How much does a website cost in 2026?

DIY builders — $16 to $50 a month, forever. You get a template and the software. You supply the design judgement, the copy, the images and the time. The recurring cost never stops and the site is not portable — leaving means rebuilding.

Marketplace gigs — $150 to $800. Usually a licensed theme with your content placed into it, plus upsells for source files, extra revisions and commercial use. Excellent for small disposable jobs; unreliable as the front door of a business.

Freelancers — $1,000 to $5,000. Often genuinely good design. Copywriting is rarely included, and the real variable is not quality but variance: availability, communication and what happens when they take on a bigger client.

Fixed-price studios — $1,200 to $3,000. Agency-range output on a published price with a written scope. You trade the bespoke consulting relationship for speed and certainty. Markora publishes a lower fixed number than this band, at $299.

Agencies — $3,000 to $10,000 and up. Strategy, research, project management and accountability. Worth it on complex builds and in organisations that need someone contractually answerable. Expensive on a five-page site for a small business.

1. Who writes the copy. This is the single biggest hidden variable. Copywriting is most of the intellectual work in a site, and a quote that excludes it is not comparable to one that includes it.

2. Page count and template count. Twelve pages built from three templates is a fraction of the work of twelve genuinely distinct pages. Ask which you are getting.

3. E-commerce or not. A catalogue, tax, shipping rules and a checkout are a different project from a brochure site, and honest suppliers price them separately.

4. Integrations. Booking engines, CRMs, inventory systems and payment flows are where estimates go wrong, because the cost lives in the other system, not in the design.

5. Billing model. Hourly billing rewards slowness; fixed pricing rewards finishing. Neither is dishonest, but they produce very different final invoices from the same starting estimate.

6. Where the supplier is based. A US-based agency carries US salary and office costs. A remote studio does not, which is most of the difference between $6,000 and $299 for comparable output.

What is the total price, in writing? Not a range and not an hourly rate. If getting a number requires a call, the call is the product being sold.

What is the delivery date, and what happens if it slips? A date with no consequence attached is a hope, not a commitment.

Is copywriting included? Ask explicitly. This is where two apparently similar quotes diverge most.

Who owns the source files, and when? The correct answer is you, on final payment. Anything else means you are renting.

And one more that almost nobody asks: what happens if I do not like it? Included revisions, and then what?