How Much a Small Business Website Costs in Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky

We don’t publish a website price, and a number without a scope would tell you little. The honest answer to “how much does a website cost” is that it depends on work you can mostly count yourself. Here is how to count it before you ask anyone for a quote.

Price ranges by site size: 5, 15 and 40 pages

Page count is a fair shorthand, as long as you remember that the cost sits in writing and planning those pages, not in the number itself:

• Around 5 pages. Home, services, about, contact and one more. Most of the work is the design and the words on the home page. A standard five-to-ten page site takes us four to six weeks from kickoff to launch, and a small, tightly scoped site can go faster: Carolina Rides Weddings went from brief to live site in one week.
• Around 15 pages. A page for each service and each town you work in. Writing becomes the biggest cost, because every page needs its own words to be found in search. Decide early who writes them: you, us, or both.
• Around 40 pages or more. Departments, several locations, or an old site’s content to move across. Moving and rewriting old pages takes real time; for Jefferson County, PA we migrated more than 200. A build this size gets scoped page by page in writing before it starts.

Photos change the number too. Real photos of your work and your people cost more to get than stock images, and they are worth more to a visitor deciding whether to call.

One-time build vs. monthly fees

A website has two costs: building it once, and keeping it running every month. Ask any quote to show them separately.

We quote the build as a fixed price, and hosting and maintenance are part of one monthly fee, so there is one number to call when something needs attention. You edit the site yourself after launch; we train you on it and write down how it works.

A do-it-yourself builder bundles hosting into its monthly plan, and for some owners that is the right choice. We moved Bikes To Go off Wix onto WordPress for speed and room to grow, and we helped West Virginia Gun Company improve its site without leaving Squarespace, because that is what the owner wanted.

Website redesign cost works the same way as a new build, with one extra option: on a monthly plan, the redesign can be folded into the retainer. Starkey Soft Water got a full site rebuild inside its monthly partnership, with no separate project fee.

What raises the price: online stores, booking, integrations

Anything the site has to do, rather than show, adds to the build:

• An online store. Products, options, a cart and payments. Medlining Machine Works needed product bundling and customization when its only online sales channel walked away.
• Booking and ordering. Rentals, appointments or food orders taken on the site. Star of India takes pickup orders on its own site, with no third-party commission.
• Portals and payments. A tenant or member area with logins. River Point Properties lets tenants pay rent and send maintenance requests online.
• Integrations. Sending form leads to a CRM, pulling a schedule from another system, or connecting to accounting. Each one is a piece to build and test.
• Rules you have to meet. A public body’s site has accessibility requirements that shape the whole build.

When you compare quotes, check that each one includes the same features. A low price that leaves out the store or the booking is not the same site.

Who should own the domain and hosting

You should. The domain in particular should be registered in your business’s name, on an account you can log into, whoever builds the site. When we hand a site over, you own the content, the domain and every login.

Hosting through your web designer is fine, and it is how our monthly fee works, as long as you could move the site if you ever needed to. Our post on who owns your website walks through the six pieces to check.

What upkeep costs after launch

Web design pricing for a small business doesn’t stop at launch. After it, the costs are hosting, updates, backups, security, and the small edits every business needs. Ours are in the monthly fee. Elsewhere, check what each plan includes before comparing prices; our post on what a maintenance plan should include lists the questions to ask.

If nobody on your staff will look after the site, Webfresh Autopilot watches it, fixes technical problems on its own, and sends anything that changes your wording to you for approval. It is quoted after the free audit, like the build.

See what we build on our website design page, for shops and retailers on website design for commerce and retail, and for your area on website design in Huntington, WV or website design in Columbus, OH.