The short answer
How much does a website cost for a small business? For most local businesses the build costs somewhere between about $500 and $10,000, and then the site costs something every month for as long as it is online. Building it yourself on Wix or Squarespace costs roughly $200 to $600 a year in plan fees and no build fee. A freelancer typically charges $500 to $5,000 for a basic 5 to 10 page site, according to Clutch's budgeting guide. Agencies run higher: Clutch's web design pricing guide puts the full range at about $2,000 to $100,000, while noting that most projects reviewed there come in under $10,000.
Ours are $497, $997 or $1,997, one time, and the site is yours. That is well below the market, so the rest of this page explains the market first and then explains what you do and do not get from us at that price. If you only want the comparison, it is in the table below.
Web design cost by route, side by side
"Website" describes at least three different purchases, and quotes rarely say which one you are being sold. Here they are next to each other, with the numbers from the sources listed at the end of this page.
| Route | Paid up front | Paid every month or year | What you are really paying for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build it yourself (Wix, Squarespace) | $0 | About $17 to $39 a month on annual billing for the common Wix and Squarespace plans | Software. You supply the design, the writing and the evenings. |
| Freelance web designer | About $500 to $5,000 for a basic 5 to 10 page site | Hosting, domain and any care plan the freelancer offers | One person's time and judgment, and whether that person is around next year |
| Web design agency | About $2,000 to $100,000; most Clutch-reviewed projects under $10,000 | Hosting and a maintenance retainer, often bundled | A team: project manager, designer, developer, account staff and an office |
| Dominion Web Design Pro | $497, $997 or $1,997, one time | $49 a month for hosting, maintenance and updates, or included while you keep the AI agent | One builder, Maurice Johnson, writing every page by hand after you have seen a free demo |
Third-party prices were checked on October 12, 2026 and change often. Check the vendor's own pricing page before you buy.
How much does a website cost to build? It depends who builds it
You build it yourself
Website builders charge no build fee and a plan fee that never stops. When we checked in October 2026, Wix listed its Light, Core and Business plans at about $17, $29 and $39 a month on annual billing, and Squarespace listed Core at $29 a month on an annual plan or $39 paid month to month, after a July 2026 price increase on its annual plans. Monthly billing on either costs more.
The real price here is not money. It is your evenings. You become the designer, the copywriter and the support desk. That is a fair trade if you have the time and need something simple, like a one page site with your hours and phone number. It is a poor trade if an hour of your time is worth more in the business than on a template. Our builder or designer guide covers this choice on its own.
You hire a freelancer
Clutch's budgeting guide puts a basic 5 to 10 page site from a freelancer at $500 to $5,000. Rates are all over the map: Upwork lists web designers on its marketplace at roughly $15 to $30 an hour, while U.S. design firms that get shortlisted on Clutch are typically around $100 to $149 an hour. A freelancer gives you a real person making decisions about your site. What varies most is what happens after launch, because it depends on whether that one person is still taking calls in two years.
You hire an agency
Agencies cost more for the same number of pages, and the gap is mostly not craftsmanship. An agency carries project managers, designers, developers, account staff and rent, and each of them is part of the quote. For a business that needs brand strategy, original photography, a custom booking system and someone on a weekly status call, that structure earns its price. For a plumber who needs five clear pages and a phone number that works on a phone, much of it is overhead.
The yearly costs that rarely make it into the quote
This is where website budgets actually break. Read it before you accept any quote, including ours.
- Domain nameClutch's budget guide puts a domain at $0 to $20 a year. The wholesale price registrars pay Verisign for a .com was $10.26 and rises to $10.97 on November 1, 2026, Add the $0.20 ICANN fee and a .com renewal of about $10.50 now, or about $11.20 after November 1, is sold at or near cost.
- HostingAbout $2 to $80 a month in Clutch's guide. Low introductory prices usually renew higher, so ask for the renewal rate.
- Security certificateOften free. Let's Encrypt, a nonprofit certificate authority, issues them at no charge and most hosts install one automatically.
- Plugins and supportOn a WordPress site, Clutch lists plugins at $0 to $600 a month and tech support at $2 to $300 a month, depending on what the site does.
- Words and photosMany build quotes assume you will supply the writing and the pictures. If you do not, someone has to be paid for both, or the project stalls.
