How Much Does a Website Cost? Real Numbers for 2026

The question sounds simple and gets answers ranging from “free” to “$20,000”. Both can be honest. A free builder plan is a website, and so is a custom shop built by an agency. What helps is splitting the cost into parts you can price one by one, and separating what you pay once from what you pay every year.

The numbers below are typical ranges from public price lists and common freelancer rates. They are not quotes. Check current prices before you budget.

How much does a website cost: the short overview

“Yearly running cost” includes the domain, hosting or builder plan and typical extras, not your time.

The building blocks, priced one by one

Domain

The address. Paid yearly, and the cheapest part. At betadomain the price is the same for registration and every renewal:

The median across all 490 endings is €39.99 a year; the full price list has every one. Beware of intro prices elsewhere: a domain for a dollar in year one can cost $20 or more from year two.

Hosting or builder plan

Where the site lives.

• Website builder plan with own domain: roughly $10–30 a month on yearly billing, more for shop features.
• Shared hosting for WordPress: roughly $3–10 a month. Watch for first-year discounts here too.
• Managed WordPress hosting: roughly $15–40 a month, with updates and backups handled.

Design

• Template included in a builder: $0.
• Premium WordPress theme: roughly $50–100 once, sometimes with a yearly licence for updates.
• Custom design by a designer: part of the freelancer or agency price.

Extras

Cost to build a website yourself: a real example

A hairdresser builds a five-page site with a builder, adds booking and one mailbox:

Domain .co.uk                     €15.99 / year
Builder plan with booking         ~$200 / year
One mailbox                       ~$40 / year
Photos (own phone)                $0
----------------------------------------------
First year                        ~$255 + domain
Every following year              about the same

Time spent: one weekend for the build, plus a week of evenings for the text. The step-by-step plan is in create your own website.

What a web designer costs

If you hire someone, you pay for time. Freelance rates vary widely by country and experience, roughly $30 to $120 an hour. A small business site with five to eight pages typically takes 20 to 50 hours, including meetings and revisions.

What drives the price up:

• Writing the text for you (copywriting)
• Photography
• Custom design instead of an adapted template
• Shop, bookings, member areas, multilingual pages
• Ongoing support and updates

Get at least two quotes and ask each for an itemised list. Also ask three questions that save money later:

1. Will the domain and all logins be in my name?
2. Can I edit texts and images myself?
3. What does maintenance cost per month or per year after launch?

If the answer to the first question is no, look elsewhere. Moving a domain out of someone else’s account is a common and avoidable headache. The buying-a-domain checklist explains why the registrant field matters.

Website maintenance cost per year

The build is a one-off. The site keeps costing money:

The choice between the two is covered in website builder vs WordPress.

Five ways to keep costs down

1. Register the domain separately at a registrar with fair renewal prices. You can switch builders or hosts without losing the address.
2. Price year two, not year one, for hosting, builder plans and domains.
3. Use forwarding instead of paid mailboxes for addresses that only receive mail, as described in email forwarding for a custom domain.
4. Start small. Five good pages beat fifteen half-done ones.
5. Write the text yourself. It’s the single biggest saving when working with a freelancer, and nobody knows your business better.

Whatever your budget, the domain is the first fixed cost and the easiest one to plan. Try hairbyamelia.co.uk with your own name, or start with a .com at a fixed yearly price.