How Much Does a Website Cost for a Small Business?

Ask around and you'll get every answer from "free" to "five grand" — and confusingly, they're all true. What a small business website costs depends entirely on who does the work and who keeps it alive afterward.

The usual ways to get a website

• A designer or agency: commonly $1,500–$5,000+ up front for a small business site — and that's the build alone. Hosting, updates, and changes are extra, forever.
• DIY builders (Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy): $16–$50 a month — but you do all the work. For most owners the site gets half-built once and never touched again, which is why so many DIY sites are quietly embarrassing.
• A friend or relative who "does computers": cheap until they get busy — and then nobody can update your site at all.

The cost nobody budgets for: keeping it alive

The build is the beginning, not the end. Hosting, security updates, content changes, search-engine basics, analytics — a website that nobody maintains is a website that slowly stops working for you. The upkeep, not the build, is where most small business websites die.

The managed alternative

A managed website flips the model: one flat monthly rate covers the build and the running of it. With Rent-a-Site, that's $100 a month — the whole price. We build the site, you approve it before it goes live, and then we handle hosting, monitoring, Google Analytics, search basics, and fresh content every month. No setup fee, no contract, cancel anytime.

For comparison: two hours of agency time bills $150–$300 almost anywhere. A managed $100/month with the build included isn't a typo — it's launch pricing for our first 20 hero clients, and it's locked for as long as they stay subscribed.

Related: is a Facebook page enough, or do you need a real website?