How much does a website cost per month - and is per month even the right way to buy one? Ask the industry and you get a range so wide it answers nothing: its own reference pages put a website at $100 to $100,000 or more, which is like pricing "a vehicle" somewhere between a skateboard and a freight train. The ranges are useless because they mix four completely different ways of buying: a builder subscription, a self-managed WordPress site, a hired professional, and a one-time build. Each has a different price shape - and the shape matters more than the sticker.
The short answer: a DIY website builder's cheapest ad-free plan costs $9.99 to $19 per month billed annually, with renewals and extras that push a realistic three-year total to $396-$724. A self-managed WordPress site runs roughly $975 to $4,600 over three years for a small business. A freelancer charges $500 to $5,000 to build one, an agency $3,000 up plus a monthly retainer that alone can pass $4,000 a year. And a custom-coded one-page site bought once costs $297, or about $351 over three years with the domain - the only option on the list with no monthly bill at all.
The rest of this post shows where those numbers come from, current as of August 2026, with every price sourced. It ends with the table the "website cost calculator" searches are actually looking for: what each route totals over three years.
How Much Does a Website Cost Per Month?
A website costs $9.99 to $19 per month on a mainstream builder's cheapest ad-free plan with a custom domain - $9.99 at GoDaddy, $17 at Wix, $19 at Squarespace, billed annually - and every one of those numbers rises 24-50% if you pay month-to-month instead of committing to a year up front. Top tiers run $99 to $159 per month.
The current entry-level website pricing, checked against sources updated in mid-2026:
| Builder | Plan | Paid annually | Paid monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| GoDaddy | Basic | $9.99/mo | $14.99/mo |
| Wix | Light | $17/mo | $24/mo |
| Squarespace | Basic | $19/mo | $25/mo |
| Hostinger | Premium | $2.99/mo (48-month prepay) | - |
Sources: Wix's paid plans run $17 to $159 per month billed annually, with month-to-month billing raising Light to $24 and Core to $36. Squarespace runs $19 to $99 per month annually, $25 to $139 month-to-month. GoDaddy's builder runs $9.99 to $29.99 per month billed annually, with monthly billing up to 50% more.
The Hostinger row is the fine print in miniature: the $2.99/month price requires paying 48 months up front and renews at around $10.99/month. That is not a $2.99 website. It is a $143 commitment followed by a quadrupled renewal - a pattern you will meet again below.
The Advertised Monthly Price Is Not What You Pay
The advertised price is a floor, not an estimate. Four things push the real monthly cost of a builder site above the sticker: annual-billing pricing, domain renewals, transaction fees, and paid extras.
- The price assumes annual billing. Every headline number in the table above requires paying a year up front. Pay month-to-month and Wix Light jumps from $17 to $24 - a 41% premium for flexibility.
- The free domain lasts one year. After that, a .com on Wix renews at $17.35/year and Squarespace domains renew at about $20/year for a .com, up to $70 for premium TLDs. GoDaddy's custom domains run about $17.99/year after intro pricing, and its business email expires after year one and renews at $0.99 to $16.99/month.
- Lower plans take a cut of your sales. Squarespace charges a 2% transaction fee on store sales on its cheapest plan, and 7% on digital content, dropping only on higher tiers. Selling anything means either paying the fee or upgrading.
- The plan you start on is rarely the plan you end on. Features that sound optional - removing ads, connecting analytics, accepting payments - are distributed across tiers precisely so that growth means upgrading. We broke down the full Wix version of this in the real cost of Wix.
None of this is a scandal. It is a subscription business doing what subscription businesses do. The point is arithmetic: "from $17/month" reads as $204 a year, but once the domain renews, year two of the same Wix site is about $221 - and $138 to $248 across the three builders in the table above - before any plan upgrade lands. If you pay for Wix mainly to be found, read why Wix websites struggle to rank first.
How Much Does a Website Cost Per Year?
A website costs $138 to $248 a year on a builder's cheapest plan once the domain renews, $300 to $700 a year in maintenance for a self-managed WordPress site, $1,400 to $5,400 a year on an agency retainer, and about $18 a year - the domain renewal alone - for a custom-coded one-time build.
The WordPress Route, Broken Down
A self-managed WordPress website costs a small business roughly $375 to $3,200 in year one - $75 to $2,500 to get built plus $300 to $700 a year to keep running - and $300 to $700 each year after, per WebFX's 2026 cost breakdown. WordPress itself is free; everything around it is not.
The per-component numbers from WebFX's WordPress cost guide: the hosting cost runs $3 to $800/month depending on tier, a theme $0 to $200, plugins $0 to $1,000, and ongoing maintenance $300 to $700 a year for a small business site. The spread on hosting alone explains most of the confusion in this market - $3/month shared hosting and $800/month managed hosting are both "WordPress hosting" the way a tent and a hotel are both accommodation.
