The cost of a website in 2025 depends on two factors: the build fee and the hosting/maintenance fee.
Cost to BUILD a website:
There are three general buckets to compare the cost to build a website. There are FREE builders, AFFORDABLE builders, and INVESTMENT builders.
The free website builders are platforms that let you design your own site using their system. All you need is your time, wisdom, a learning curve on how to use their tools, and a vision for what you want to build. These are popular platforms like Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, GoDaddy, and even Mailchimp. The systems that allow you to build a website for free are going to have limited options on styles, designs, site additions, and SEO power (search engine optimization) for your website.
Free website builders will take you 20-60 hours of your time to design your site.
While the build may be free, the maintenance and support you’ll need to launch your site will not be free. More on that later.
The affordable options to build a website are typically freelancers or a small design or marketing agency. Teams like Launch Kits (the most affordable online in this category) will typically have a streamlined process where you can share your core details, and the team will take their expertise in design and build a website for you. Building a website with an affordable web design company will only cost $500-5,000 depending on your choices and needs. Launch Kits has set options so you can be sure you are getting what you need and not paying extra for needless things that bloat a site or make the process needlessly complex.
Affordable website build options will only take you a few hours of your time to fill out a form or meet with a virtual team member to share your company goals and information. The site can be ready in as little as one week.
The investment builder solution for a website is hiring a branding and custom graphic or design firm. This process will cost between $10,000-100,000 depending on your site functionalities, branding needs, and desired features – like custom photography, e-commerce, or multi-site locations for your business.
The timeline to build an ‘investment website’ is typically no less than 4 months, and it will require weeks of your teams time, effort, and strategy.
Cost to MAINTAIN a website:
Nomatter what your build cost is that you think is right for your budget and goals, there is always a maintenance and support fee with a website. Why? Because a website has to live somewhere online in digital real estate. It’s like renting some virtual cloud (server) space to build your house (website) to showcase your business.
The maintance costs on large, shared-hosting platforms like GoDaddy or Siteground or Bluehost will generally allow you an option to spend $5-10/month to host your site files to be found online. This requires you to be the expert in support and updates and tools, security, and site monitoring. You will need knowledge in DNS settings, domain pointing, SSL security, and maybe some php insights.
The next step up is to use platforms like Kinsta or Liquid Web to host your site files. These offer dedicated (private) hosting environments to ensure your brand website is protected and controlled – and typically have a team of support specialist you can reach out to if you have issues. They cost between $25-50/month to host your site.
The platforms you built the FREE website on above typically have monthly costs to host your site on their platform – which will cost between $16-60/month – and sometimes more, in order to make your ‘free’ site go live. The downside is that if you stop paying their platform, you lose your hosting AND your website. Therefore, selecting an affordable website builder so you can host your site separately (ex: build a wordpress site and host in on Kinsta) is a more secure and sure way to own and control your brand, site speed, security, and have a team to help if needed.
If your website design company has the option to opt in to use their tools, teams of writers and designers, have pro tools and training, and get people to help with hosting AND your website updates, that may be the best ROI (return on investment) for your needs.
Marketing agencies charge $300-5,000 per month to support your site, whether it’s a custom site ‘investment build’ or an ‘affordable build’, so make sure you know what you are getting for your spend each month!
If you have questions or need our advice, feel free to ask anytime.
