RunCabin Blog · Buying guide

How much does a small-business website cost in 2026?

June 12, 2026 · 7 min read

Short answer: anywhere from about $16/mo (you do all the work) to $350/mo and up (someone else does), and the sticker price is rarely the real price. The real price hides in setup fees, 12-month contracts, year-two renewal jumps, domains and email billed separately, and one clause almost nobody reads: whether you keep the website if you cancel.

Here is the honest map of what local business owners actually pay, by category.

Option 1: DIY builders - cheap if your evenings are free

The DIY trade-off is simple: the dollars are low because you are the web designer now. You pick the template, write the copy, wrestle the layout on mobile, and make every future change yourself. For some owners that is fine. For most trades, the site ships late or never, because actual paying work always comes first.

Option 2: Managed home-services website companies

These are the companies that call you after you register an LLC. Someone builds and maintains the site for you - at a very different price point.

Read those right-hand cells again. The recurring pattern in this category is rented ground: the moment you stop paying, the site - sometimes the domain - is gone. One BBB complaint about Hibu from March 2026 reads: "I submitted written cancellation requests on November 29th, December 29th, and January 28th... additional charges continued to accrue." That is an individual complaint, not a statistic, but it is exactly the clause to check before signing anything: what do I keep if I leave?

Option 3: Website bundled into a field-service CRM

Jobber and Housecall Pro both offer website builders - bundled into their field-service platforms. Jobber's site builder requires a Jobber plan (Core starts around $39/mo for a solo operator, scaling to several hundred for teams). Housecall Pro's website add-on runs around $40/mo on top of a base plan that starts around $59-$79/mo.

If you already want the full CRM - scheduling, invoicing, dispatch - the bundled site is a reasonable add. If you just want a website and leads in your inbox, you are buying a whole software suite to get a brochure.

Option 4: A freelancer or agency

Custom work varies too much to put an honest number on - quotes for a simple local-business site range from a few hundred dollars to well into four figures, plus hosting and an hourly rate for changes. The structural issue is not the build price; it is that every future edit (new phone number, new photos, holiday hours) goes through another human, on their timeline, often on their invoice.

The five costs that hide in the fine print

1. Setup fees - a few hundred dollars before anything goes live.
2. Contracts - 12-month commitments with early-termination charges.
3. Renewal jumps - intro pricing that doubles in year two.
4. A-la-carte essentials - domain, email, and SSL billed as extras.
5. The cost of changes - your evenings (DIY) or support tickets (managed).

Where RunCabin sits

We built RunCabin's done-for-you websites to make this comparison boring: $39.99/mo, flat, all-in. The site is built for you (your name, your work, your city), the domain and professional email and a free AI logo are included, there is no setup fee and no contract, and every inquiry from your quote form lands straight in your inbox with no lead fees.

The part that genuinely does not exist elsewhere at this price: you change the site by asking. "Add pressure washing to my services." "Swap the hero photo." Plain English, done in moments - no page builder, no ticket queue. And if you ever cancel, the domain is yours and stays yours.

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Related reading: is a Google Business Profile enough? · what is an AI-editable website?