How much does a website cost for a small business in Australia?
The honest answer is that "a website" isn't one product, so the price range is enormous and mostly useless. What's more helpful is knowing the four ways websites get priced, because once you can tell which one you're being quoted, the number makes sense.
The four ways it gets priced
Do it yourself. You pay a monthly subscription to a platform and build it in your evenings. The subscription is modest. The real cost is your time, and it's usually badly underestimated, most owners we speak to spent a few weekends on it, got about 70% of the way, and left it there. It's still sitting at 70% a year later.
A freelancer. Usually a fixed project price, and the range is wide because "freelancer" covers everything from a student to somebody with fifteen years on. Fast and often good value. The risk is availability later: when you need a price changed in eighteen months, they may have taken a full-time job.
An agency. The most expensive option by a distance, and for a local business with five pages it's usually more process than you need, discovery workshops, wireframes, revision rounds. Worth it when you're spending real money on advertising and every conversion point matters. Not worth it for a café.
A productised service. A fixed scope at a fixed price, done fast, because the same thing is being built repeatedly. That's what we do. Less flexible than an agency by design. You're getting a design we've already made for your trade rather than one invented from scratch.
What's usually missing from the quote
This is where budgets get away from people. A build price is not a running price, and four things sit outside it:
- A domain, paid yearly to a registrar. Small, but it renews forever and it should be in your name, not your web person's.
- Hosting, monthly or yearly.
- An email address on your domain, usually a small monthly cost per mailbox.
- Changes. The big one. Ask what a price update costs in a year's time. "Contact us" often means an hourly rate and a two-week queue.
Get those four answered before you compare any two quotes, because a cheap build with expensive changes is not a cheap website.
What we charge
Five pages from $390, with extra pages at $50 each. Half up front, half when it goes live. Then hosting, backups, security and unlimited minor changes are free for two months, and $5 a month after that.
One thing worth stating plainly: our prices are in US dollars, and they're adjusted by country. Australia sits at the standard rate, so an Australian business pays the list price, but you'll be invoiced in USD, and your bank's conversion applies. We'd rather say that here than surprise you at the invoice.
The domain and the mailbox you buy yourself, in your own name, from a registrar. We walk you through it and set the whole thing up, but you own it. If you ever leave us, it goes with you, along with every file.
So what should you actually budget?
For a five-page local business site that looks current, loads fast on a phone and you can change yourself: expect a few hundred dollars to set up, plus a small monthly amount to keep it running and maintained. If a quote is dramatically above that, ask what the extra buys. If it's dramatically below, ask who's making the changes in a year.
The best way to work out whether a price is fair is to see what you'd get for it.