When you Google anything about starting your business’s website, you get many high-ranking blogs from so many strong and established companies. They are all extremely successful in the website development business or even in online marketing. They have the authority and establishment to tell you exactly what to do. But what you end up actually finding instead of useful articles, is a lot of “it depends” answers. Let me break down what these blogs are actually saying. They are saying: we don’t want to scare you off with a number. Honestly speaking? That’s not entirely wrong. A poorly framed price can send someone running before they understand what they're actually paying for.
But it's also a little self-serving. The broader your answer, the broader your audience. If you never commit to a number, you never lose a lead. The result is a sea of articles that technically answer the question while telling you absolutely nothing useful.
This one is different. I'm going to give you real numbers.
The honest price ranges
Let's start with the big picture. There are essentially four ways to get a website, and they exist in completely different universes.
DIY platforms (Squarespace, Wix, GoDaddy Website Builder, etc.)
You're looking at $16-$49 per month, billed annually. That's $192–$588 a year just to keep the lights on. The builder is included, templates are included, and hosting is included. What's not included is anyone who knows what they're doing — that's you in that situation. If your time is worth anything, factor that into the cost of running the website. These platforms are fine for a placeholder or a passion project. For a business trying to rank on Google and make a real first impression, they have serious limitations.
Freelance developers
This is where the range gets wild: $1,500 on the low end, $8,000+ on the high end, for what might look like the same five-page website on paper. The difference is experience, location, process, and what's actually included. More on that later.
Small agencies (like us)
$5,000-$20,000. You're paying for a process, not just a deliverable. Strategy, design, development, SEO setup, and someone accountable when something breaks.
Large or full-service agencies
$20,000-$100,000+. Usually reserved for enterprise clients, complex web applications, or companies with serious marketing budgets. If you're reading this post, this probably isn't your category yet.
Why two "5-page websites" can cost between $800 and $15,000
Page count is almost never what drives the price. A five-page website can be built in a weekend or take three months, depending on what's actually involved. Here's what moves the number.
Custom design vs. a template
A template is a pre-built layout someone else designed. You swap in your logo, your colors, your text, and you're done. It's fast and it's cheap. Custom design means someone is building your site's visual identity from scratch including the layout, the typography, and the way elements interact as you scroll. That takes real time, and real time costs real money. The difference in outcome is also real: a custom-designed site looks like your business. A template looks like everyone else's (this also happens when you go with DIY platforms for website building).
CMS integration
CMS stands for content management system. It's what lets you log in and update your own website without calling a developer. Adding one properly takes time to build and configure. Skip it and you're dependent on your developer every time you want to change your hours or swap out a photo. Most business owners don't realize this isn't automatic. It's a deliberate build decision.
SEO setup
A website that isn't set up for search engines is essentially invisible. Proper SEO setup means clean page titles, meta descriptions, structured data, a sitemap, Google Search Console connected, and fast load times. Some developers include this. Most don't. If it's not in the scope of work, assume it isn't happening.
Copywriting and photography
The words on your website and the images on your website are not usually included in a web development quote. If you hand your developer a Word doc and a folder of iPhone photos, that's what goes on the site. Professional copy and photography are separate line items and they matter more than most people expect.
Who's actually doing the work
A developer in Queens, NY charging $5,000 and a developer overseas charging $800 may both call it a "five-page website." The difference is communication, accountability, understanding of your local market, and what happens when something needs to be fixed six months later.
Timeline
Need it in two weeks? That costs more. Rushed projects compress the process, which means less refinement, more stress, and usually a premium on the rate. Build in realistic time and you'll get a better product at a better price.
The price you see isn't exactly the price you pay
The quote your developer sends you is for building the website. It is not for everything that comes after. Here's what tends to surprise people once the invoice is paid and the site is live.
Hosting
Your website lives on a server somewhere. Someone has to pay for that server. Cheap shared hosting runs $5-$15 a month and puts your site on the same machine as thousands of others, which means slower load times and no guarantees when traffic spikes. Better hosting, like a CDN-based solution that serves your site from servers close to your visitors, costs more but performs significantly better. At Really Far, we build on Cloudflare Pages — it's fast, globally distributed, and the hosting cost is effectively zero for static sites. That's one of the structural advantages of building without WordPress.
