Field notes · 16 August 2026
What a custom business website actually costs.
Most studios will not put a number on a page. We publish ours, so here is the whole picture: what the work costs, what actually moves the price, and how to tell two quotes apart when they are thousands of dollars away from each other.
The short answer
Five thousand to twenty thousand, and here is the line
Our site and section builds start at $5,000, and most land between $5,000 and $20,000. Custom business software starts at $7,500. Every one of those is a fixed bid agreed before we start, billed against milestones, and scoped by a three business day Crux Roadmap that is fully refundable if you are not happy with it.
The rest of this note is why that range is as wide as it is, because the gap between five and twenty is not padding. It is a different product at each end.
What moves the number
Systems, not pages
The instinct is to count pages. Page count is close to irrelevant. Once a design system exists, the tenth page costs a fraction of the first. What costs money is everything the site has to do.
A site that presents
Pages, photography, copy, structured data, a contact form that emails you. Real work, and the bottom of the range. This is where a good brochure site lands, and for plenty of businesses it is the correct answer.
A site that routes
Now the site does something when someone arrives: texts the owner on a new inquiry, books into a real calendar, routes by service or territory, chases the ones who go quiet. Each of those is a small system with its own failure modes.
A site that runs the business
Customer portals, quoting, invoicing, inventory, a dashboard the office actually opens each morning, and integrations into the tools you already pay for. This is software with a website attached, and it is priced as software.
Chart: site and section builds range from 5,000 to 20,000 dollars. A site that presents sits near 5,000, a site that routes work near 12,000, and a site that runs the business near 20,000.
A useful test before you ask anyone for a quote: write down what should happen in the ninety seconds after a stranger hits your site and decides they want you. If the honest answer is "they fill in a form and I get an email", you are shopping at the low end and you should not pay more. If the answer involves three tools, a schedule, and somebody remembering to follow up, that is where the money goes, and that is also where it comes back.
Where the money leaks
Three ways businesses overpay
1. Renting a site forever. A page builder at $55 a month feels cheap next to a build. It is $1,980 across three years, it does not get faster, and at the end of it you own nothing you can move. We replaced exactly that for a roofing company in the Tri-Cities. Their running cost went to zero, and all 62 pages of the new site score 90 or better on mobile. The rebuild paid for its own hosting line in the first year.
2. Paying a retainer with no deliverable. A monthly fee with no named output is the most expensive line item in small business marketing. If nobody can tell you what shipped last month, nothing shipped. Our ongoing work is a program with a live results report, not a subscription that quietly renews.
3. Buying the same site twice. The cheapest build is often the one you replace in eighteen months, because it was quoted against a page count instead of against what the business needs to do. Paying once for the right scope beats paying twice for the wrong one, which is the entire reason we put a paid, refundable roadmap in front of every build rather than guessing at a proposal.
After the invoice
What it costs to keep running
Ours cost nothing to host. We build on Cloudflare, where a fast static site fits inside the free tier, and hosting is free for anyone who has bought any Cruxsmith product. The only price is a small credit in the footer.
Your domain stays registered in your name from day one, and if you ever leave, the transfer is $100 with everything organised and handed over. We put that in writing because the industry norm is the opposite, and because a studio that has to hold your domain hostage to keep you is telling you something about the work.
Ongoing search, content and conversion work is a separate decision, priced as a monthly program rather than folded into a hosting bill where you cannot see it.
Judging the quotes
Six questions that separate two bids
When two quotes are far apart, one of them is usually solving a different problem. These six questions surface which:
Who owns the domain, the code, and the content when this is over? The only acceptable answer is you.
What is the fixed price, and what makes it change? Scope changes should have a name and a number, not a surprise.
What happens on the site after someone submits a form? If the answer is "you get an email", the bid is for pages, not systems.
What does month two look like? Plenty of builds are quoted with no thought past launch, which is exactly when the work starts mattering.
Who is actually doing the work? Ask for the name. With us it is one senior engineer, the same one on the call.
What does it cost to leave? If nobody will answer that, you have your answer.
Our numbers
Published, on purpose
Every price we charge is on the pricing page, including the small end of the shop. We publish them because a quote you cannot check is not information, and because the first hour of most sales conversations is spent circling a number that could simply have been printed.
Builds. Site and section builds from $5,000, most between $5,000 and $20,000. Custom business software from $7,500. Fixed bid, milestone billing, source code yours.
Before the build. A Crux Roadmap: three business days of real work, findings and a fixed price at the end, fully refundable if you are not happy, and credited toward the build if you go ahead.
Ongoing. An optimization program at $2,500 a month, or $2,000 a month on a six month term. Studio Partner at $5,000 a month when you want a technical partner on call.
The small end. A one day visual refresh at $500. One useful automation at $400. Core pages rewritten around what people search from $500. Franklin and Macon County businesses also get the neighbors plan.
How much does a custom website cost for a small business?
Ours start at $5,000, and most land between $5,000 and $20,000. The number moves with how many systems the site has to run, not with how many pages it has. A brochure site with a contact form sits at the bottom of that range. A site with booking, intake routing and a customer portal sits at the top.
Why do website quotes vary so much?
Because the word website covers two different products. One is a set of pages. The other is the software your business runs on. Two quotes that look far apart are usually quoting those two different things, and the cheaper one is not always the one that leaves you with less.
What does a website cost to run after it is built?
Ours cost nothing to host. We build on Cloudflare, where a fast static site fits inside the free tier, and hosting is free for anyone who has bought any Cruxsmith product. The domain stays in your name.
Is a cheap monthly website plan cheaper?
Over a few years, usually not. A $55 a month page builder is $1,980 across three years and you do not own the result. We replaced exactly that for a roofing company and their running cost went to zero.
Want the number for your build?
A Crux Roadmap puts a fixed price on it in three business days, and refunds in full if you are not happy with what we show you. Free fit call first.
Get your Crux Roadmap