The honest caveat about the WordPress route is not the money, it is whose evening it costs. Updates, plugin conflicts, security patches, backups - the $300-$700 maintenance figure exists because this is real recurring work. Pay someone and it is a bill; do it yourself and it is your time, which for a business owner is the same thing with worse hours.
How Much Does It Cost to Have Someone Build Your Website?
A freelancer charges $500 to $5,000 for a small business web design, and an agency $3,000 to $100,000 or more, per WebFX - with agency maintenance retainers adding $119 to $449 per month on top. Most local businesses hiring out land near the bottom of those ranges, but the retainer is where the money actually goes.
Run the retainer forward: $119 to $449 a month is $1,400 to $5,400 a year for upkeep on a site that already exists. Over three years, a modest $3,000 agency build carries $4,300 to $16,200 in maintenance behind it. The build is the visible cost; the relationship is the expensive part.
Then there is the replacement cycle, which almost no cost guide prices in. Orbit Media's analysis of 50 top marketing websites via the Internet Archive found an average website lifespan of 2 years and 1 month, against 6 years and 4 months for its small and mid-size client sites, and a Databox study of 145 companies it cites found 49% had completely redesigned their website within the past two years. A website is not a purchase, it is a purchase you repeat. Whatever route you price, price it knowing you will likely buy it again within five or six years.
For context on who buys what: Clutch's 2025 survey found 41% of small businesses use DIY builders like Wix and Squarespace, 34% use WordPress or Shopify, and 12% have custom-built sites - with 45% outsourcing the work. The market splits almost evenly between people paying with money and people paying with their own weekends.
Website Cost Calculator: What Each Route Totals Over Three Years
A three-year website cost calculator gives, side by side: about $351 total for a one-time custom-coded page, $396 to $724 for a builder's cheapest plan, $975 to $4,600 for self-managed WordPress, and $7,300 to $19,200 for an agency build with a retainer.
Three years is the fair comparison window - long enough for renewals and retainers to land, shorter than the typical redesign cycle. The full arithmetic, using the sourced prices above:
| Route | What's counted | 3-year total | Per month equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|
| PageDrop one-page build | $297 once + domain ~$18/yr | ~$351 | ~$10 |
| GoDaddy Basic | $9.99 x 36 + domain renewals | ~$396 | ~$11 |
| Wix Light | $17 x 36 + domain renewals | ~$647 | ~$18 |
| Squarespace Basic | $19 x 36 + domain renewals | ~$724 | ~$20 |
| WordPress, self-managed | $75-$2,500 build + $300-$700/yr | $975-$4,600 | $27-$128 |
| Freelancer build | $500-$5,000 build, upkeep extra | $500-$5,000+ | $14-$139+ |
| Agency build + retainer | $3,000 build + $119-$449/mo | $7,300-$19,200 | $200-$530 |
How Much Does a Website Cost for a Small Business?
Over three years, a single-location small business pays about $351 for a one-time custom-coded page, $396 to $724 on a builder's cheapest plan, $975 to $4,600 self-managing WordPress, or $7,300 to $19,200 for an agency build plus retainer. Most of that spread is not quality - it is who does the recurring work, and how often.
Three caveats, because a table this tidy earns skepticism. The builder totals price the bare plan and assume the cheapest tier actually holds - GoDaddy's prices in particular rise substantially after the promotional first year, any selling pushes you up a tier, and a fully working builder site with business email and apps runs far higher, as we showed in the real cost of Wix. The freelancer figure buys a build with no upkeep, so add hosting and someone to call when it breaks. And the agency range uses the bottom of WebFX's $3,000-$100,000 build spread - the top of that range buys a site costing more than a house deposit.
What the table cannot show is what you get for the money, and there the cheap end has a real weakness: builder sites are slow. We measured this separately - builder platforms routinely score under 50 on mobile PageSpeed because the drag-and-drop editor ships with every page whether you use it or not. The subscription buys convenience for the owner, not speed for the visitor.
What About a One Page Website?
A one page website is the cheapest route to a professional site over three years: about $111 if you build it yourself on Carrd, or about $351 for a custom-coded page paid for once, which is PageDrop's own price. The recurring bill in every route above pays for infrastructure a single-location business mostly does not use, and a static page that hosts for free removes it. The full route-by-route breakdown, including freelancer and agency quotes for a single page, is in one page website cost over three years, and the case for when one page is enough is in one-page vs multi-page websites.
