What a Business Website Gives You, and What a Year Costs
What a website does for a local business, and an honest bill for having one for a year.
By Julia Profit Studio Published 8 min read
In BrightLocal’s 2026 survey of 1,002 US adults, 97% said they read reviews of local businesses, and 54% said they visit a business’s website after reading positive reviews [1]. Your reviews bring people to the door. Your website is what they see when they open it.
Most owners ask two questions before they order a site: what will it do for me, and what will it cost me every year, not only on day one. This page answers both, with the prices we charge and the costs that are not ours to set.
What visitors do before they contact you
The BrightLocal survey shows the order of events. A customer searches, reads reviews, and then checks the business itself [1]. If your only online presence is a listing on someone else’s platform, that last step ends on a page you do not control.
A website is the one page where you decide what is said. It can show your services and your prices, answer the questions people ask before they call, and give them one clear way to reach you.
What a website gives you that a listing does not
A listing shows a name, a phone number and a few reviews. A website adds five things.
Your own words: what you do, where you work, how you work. Your own proof: photos of real jobs, and reports anyone can open. A form that reaches you directly. Legal pages that describe what the site actually does. And an address search engines and AI assistants can read, because the text is plain text on the page.
It also belongs to you. When the domain, the hosting account and the code are registered in your name, you can take them to another developer at any time.
The one-year bill
The price of the build is one line. These are the lines that follow, and who charges each one.
| Line | What it is | Who charges it | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build, one page | A first screen, a few sections, one contact form | Us | $599, once |
| Build, five to ten pages | Built to one design | Us | $1,199, once |
| Domain name | The yearly fee for your address | The registrar you pick | Shown by the registrar at checkout |
| Hosting | The place the site runs | The host you pick | Free plans exist; some hosts need a paid plan for business use |
| Maintenance | Updates and quick edits after launch | Us | $119 a month, optional |
Two examples, using only our prices. A one-page site with maintenance costs $599 to build and $1,428 to keep for twelve months ($119 x 12), which is $2,027 in the first year, plus your domain. The same site without maintenance costs $599 plus your domain. Maintenance is optional, and some sites need no change for months. If you skip it and later want a change, we quote it before we start.
You can see all current prices on our pricing page. Prices for online stores and for moving a WordPress site are listed there too.
What is not in our price
Hosting is not in our price, because you choose the host and you pay the host directly. Cloudflare Pages has a free plan [2]. Vercel’s free Hobby plan is for non-commercial, personal use only, so a business site on Vercel needs a paid Pro plan, at $20 per developer seat per month [3]. Check each host’s current terms before you decide, because they change.
Also not in our price: the domain fee, paid stock photos, a store platform plan if you sell online, and payment processing fees on your sales. We list each one in the agreement before you sign.
What a year costs with WordPress, for comparison
One agency that publishes its estimates puts the realistic yearly cost of a WordPress business site, for hosting, paid plugins and maintenance, at $700 to $2,100, and a comparable Astro site at $0 to $200 [4]. Take that as one agency’s estimate. The point is not that one number is right. The point is to ask for the yearly bill before you sign, whoever you hire.
What you own at the end
When the final payment is made, the domain, the hosting account, the site’s code, and every page, text and image made for your site are yours. They live in accounts opened in your name. We keep the right to show the finished site in our portfolio unless you ask us not to, and our own general tools and know-how. Fonts and stock photos keep their own licenses, and we tell you which ones.
Six questions to ask any web developer
- Whose name is the domain registered in?
- Where does the site run, and who pays the host?
- What will it cost each year after launch?
- How do I change a word on a page?
- Is there a written agreement, and how many rounds of changes does it include?
- If I leave, what do I take with me?
If the answers are clear, you are talking to someone who runs a real business. If they are vague, ask again.
How we get paid
We send a written agreement first. We ask for half of the price before we start and half when you approve the finished site, before it goes live on your domain. You pay by card or bank transfer through our payment provider, or by PayPal invoice, and larger projects can go through Escrow.com milestones. The steps are on our how to pay page. Nothing starts until the agreement is signed and the first payment has arrived.
Tell us about your business, and we will send back what you get, the price and the delivery date, in writing.
Sources
- BrightLocal, “Local Consumer Review Survey 2026,” 1,002 US adults, published February 11, 2026. https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/
- Cloudflare, “Pages limits.” https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/platform/limits/
- Vercel documentation, “Hobby plan,” last updated September 14, 2026. https://vercel.com/docs/plans/hobby
- WebAloha, “WordPress vs Astro: Which Is Better for Business in 2026?” (one agency’s published estimates). https://webaloha.co/wordpress-vs-astro-for-business/