A website has three bills: the build, the monthly keep-it-online number, and the yearly extras (domain, SSL, the care plan). Ask “how much does a website cost” and most answers mash those into one fake sticker. GoDaddy’s 2026 breakdown is the honest version of the cheap end: a small business site can land around $120 per year on a builder, while a complex custom build runs $10,000 and up. Those two numbers describe different jobs. If you need a range for your scope, use the website cost calculator and then price a real build against it.
The three bills: build, monthly, yearly
The build is the one-time work: design, templates, forms, copy, and whatever the site has to talk to. GoDaddy lists professional website design services from $499 one-time, with their own table putting a small business designer build at $640 and up, a small-to-medium ecommerce site at $5,000 and up, and a large custom site at $15,000 and up in year one. That table is a vendor selling builders next to designers, so treat it as a floor, not a quote.
Monthly is hosting plus care. GoDaddy’s shared hosting sits between $5.99 and $24.99 per month on the plans they publish (excluding VPS and dedicated). Builder subscriptions on that same page run $9.99 to $20.99 and up per month, or $120 to $300 and up per year. SSL, if you buy it separate, starts at $5.49 per month on their list, or $65.88 per year on a three-year term. None of that is the person who fixes the form that broke on a Monday.
Yearly is the domain and the stuff you forget until renewal. GoDaddy puts a typical .com around $20 a year, with the broader domain range $0 to $30 depending on the extension. Maintenance, on their own page, is “up to $500 or more annually” for most businesses, which is the line owners skip when they compare a $12 builder to a custom proposal.
I would budget the three lines on separate rows. Mixing them is how a $199 year-one builder turns into a surprise the month you need a booking flow. The concession: three rows look more expensive on a spreadsheet than one. They also match the invoices you will get.
What a five-page site is (and is not)
A five-page website is home, about, services, contact, and one extra (a location, a blog index, or a FAQ). It is not a store, a member login, or a CRM. GoDaddy’s small-business row assumes a few core pages, contact details, and maybe a blog, and prices that DIY path between $145 and $640+ a year. The $640+ designer cell on that row is a one-time fee, not a custom application.
The cost jumps when a page is a distinct template. Five pages that share one layout are cheaper than five layouts. A service-area map, a quote form that writes to HubSpot, and a booking calendar are three extra jobs, even if the sitemap still says “five pages.” Owners who ask for a five-page price and then add those jobs mid-build are not being cheated. They changed the job.
Copy is its own line. GoDaddy cites professional website content at $0.35 per word. That number is a content mill rate, and it still adds up faster than people expect once you write services, FAQs, and a privacy policy. Stock photos are free. Custom photography is not. Skip the photoshoot if the business already has decent phone photos of the shop floor; spend it if the product is the offer.
DIY, freelancer, or agency
GoDaddy’s path split is a builder app, WordPress, or a professional. Builder subscriptions are $120 to $300+ per year. WordPress is free to download and not free to run well. Design services start at $499 one-time on their menu.
Agency and freelancer ranges on the open web sit higher because the job includes discovery, accessibility, analytics, and a handoff, not a theme skin. I would not hire a $499 “we build your site” product if the business takes phone leads for a living. I would use a builder to test a name over a weekend. About 20 to 30 percent of the clients who come to us already outgrew a DIY stack (WordPress, Framer, Bubble). The audits show the same pile: weak SEO structure, accessibility holes, cookie issues, and forms that leak. That is the long-run cost DIY sites hide.
The side I take: if you have no marketing or tech person on staff, skip the builder-as-forever-plan. Pay for a scoped build and a care line. You give up the feeling of a $20 month. You keep a site someone else can fix when you are on a job site. If you do have a marketer who lives in Webflow, DIY can be the right call until the first integration.
What pushes the number up
Ecommerce is the first jump. GoDaddy’s small-to-medium store row is $230 to $5,000 if someone builds it for you, and “more than $5,000” once the catalog is large. Payments, tax, shipping, and product variants are why. A five-page brochure and a catalog with checkout are different products wearing the same word “website.”
Integrations are the second jump. Booking, CRM, inventory, and quotes each add a system that can break. Name them in the scope or they show up in week six as a change order. Hosting that has to stay up through a sale week is the third. Shared $6 hosting is fine for a brochure. It is a poor place to put checkout.
Care is the bill people treat as optional. GoDaddy’s maintenance note (security updates, malware scanning, backups, plugin work) is “up to $500 or more” a year, and ecommerce sits higher because payment gateways and inventory need watching. If nobody on the team will log in, that line belongs with website care, not with hope.
How to budget without a fake package
Write the three bills. Write the templates, not the page count. Write the systems the site must talk to. Then ask for a fixed scope. We stay on budget 94 percent of the time by controlling that scope, not by guessing a package price that pretends every small business needs the same site.
Established local businesses with no in-house talent should look at web development for small business, because the relationship after launch is the product. Greater Boston teams comparing agencies on who writes the code should start with Greater Boston web development. Both beat a price list that hides monthly hosting inside a one-time number.
The last useful check: if two quotes are $2,000 apart, ask which bill they omitted. Domain, SSL, content, and care are the usual missing rows. The cheaper PDF is often the one that stopped counting at launch day.