Web development for small businesses
The honest shape of a small business website project: what it costs, who should write the content, why maintenance is a subscription, and what to demand before signing.
Bands are editorial estimates, Q2 2026 — same method as the rate benchmarks. Your quote is scoped to your actual project.
A small business website has one job: turn the attention you already earn — referrals, search, a van with your name on it — into a phone call, a form, or a booking. Everything on the site either serves that job or is decoration you were billed for.
Done properly, a 5–10 page site with a CMS, real contact forms and basic SEO foundations lands between $3,000 and $12,000. The honest range is wide because of two variables nobody quotes for upfront: who writes the content, and how many genuinely unique page designs there are. Ten pages from three templates is a fraction of ten bespoke pages — usually a better fraction, too.
The decision that matters most after launch is ownership. The site should be yours in every register that exists: domain in your name, hosting in your name, CMS admin in your name, and a developer who hands over credentials instead of renting them back to you monthly. A website you cannot leave with is not an asset; it is a hostage situation with a nice header image.
Quarterly, and only when the numbers move
Get the rate report before you negotiate.
Updated rate bands across the major stacks and regions, plus what changed and why. No other email.
Questions
Asked about hiring for small business.
For most, yes — it runs a huge share of the business web, which means help is cheap and available everywhere, and editors find it familiar. Alternatives earn their place when the site is simple and mostly static (lighter, faster builds) or when the business is fundamentally a store (Shopify). What matters more than the platform is that you can operate it and leave it — both of which are ownership questions, not software questions.
Because the same words describe different projects. The $800 quote usually assumes a template, your content, your images and your patience; the $15,000 one assumes custom design, copywriting and hand-holding. Compare specs, not prices: demand a written scope with every quote, and the variance collapses to calibre and margin. The bands on this site exist precisely so you can sanity-check which is which.
Across the market, most retainers sit between $500 and $3,000 per month, with small business plans at the low end of that. What matters more than the number is what it covers: updates, backups, restore testing, and a response time for breakage. If a maintenance quote cannot list those four things, it is a subscription, not a service.
The build should include the technical minimum — clean titles, mobile layout, speed, sitemap, sensible page structure. Ranking for competitive local terms is ongoing work on content and reputation, which is separate money. Be suspicious of anyone bundling "SEO" into a build without saying which of the two they mean.
Send the brief. Get a real number for your small business project.
Scoped quote within two business days. If it's not a fit, you keep the scope and the numbers.
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