I need a website for my business

There are four realistic ways to get a website for a small business, and about $8,000 separates the cheapest from the dearest over two years. Here are all four, with current prices, the arithmetic, and honest guidance on which one fits you.

What are the four ways to get a website, and what does each cost?

Build it yourself on a site builder ($9.99 to $29 a month), hire a freelancer ($1,000 to $5,000 once), hire a local agency ($5,000 and up plus a retainer), or pay a monthly service to build and run it ($299 on approval, then $69 a month). The real difference is not price. It is who does the work, and who fixes it at 9pm on a Friday.

Checked 14 September 2026. Wix's pricing page lists Light at $17.77 a month and Core at $29.77, billed annually. Website Builder Expert (August 2026) lists Squarespace Basic at $19 annually, $25 monthly; its GoDaddy review (October 2025) lists Basic at $9.99, an introductory rate that renews higher. The same publisher (December 2025) puts freelancers at "around $50 to $200 per hour", a professional build at "upwards of $5,000".

What does each route cost over two years?

Two years is the honest window, because a website is not a purchase. It is a subscription wearing a purchase's clothes. A $20 a year domain sits in every row, so the comparison is fair.

One number to hold those quotes against. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics put median pay for web developers and digital designers at $99,520 a year, $47.85 an hourin May 2025 (bls.gov). At that rate a $3,000 agency build is about 63 hours of work and a $1,500 freelance build about 31. That is the arithmetic under every quote you will get: the question is not the price, it is what fits in the hours.

Which route should I actually pick?

If you need one page, have under $500 to spend over two years, and can find 20 to 40 hours, build it yourself on Wix or Squarespace. We mean that. A plumber with a phone number, a service list and six real photos does not need us.

• Build it yourself when you have more time than money. Pick a template you can live with: Website Builder Expert (April 2026) notes that "templates cannot be changed after your site is live with either Wix or Squarespace" and that "neither Wix nor Squarespace offers an automated migration process". Plan to stay; if you outgrow it, see moving off Wix or Squarespace.
• Hire a freelancer when you have a specific look in mind, $1,500 or more, and someone who will own the site afterwards. Get the domain, files and logins in your own name before the final payment — the questions to ask a designer cover the rest.
• Hire an agency when you need an online store, a booking system, a members area, a custom web app, or several locations under one brand. We build none of those, so hire the agency, not us.
• Pay monthly when you want it handled, you do not want an invoice every time a price changes, and you still want to own everything. That is what a monthly website plan is for.

What does a small business website actually need?

Six things: who you are and where, what you do, proof the work is real, how to reach you without a long form, your service area, and your hours. Most small businesses need four to eight pages, not forty. Copy the brief below and hand it to whoever builds the site, including yourself.

HOMEPAGE BRIEF — fill this in, send it to whoever builds the site

1. Business name, address, phone, hours — written exactly as they appear
   on your Google Business Profile. Character for character.
2. One sentence, first thing on the page:
   "We [service] for [who] in [town]."
3. Your top 3 services. One short paragraph each, in your own words.
4. Service area: the towns you cover, or a radius in miles.
5. 6-10 real photos of your work, your van, your team. No stock photos.
6. What a visitor should do next: call, text, or a 4-field form
   (name, phone, town, the job). Never more than 4 fields.
7. Licence and insurance numbers, if your trade has them.
8. The 3 questions customers always ask, and your answers.

If a quote does not cover all 8 of these, ask what it does cover.

What it does not need: an image slider, a stock photo of a handshake, a chat bubble nobody answers, or a blog you will abandon in March. Nor an SEO package on day one: Google's own SEO starter guide opens with "You usually don't need to do anything except publish your site on the web", and cautions that "Some changes might take effect in a few hours, others could take several months". A page that loads in under 2 seconds on a phone and shows your number in the corner beats a prettier one that does neither.

Do I need a website for my business at all?

Honestly, not always. If you are fully booked on word of mouth, take no new customers, and have a complete Google Business Profile with photos and reviews, a website is optional and anybody telling you otherwise is selling one. That is a real answer and it is free.

You do need one when any of these is true: people search for what you do before they choose (most trades, most professional services), you want enquiries that arrive while you are asleep, you are quoting against competitors who have one, or something you rent — a platform page, a directory listing — is currently your only presence. The last is the strongest reason, and it is about ownership rather than marketing.

What should a website include, and how do I make it look professional?

Professional is mostly subtraction. The things that make a small business site look amateur are additions: a rotating slider, three different typefaces, stock photographs of people who do not work there, a chat bubble nobody answers, and text set in a colour that is hard to read on a phone in daylight.

What reads as professional, in order of effect: your own photographs instead of stock, one typeface used consistently, generous space, a phone number visible without scrolling, and specific writing — "we replace boilers in Leeds and Wakefield, usually within 48 hours" beats "quality solutions delivered with passion" in every measurable way. The brief below is a list of what to include; almost nothing outside it changes how many people call.

Do I need a website if I already have a Facebook page?

Yes, and the reason is ownership, not features. A Facebook page is rented ground, and the landlord writes it down. Meta's Terms of Service say at 3.2 that "We can remove, block or restrict content that is in breach of these provisions", and at 4.2 that "we may suspend or permanently disable your access to Meta Company Products, and we may permanently disable or delete your account". No appeal you control, and no copy you keep.

Three problems. The address is theirs: you cannot move facebook.com/yourshop or take your reviews with you. A logged-out visitor often meets a sign-up wall instead of your opening hours, and nobody searching "emergency plumber near me" at 11pm is searching inside Facebook. And you do not control reach — the platform decides how many followers see a post.

Keep the page. Point it at a site you own, on a domain registered in your name, so the day a platform changes its mind you lose a channel and not the business. See who owns your website.

Where does Fablence fit, and what does the $299 pay for?

We build first and charge nothing for it. You get your homepage rebuilt at a private link. Say no and it is deleted, and you owe $0. The $299 setup fee is charged only when you approve the design. The site is live within 72 hours of approval, then $69 a month.

If you already have a website, you send us nothing. Your services, hours, photos and copy are already on the open web, so we take them from there. That is the only reason this works at $69 rather than $300. The $69 covers hosting on our own servers, maintenance, 30 minutes of edits a month, a monthly report, uptime monitoring, nightly backups, and redirects from your old addresses so a redesign does not cost you rankings. A $199 tier adds listings and local search work, offered at month two or three, never day one.

No lock-in, in writing: you own the domain, the content, the leads and the Google Business Profile, where we are only ever Manager, never Owner. Ask for a static export any day and you get it the same day, free. Month to month, 30 days' notice, no exit fee. One person builds the site and answers the email — a limit as much as a feature. Numbers on pricing, method on how we work, and to see your own homepage rebuilt before deciding anything, start here.