You asked a plumber buddy what he paid for his website and he said $6,000. You Googled it yourself and got answers ranging from “free” to “$35,000.” Neither number tells you what your shop should actually spend.
Here’s what you’ll get from this article: real 2026 pricing for a simple business website, a breakdown of where every dollar goes, and a straight answer on what a tradesperson should budget. No upsell math, no agency runaround.
How Much Should a Simple Website Cost in 2026?
A simple, professionally built business website costs $1,000 to $3,000 one-time for a clean 3-to-5-page site. DIY builders run $200–$600 a year; freelancers charge $1,500–$8,000; agencies start around $6,000.
That’s the honest range. Where you land depends on who builds it and how much you actually need. For most tradespeople, the answer is “less than you’ve been quoted” — because you don’t need an enterprise site. You need a place customers can find when someone hands them your name.
The wide spread you keep seeing online is real, but most of it doesn’t apply to you. The $35,000 number is for companies with online stores, customer logins, and ten departments. A painter who wants to show his work and collect a phone call is not that company.
What Drives the Price of a Website Up or Down?
Website cost comes down to four things: how many pages you need, whether the design is custom or template-based, what the site has to do, and who builds it.
Page count is the simplest lever. A one-page site costs less than a five-page site, and a five-page site costs less than a twenty-page site. Most trades need three to five pages: who you are, what you do, and how to reach you. That’s it.
Custom design is the next big factor. Fully custom layouts take more hours and cost more. A clean professional template gets a service business 90% of the way there at a fraction of the price — and customers genuinely can’t tell the difference on a phone screen.
Functionality is where budgets quietly balloon. Online booking, payment processing, customer portals, e-commerce — every one of those adds cost. A trades site rarely needs any of them. A click-to-call button does more for a plumber than a checkout cart ever will.
And then there’s who builds it, which is the biggest swing of all.
DIY, Freelancer, or Agency: Which Should a Tradesperson Choose?
For most tradespeople, a specialized done-for-you service in the $1,000–$1,600 range beats DIY (too much time) and agencies (too much money) — you get a professional result without becoming a web designer or signing a retainer.
Here’s how the three main paths actually shake out in 2026:
| Option | Typical Cost | Best For | The Truth |
| DIY builder (Wix, Squarespace) | $200–$600/year | People with time to spare | You build it, fix it, and maintain it yourself |
| Trade Specific Partner | $1,500–$5,000 one-time | Solo operators & small crews | Get what you need without piling on extras |
| Full Marketing Agency | $5,000–$35,000+ | Big companies, complex sites | Overkill and overpriced for a trades shop |
The DIY route looks cheapest until you count your hours. Building a decent site takes 20 to 40 hours when you don’t do it for a living. You finish a long day on a job, sit down at the laptop, and burn three nights fighting a template instead of resting. The platform fee is low. Your time is not.
Agencies do solid work. They’re just built for businesses ten times your size, with retainers and “strategy phases” you’ll never use. Paying agency rates for a brochure site is like renting a crane to hang a picture frame.
What’s Included in a Good Trades Website Package?
A solid trades website package includes a 3-page site (home, services, contact), a domain name, one year of hosting, and a click-to-call setup — everything a referred customer needs to confirm you’re legit.
This is the part nobody explains clearly, so here’s the plain version. A website isn’t one purchase — it’s a few pieces that have to work together:
- The domain — your web address, like yourbusiness.com. Runs $10–$20 a year on its own.
- Hosting — where the site actually lives online. Usually $5–$25 a month if you buy it separately, which adds up to $240 or more a year.
- The build — the design and the pages themselves.
- The extras — a logo, a Google Business Profile, business cards, review collection. Optional, but they stack credibility.
The reason packages exist is so you’re not buying these five things from five different companies and stitching them together at 9 p.m. A good package bundles the domain, the hosting, and the build into one flat price with one point of contact.
At The Trades Marketing Company, that bundling is the whole model. Every package includes a 3-page website, a one-year domain, and a full year of hosting (a $240 value on its own) — so the price you see covers the parts that usually show up as surprise line items elsewhere.
What Does The Trades Marketing Company Charge?
The Trades Marketing Company offers three flat-rate packages: $999 for a website, $1,299 to add referral tools, and $1,599 to build a full brand — each with payment plans and no hidden monthly fees.
The prices are published on the packages page, which is exactly how it should be. If a company makes you “request a quote” for a basic site, that’s the agency game your peers warned you about.
Is a Cheap Website Worth It, or Should I Spend More?
Spending more doesn’t make a trades website better past a certain point. A clean, fast, $1,000 site that clearly shows your work and your number will out-convert a $10,000 site with features your customers never touch.
The temptation runs both directions. Some owners chase the rock-bottom $0 option and end up with a half-finished site that quietly costs them jobs. Others assume expensive equals trustworthy and overpay for an agency build they don’t need.
The trap on the cheap end is the “fix-it” cycle. A clunky DIY site that constantly breaks ends up costing more in your time and lost calls than a clean build would have cost up front. The trap on the expensive end is paying for capability that never gets used — a 20-page site, a blog you’ll never write, integrations that sit idle.
The sweet spot for a tradesperson is a focused site that does three jobs well: shows who you are, proves it with finished work and reviews, and makes calling you dead simple. Past that, you’re spending on features instead of customers.
Does a Website Actually Pay for Itself?
Yes — for most trades, a one or two recovered job covers the cost of the site.
Run the math on your own numbers, because it’s the math that matters more than the price tag. Think back over the last few months. Someone got your name from a neighbor, looked you up, found nothing — no site, no photos, no reviews — and called the next guy instead. How many times did that happen?
If even two of those calls had landed, and your average ticket is $500, that’s $1,000 back in your pocket. The site paid for itself and you still have it working for you every day after.
That’s the real frame. A website isn’t a marketing expense you hope works someday. It’s the catcher’s mitt for referrals you’ve already earned and are currently dropping at the “let me look them up” moment.
How to Choose the Right Website Package for Your Trade
Pick your package based on where your business is right now. New and just need to exist online? Start basic. Already getting referrals and want to capture more? Add the referral tools. Building something you want to grow? Invest in the brand.
A few practical questions to size your decision:
- Do you have a logo and brand already? If not and you want one, the Business tier folds it in for roughly what a logo costs on its own.
- Are you actively getting referred by name? If yes, the referral and review tools in the Basic tier turn that word-of-mouth into something customers can actually find and act on.
- Is cash flow tight this quarter? Payment plans (4 payments instead of one) let you launch now and spread the cost without a long-term contract hanging over you.
- How fast do you need it live? A three-week turnaround means you could be losing zero more referrals by the end of the month.
You can also start smaller and add later. Launch the Essential site now, add the logo or referral tools when the work picks up. Just make sure whoever builds it sets you up so upgrading is easy instead of a rebuild.
The Bottom Line on Simple Website Pricing
A simple business website should cost most tradespeople well under the $4,000–$8,000 typical professional build, because you don’t need the parts that drive that number up. You need a clean site that proves you’re real and makes you easy to call.
The cheapest option is almost never your time spent fighting a DIY builder. The most expensive isn’t always the agency — it’s the referrals you keep losing because there’s nowhere for people to find you.
Ready to see exactly what you’d get and what it costs? The packages and prices are all published right here — no quote request, no sales maze. Or book a quick call and have your site live in three weeks.