up to 3 sites and 200 MB of images, and a person who answers within 24 hours.
• Also included: free .com domain for the first year on the annual plan, or connect a domain you already own.
• Trial: 7 days free, no card. No lock-in; cancel from your dashboard.
• Not included: someone to write your text or take your photos. You do that, and it takes an afternoon.
• Not for you if: you need a custom application, a store with thousands of products, or a live integration with your accounting or stock system.
• Two-year cost: $320 on the annual plan, with unlimited changes.

Freelancer ($500 to $2,000)

• Someone with taste builds it and you touch nothing.
• In exchange: hosting and domain billed separately, changes that cost money or time, and dependence on that person still being around next year.
• Two-year cost: the build plus $120 to $400 in hosting and domain plus changes. Roughly $800 to $3,000.

Agency ($2,000 to $10,000+)

• Design, copy, often photography. For when brand image matters a great deal.
• In exchange: the price, the monthly retainer, and weeks or months of timeline.
• Two-year cost: $4,000 to $20,000 with maintenance.

Free

• Fine for a personal page or a test.
• In exchange: third-party ads, an address that isn't yours, no custom domain, no legal pages, and a paid upgrade the moment you need anything normal. Free WordPress costs hosting plus your time.

How to choose for your situation

Three questions settle it:

• Do you need to change things often? Prices, menus, hours, seasonal offers, new photos. If yes, you want to be able to edit it yourself in two minutes. That rules out anything where changes go through someone else.
• Is your brand the product? A design studio, a luxury boutique, a restaurant with a Michelin ambition. If yes, an agency or a strong freelancer earns their fee. If you're a plumber, a salon, a consultant or a café, your customers want your hours and your prices, not a visual identity.
• Do you need custom software? A booking engine with your own rules, a portal, a big catalog. If yes, budget for a developer. If no, a builder covers everything on the list.

Most small businesses answer yes, no, no. That's the builder bracket, and the difference between a $16 month and a $5,000 project is money you can spend on the business itself.

Need help figuring out what should be on the site before pricing it? Read what to put on a small business website, trade by trade. And if you're torn between WordPress and a builder specifically, that comparison is here.

What it costs to not have one

One more number. A customer who googles you, finds nothing and calls the next result is a lost sale, and it happens quietly, every week, without showing up on any invoice. For most small businesses, one recovered customer a month pays for the builder route several times over. That's the comparison that matters: not builder versus agency, but website versus no website.

Still deciding who should build it? Here's the honest version of build your own website or hire a designer, and what an affordable website for small business actually includes.

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