The month by month view of all of this, with current hosting, email and builder prices, is in our guide to how much a website costs per month.
Ask for year one and year two. A $3,000 build with a $300 a month care plan costs $6,600 in the first year and $3,600 in the second. Our Starter site without the AI agent is $497 plus twelve months at $49, which is $1,085 in year one and $588 in year two. The build price alone tells you very little.
Where part of every quote goes: finding you
Some of what you pay for a website goes into the website. A good share goes into the marketing that reached you. Our keyword research file from Ubersuggest, pulled October 12, 2026, shows what advertisers bid for a single click on these searches: "web design services" about $36.69, "web designers near me" about $35.40, and "web design services for small business" about $22.40.
That is the price of one visitor, not one customer. If one visitor in fifty becomes a client, a company buying those clicks spends four figures to land each job before anyone designs anything. That cost sits inside every quote in this market. It is not dishonest; it is arithmetic. It does mean the price of a website and the price of making that website are two different numbers.
We keep our costs down the plain way: no office outside Big Sandy, no sales team and no account managers. The free demo does the selling, because you can look at a site built for your business and decide for yourself.
What Dominion charges, and what is not in the price
Three packages, all one time. Starter is $497 for a five page site: home, services, about, contact and service area. Pro is $997 for ten pages with a photo gallery, local SEO setup including Google Business Profile, and ten researched city pages. Agency is $1,997 for keyword research across your service area and a hand-written page for every town-and-service combination worth having, usually 30 to 60 pages. The pricing page lists everything in each one.
After launch, hosting, maintenance and updates are included while you keep the AI agent; without it they are $49 a month. The AI agent is the only other recurring charge: Pro's chat widget is free for 14 days and then $297 a month, and on Agency the phone agent setup is included, while the agent itself is free for 7 days and then $297 a month for up to 750 minutes, cancel any time.
A price that far below the market deserves a straight list of what is missing:
- No brand program. No positioning workshops, logo development or brand guidelines. An agency does that properly and charges for it.
- No original photography. We use your photos. If you have none, a morning with a local photographer is often the best money you will spend on the site.
- No account manager. You get Maurice and a phone line. Our AI receptionist answers any hour and can put you through to him. If you want weekly status meetings, that is a different kind of company.
- No online store. None of the packages include ecommerce.
- No ranking promises. Nobody controls where Google places a page, at any price. We set up the basics properly and write pages people want to read.
When we are not the right choice
Honesty about fit saves everyone time. Pay someone else if any of these describe you:
- You sell products online and the store is the business. A store platform such as Shopify charges a monthly fee (its Basic plan was listed at $29 a month billed yearly in 2026 reviews) plus card fees, and the build is a store project, not a brochure site.
- You need customer logins, a membership area, a custom quoting tool or software that talks to your other systems. That is development work, priced by the hour.
- You are a larger organization that needs a team, a brand program and a formal approval process.
- You enjoy building things yourself and your site only needs a page or two. A builder plan is cheaper.
Five questions that make any two quotes comparable
- If I stop paying you, what do I keep?The most important question in this industry and the one asked least. Some arrangements answer it with "nothing", because the site lives on the company's platform. With us you own the site outright.
- What is the total in year one and in year two?Get both numbers in writing. The recurring cost decides whether the website was a good purchase three years later.
- Who writes the words?Plenty of quotes leave writing to the owner, and the project stalls for months over an about page. Find out before you sign.
- How are location pages made?If the answer is a few hundred pages generated from a list of town names, ask how many of them search engines actually indexed last time. Pages written for each town take longer and are the ones people read.
- What happens when something breaks?Ask who you call, how fast they answer and whether fixes are included or billed by the hour.
For a full line by line comparison table, see web design packages explained.
So what should a small business spend?
Our view, for a local business with fewer than about twenty pages and no store: a build price above roughly $3,000 needs a specific reason. Ask what the extra buys. Sometimes the answer is good: genuine custom design, real photography, a complicated booking integration. Sometimes it is an account manager and an office you will never visit.
And when a quote is far below the market, ours included, ask the same question in reverse: what is missing? We have listed ours above. Anyone who cannot do the same deserves a second look. The easiest way to judge us is the free demo: you see a site built for your business first and decide afterward.