How much does a contractor website really cost?

In 2026 the real ranges are roughly $200–$600 a year for DIY builders, $1,500–$4,000 for a freelancer, and $3,000–$15,000+ for an agency — those are industry-reported figures, not ours. Our own number is $4,770, all-in, and we’ll show you exactly what’s inside it and what isn’t.

Ask three website companies for a price and you’ll get a riddle, a range, and a request to “hop on a call.” Almost nobody ranking for this question publishes their own number until you’re in the funnel. That’s the game, and it works on contractors especially, because you’re busy and you price jobs honestly yourself — so you assume the other guy does too. Here’s the whole market, priced out loud.

The three ways to buy a website

DIY builders — $200 to $600 a year, reported. Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy and the rest. The money is small; the cost shows up elsewhere. A template site with three paragraphs on it rarely ranks for anything, which means it exists but doesn’t work — a business card taped to a lamppost on a street nobody drives. If you have more evenings than jobs right now, DIY is a fine placeholder. The risk nobody mentions: on most builders you’re renting. Stop paying and the site is gone, along with every hour you put into it.

Freelancers — $1,500 to $4,000, reported ($1,500 to $8,000 at the wide end). This can be the best value on the board or a half-finished folder of files, and from the outside the two look identical. The variables are whether they’ve built for trades before, whether they answer the phone after final payment, and whether anything is written down. If you go this route, get the scope in writing and get every login in your own name before the last check clears.

Agencies — $3,000 to $15,000+, reported, with big-shop builds quoted into the $30,000–$50,000 range. At the top end you’re paying for meetings, account managers, and a brand book you’ll never open. Some agency builds are excellent. But a $12,000 site and a $4,700 site can rank identically — Google scores the pages, not the invoice. Past a certain point you’re funding the agency’s office, and their office is nicer than yours.

One trap that spans all three lanes: per-page pricing. “$300 a page” sounds fair until the quote balloons because a proper trades site needs a page for every service and every town. Price the outcome, not the page count.

What a contractor site actually needs

Not much, and that’s the point. Your customers want five things findable in ten seconds: what you do, where you work, proof you’re legit (license number, insurance, real job photos), what other homeowners say, and a fast way to reach you. Structurally, that means a page for each service, a page for each town you serve, a review section that isn’t three years stale, and a lead form that alerts an actual human. We wrote up the full checklist in what a contractor website actually needs — take it into any sales conversation, including one with us.

What it doesn’t need: a news section nobody reads, a video header that takes six seconds to load, or an “AI chatbot” that annoys the exact homeowner who was about to call. Every dollar in a quote should trace to a thing that makes the phone ring.

What ours costs, and why we publish it

Launch is $4,770. That’s handbuilt pages (no template), local search setup built to rank, a lead form wired into a pipeline that works every lead within 7 hours, live in 2 to 4 weeks — and you own every line of it, domain and files and accounts, in your name. One price, no meter. What it deliberately isn’t: ongoing ad management, social media posting, or a retainer you forget to cancel. Those exist as separate work (Extraction) for shops that want the engine run for them — scoped honestly, real number after one call.

We publish the number because you would. No contractor worth hiring makes a homeowner book a “discovery call” to learn what a water heater costs.

What about the AI website builders?

The newest pitch in the DIY lane: describe your business, and an AI builder spits out a site in ten minutes for a few dollars a month. As a piece of software, genuinely impressive. As a contractor’s storefront, it has the same two problems as every template — and one new one. Same problems: you’re renting (cancel and it’s gone), and it’s thin, so it ranks for nothing. New problem: the AI writes the same confident, generic paragraphs for you as for the other four contractors in your county who typed the same prompt, so the sites don’t just look alike — they read alike. Google’s systems reward pages that demonstrate real experience: your jobs, your towns, your license, your photos. A machine that’s never been in your truck can’t write that, and homeowners feel the difference even when they can’t name it. Use an AI builder the way you’d use a magnetic sign on a work van: fine for week one, embarrassing at year three.

The costs nobody puts in the quote

Whatever lane you buy in, four line items ride along, and it’s better to meet them now than on an invoice:

The domain — $15 to $25 a year, and it must be registered to you, in your own registrar account. This is the deed to the property; everything else is the building. Hosting — anywhere from free to $30 a month for a normal trades site. More than that, ask what for. The words — somebody has to write the pages, and “we’ll need content from you” is how a six-week build becomes a six-month stall. Ask who writes it, whether it’s included, and what they need from you (usually an hour on the phone, if they’re any good). The photos — your real jobs, which cost nothing but the habit; a builder who plans to fill your site with stock photography is building you a site that looks like everyone else’s.

And one “cost” that’s really a trap: the free website that comes bundled with a lead platform or a supplier program. Free means the platform owns it, ranks it under their domain, and keeps every ounce of the search value when you leave. Renting your own storefront from the company that also charges you per customer walking in — read that twice, then pass.

How to compare two quotes apples to apples

Quotes come in different shapes on purpose — a monthly here, a one-time there, a “starting at” everywhere. Flatten them: total cost of year one, then total cost of year three. A $180-a-month subscription looks smaller than $4,700 one-time until you run it out — $2,160 by month twelve, $6,480 by year three, and at the end you may own nothing. Then ask each bidder the same three questions: what do I own when it’s done, what does year two cost, and what exactly makes the phone ring. The quote that answers cleanly in writing is usually the honest one, whatever the number says.

The maintenance question

Whoever builds it, ask what year two costs. Reported maintenance runs $50–$150 a month for hosting, updates, and small edits — fair, if it’s real work. The overlooked risk is the subscription-only model: some shops never sell you the site at all, just access to it, and cancellation means the whole thing evaporates. Before you sign anything, ask one question: “If I stop paying, what do I keep?” If the answer takes more than one sentence, you have your answer.

Do the return math the same way you’d bid a job. If your average job is worth $3,000 and a working site brings even two extra jobs a year, a $4,700 build is quietly one of the cheapest employees you’ll ever hire. And that math undercounts it, because a job isn’t just a job — it’s the repeat work when the same house needs you in three years, the neighbor who saw your truck out front, and the review that closes the next stranger. Count the customer, not the invoice, and the site pays for itself faster than any tool in your trailer. And if you’re currently paying per-lead platforms instead, run that math too — renting leads costs more than owning the asset that earns them.

One more red flag worth checking before you sign: a bid that comes in well under everyone else’s. Cheap builds tend to cut the same three corners every time — no real mobile testing, no attention to page speed, and a layout copied wholesale from a stock library with your logo dropped on top in a different color. None of that shows up in the invoice. It shows up three months later in your ranking, or the lack of one. A fair price buys a site built around your trade; a bargain price buys somebody else’s template with your name on it.

Straight answers

Want the playbook before you spend a dime? The free Field Guide covers what you can do yourself. Ready to have it built? Launch is $4,770 — or just tell us about the job and get a straight answer.