What a website costs
Most studios won't tell you until you've sat through a call. So here it is first: $150 a month, everything included, and no invoice at the end of the build. That’s the whole price. The rest of this page is what sits behind it.
One plan, $150 a month. Three-month minimum, then cancel anytime.
- A hand-built website, designed for your trade
- Monthly updates — and a yearly style overhaul
- Contact form, wired and tested
- Google Search Console + Business Profile, managed
- Backlink tracking and downtime monitoring
- A plain-English health report, every month
- One-Tap Review cards for your counter
The honest answer to the question you actually asked
If you search what a website costs, you'll get a range so wide it's useless — a few hundred dollars for something you assemble yourself, four or five thousand for a custom build from an agency, and a monthly fee on top of either one for somebody to keep it alive.
The number is wide because "a website" isn't one thing. A single page that lists your hours is not the same job as a site that has to convince a homeowner to call you instead of the shop one town over. What you're really buying is somebody's attention over time — and that’s the part most quotes leave out.
Here's how I price it instead.
There is no build invoice
This is the part that surprises people. Most shops charge four or five thousand dollars up front to build the site, hand you the keys, and then bill monthly to maintain it. I fold the build into the monthly instead — so the day you say yes costs the same as the day after, and there's no lump sum waiting at launch.
It means I carry the build. That’s deliberate: it keeps me on the hook for whether the thing actually works, rather than paid in full before you've seen a single visitor.
No tiers, either. No "premium" version of the same site with a different color on the button. Every website I build gets the same care and the same standards — there is no better version to sell you.
What isn't in it
Some businesses need more than pages. Online ordering that talks to the kitchen. A booking calendar that knows who’s free. An MLS feed that pulls live listings. A store that takes payments and tracks inventory.
Those are real builds on top of a website, and they take real setup work, so they get quoted once, separately, before anything starts. The monthly stays $150 either way — there’s no premium plan and no upgrade path. It’s the same site and the same attention; the setup is just its own line.
If you’re not sure which side of that line you’re on, ask. It’s a short answer and it costs nothing.
How it starts
One free mockup, before you enroll. A real page, your business, your words — not a template with your logo dropped in. No obligation, and nothing to cancel if you'd rather not go ahead.
Then you pay, and then I build. The first month goes through Stripe and the work begins. Payment comes first because the build is the expensive part and it's already inside the monthly — but you've seen the mockup by then, so you know what you are buying.
Three-month minimum, then cancel anytime. Three months is roughly how long it takes to build the site properly and get it settled. After that there's no contract and no exit fee. Stop whenever it stops being worth it.
You own the code. Once the three-month minimum is paid in full, the site code is yours to take anywhere. Reusable tools and hosted services stay with the studio, but the site itself is not held hostage.
How long it takes
About seven weeks end to end — a week to talk, a week to plan, four or five to build, and one to launch and hand off properly. You can read the four steps I work through in detail, and see the sites I've built and what each one had to do.
After launch, the same monthly keeps it running — that is what website maintenance and care covers, and it is not a separate bill.
Still deciding?
Look at the work first, then tell me what the business does. If a website isn't the right spend for you this year, I'll say so — that's a shorter conversation than a refund.