The honest ranges
Here is what the market actually looks like for a small business, ignoring both the $12 template and the agency retainer with a project manager attached.
| Route | Rough cost | What you are really buying |
|---|---|---|
| DIY builder | $0–$400/yr | Software, plus every hour you spend learning it. The hours are the real price. |
| Template, installed for you | $400–$1,500 | Someone else's layout with your logo dropped in. Fast, and it will look like the four other businesses that bought it. |
| Independent designer | $800–$6,000 | A site shaped around your business by one person you can actually reach. |
| Agency | $8,000+ | A team, a process, a strategy document. Genuinely worth it at a certain size. Rarely at yours yet. |
Pageory sits in the independent-designer band, at the friendly end of it, because I am running a temporary founding-client offer while I build up published work. A one-page custom build starts at $200. A five-page business site starts at $450. A booking-led site starts at $700 and a small online store at $900. Extra pages are $60 each. Those are starting prices for an agreed scope, not an average, and not a permanent discount.
Why two quotes for "a website" differ so wildly
When a quote seems low, one of these is usually missing. When a quote seems high, one of these is usually included and unmentioned.
Who writes the words
Copywriting is a separate craft and a real cost. A build price that assumes you will supply finished text is not the same as one that includes writing it.
Where the pictures come from
Licensed stock, a photographer, or your own phone. Each has a different price and a very different result. See what to do when you have no photos.
How many revisions
"Unlimited revisions" is either a lie or priced in. A specific number is more honest and usually cheaper.
What connects to what
A booking system, a payment provider or a mailing list each adds configuration, testing and often a monthly fee of its own.
A quote that does not name the number of pages, who supplies content and how many rounds of changes are included is not a quote. It is an opening position.
The running costs nobody mentions
The build is the visible number. These are the ones that arrive later.
- The domain. Usually $10–$25 a year. It must be registered in your name. This is the single most important line in this article and I have written a whole piece about why.
- Hosting and SSL. For a small brochure site this can genuinely be free or near-free. If someone is charging you $50 a month purely for hosting a five-page static site, ask what else is in there.
- Third-party subscriptions. Booking software, e-commerce plans, transaction fees, premium plugins. These are yours, in your name, and they continue whether or not your designer does.
- Changes. The one people forget. Every business changes its hours, its prices and its services. Decide up front whether you are editing the site yourself, paying by the hour, or on a plan. Pageory's Website Care is $40/month and covers small edits to existing content.
When cheap is the right answer
I will happily talk someone out of a bigger project. If you are testing whether a service has any customers at all, a single well-written page with a phone number beats a five-page site you cannot fill. You can add pages later; that is the entire point of building on something you own.
If you already have steady demand and your website is losing you enquiries, spending the least possible money is the expensive choice. That is a different conversation, usually a redesign rather than a rebuild.
Questions I get about price
Is the $200 offer real, or is it bait?
It is real, it is temporary, and it is for a custom one-page build with an agreed scope. There is no countdown timer and no invented number of remaining slots. When founding-client pricing ends, the pages saying $200 will change.
Do you take a deposit?
No deposit is required to start. Payment is due before launch unless the written quote says otherwise.
Why is a five-page site more than five times a one-page site?
It usually is not — five pages start at $450, not $1,000. Structure, navigation and the shared design system are done once. What scales is the content and the number of decisions.
Can I pay you to just fix the site I already have?
Often, yes, and often that is the better job. I will tell you if I think the existing site is worth keeping.