For the numbers in your own trade:
- Restaurant website cost
- Salon website cost
- Coffee shop website cost
- Painter website cost
- Plumber website cost
- Electrician website cost
- Handyman website design and cost
- Dentist website design and cost
And if the question underneath the budget is what the page actually has to do, the design guides cover that trade by trade:
- Plumber website design
- Electrician website design and the electrician website essentials checklist
- Painter website design and the painter website essentials checklist
- Salon website design
- Restaurant website design
- Coffee shop website design
- Life coach website design
The trade-off is real and worth stating: a one-time build has no drag-and-drop editor and no app store. If you need a booking system, inventory, or weekly content changes, you are not this option's customer - a builder or WordPress genuinely fits better. If your site is a shopfront that changes a few times a year, paying monthly for editing capability you use twice is the most expensive way to own a simple thing.
How Much Should a Small Business Spend on a Website?
A single-location small business should expect to spend $351 to $724 over three years for a simple professional site, $975 to $4,600 if it needs e-commerce or frequent content changes, and should treat anything past $5,000 as buying marketing services, not a website. The deciding question is not the website budget - it is how often the site needs to change.
- Site changes a few times a year (trades, salons, restaurants, studios, consultants): a one-time custom-coded page. Lowest three-year total, fastest pages, no bill. This is most local businesses, and the case for whether a business needs a website at all got stronger in 2026.
- Site changes weekly, or sells online: a builder or WordPress earns its subscription. Budget the realistic tier, not the advertised one - and read free vs paid builders before taking a free plan.
- Site is the business (content, bookings, e-commerce at volume): hire properly, budget the retainer, and treat the Orbit Media redesign cycle as a line item - you will rebuild within a few years.
The one mistake that shows up at every price point is buying by monthly sticker. A $17/month site (billed annually) and a $297 one-time site cross over before month eighteen, and the subscription keeps running for as long as the business does. Whatever you buy, do the three-year math first - that is the whole trick, and it fits on the back of an envelope. And if the plan is for the site to pay for itself through search, read what six months of content marketing actually returned here before budgeting for content.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do website builders cost more than the advertised price?
Because the headline figure is the annual-billing rate for the cheapest ad-free tier, and almost nobody stays on it. Month-to-month billing runs 24-50% higher, the first-year domain renews at full price, and the features small businesses actually want - a booking widget, extra storage, removing platform branding - sit on tiers running $99 to $159. The advertised price is the floor, not the bill.
What are the ongoing costs of a website after it is built?
Domain renewal is the only unavoidable one, at roughly $18 a year. Everything else depends on the route: a builder keeps charging its subscription indefinitely, a self-managed WordPress site costs a small business $300 to $700 a year in maintenance per WebFX because plugins and core updates cannot be skipped safely, and an agency retainer runs $1,400 to $5,400. Static files have no platform to maintain, so they have no equivalent line.
How much does a website cost for a small business?
Over three years: roughly $351 for a one-time custom-coded page, $396 to $724 on a builder's cheapest plan, $975 to $4,600 self-managing WordPress, and $7,300 to $19,200 with an agency build plus retainer. Clutch found 41% of small businesses use DIY builders and 45% outsource - a split between paying with money and paying with time.
Is a one-page website cheaper than a multi-page site?
Usually, though not for the reason people expect. The saving is not the page count, it is the absence of a platform: static files need no CMS, no plugins and no updates, so hosting is free and the only recurring cost is the domain. A multi-page site built the same way costs little more; one built on a subscription platform carries that subscription forever.
Do I have to pay monthly for a website?
No. The monthly fee pays for the platform - the editor, apps, and hosting bundled by Wix or Squarespace - not for the website itself. A custom-coded site is static files you own, hosted free on services like Cloudflare Pages, with the domain (about $18/year) as the only recurring cost.
How much does it cost to have someone build a website?
Per WebFX, freelance web design runs $500 to $5,000 and agencies $3,000 to $100,000+, with agency maintenance at $119 to $449 per month after launch. For a single-location business the useful comparison is total cost over three years, where the retainer usually ends up larger than the build.
Why do website builders get more expensive over time?
Three mechanisms: the advertised price requires annual prepayment and rises for monthly billing; the free first-year domain renews at $17-$20 a year; and features are distributed across tiers so growth forces upgrades - Squarespace's cheapest plan takes a 2% cut of store sales, dropping only on higher tiers. Builders also raise renewal rates after promotional periods, most sharply in Hostinger's case, where $2.99/month renews at around $10.99.
What is the cheapest way to get a professional business website?
Over any period past eighteen months: a one-time custom-coded page on your own domain, hosted free as static files - about $351 across three years. The cheapest month-one option is a free builder plan, but it puts your business on a borrowed subdomain with the platform's ads; we covered why that costs more than it saves in our free vs paid website builders comparison.