Domain and SSL
Your domain name runs $10–$20 a year to renew. SSL certificates, the thing that makes your site show "https" instead of "http" and stops browsers from flagging it as insecure, used to cost hundreds of dollars a year. Most modern hosting setups include them free now, but not all. Ask before you assume.
WordPress plugins and theme licenses
If your site is built on WordPress, it is almost certainly running plugins, software add-ons that handle contact forms, SEO, security, backups, page speed, and more. Many of these have free tiers and paid tiers. The paid versions renew annually. A typical WordPress site might be running $200-$600 a year in plugin licenses alone, quietly, in the background, whether you're paying attention or not. Theme licenses are separate, and can also add to the yearly running cost of your website.
Ongoing maintenance
WordPress updates constantly. The core software updates. The plugins update. The theme updates. Sometimes those updates conflict with each other and break something on your site. Someone has to handle that: either you, or a developer on retainer. Most small business owners don't realize this until something breaks and they're scrambling to find someone to fix it on a Friday afternoon before a big weekend.
Static sites sidestep most of this. There's no CMS to patch, no plugins to update, no database to secure. It's not a sales pitch, it's just how the technology works.
The "I'll handle it myself" tax
This one doesn't show up on any invoice. It's the hours you spend trying to figure out why your contact form stopped working, why your page looks broken on mobile, or how to add a new service to your navigation. Time spent managing a website you don't fully understand is time not spent running your business. That cost is real even if nobody charges you for it.
What a good website actually looks like at each price point
Now that you know what drives the price, here's what you should realistically expect to receive at each tier and what you shouldn't.
Under $2,000
Be honest with yourself about what this buys. At this price point you're likely working with someone very early in their career, an overseas freelancer, or a heavily templated DIY build with some professional help layered on top. That's not always a dealbreaker, a clean, fast template site is better than a bloated custom one but you should go in with clear expectations. Custom design, SEO strategy, CMS integration, and ongoing support are probably not in the package. Be sure to get everything you want for your website done in writing.
$2,500-$5,000
This is the sweet spot for a serious small or local service business. At this range you should expect a professionally designed site, mobile responsiveness, fast load times, basic on-page SEO setup, a contact form that works, and a developer who communicates like a professional. This is exactly what our Starter Site package covers. You won't get a massive custom web application, but you will get something you're proud to hand someone a business card in front of.
$5,000-$10,000
Here you're buying more than a website, you're buying a system. Expect a fully custom design, CMS integration so you can manage your own content, comprehensive technical SEO, schema markup, Google Analytics, and a developer or agency with a real process behind them. This is our Business Site and Site + SEO Launch territory. By the end of this engagement your site should be ranking, loading fast, and generating leads. Not just existing.
$10,000 and above
This range makes sense when your website is genuinely complex like e-commerce with large product catalogs, membership platforms, custom web applications, multilingual sites, or enterprise-level SEO campaigns. If you're a local service business in Queens trying to get found on Google and convert visitors into calls, you almost certainly don't need to be at this price tier yet. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise.
The right question to ask
Don't ask "how much does it cost." Ask "what will I have when this is done, and what happens after?" A good developer or agency should be able to answer both clearly, in plain English, without hesitation. If they can't, that tells you something.
What we charge, and why
I'll keep this short because this isn't a sales page, it's a blog post. But since the whole point of this article is transparency, it would be a little hypocritical to dance around our own numbers.
At Really Far, we build static websites for small and local businesses. No WordPress, no bloat, no monthly maintenance surprises. Our projects start at $2,500 and go up from there depending on scope. Here's the quick version:
Every site we deliver scores 95 or above on Google PageSpeed. That's not a nice-to-have, it directly affects where you rank and whether people stick around once they land on your page.
If you want the full breakdown, our pricing page has everything.
Not sure where your project falls?
That's exactly what the free audit is for. I'll run your current site through Google's performance tools, show you what's working and what's hurting you, and give you an honest read on whether you need a refresh, a rebuild, or nothing at all. No pitch, no obligation, just useful information.
If that sounds worth your time, reach out here. I'll get back to you within a few days.