Small business website cost in Australia: 2026 price guide

How much does a small business website cost in Australia?

There is no official price list, so the most honest answer is to show what the published Australian guides say and where they agree.

Three of the four guides put a professionally built small business site somewhere between $2,500 and $10,000. Bark is lower because its figures come from requests on its own marketplace, which include very basic jobs. Bark says they are based on more than 447,500 website design requests in Australia since 2021.

What does each type of website cost?

The type of site matters more than the size of the business. A cafe and a law firm can both need the same five-page site.

If a quote for a five-page brochure site is far above these ranges, ask what is included that the others leave out. If it is far below, ask the same question.

Website builder, freelancer or agency: which costs what?

Who builds the site changes the price as much as what is built.

The hourly figures are Bark's published rates for Australian web designers. Most agencies and freelancers quote a fixed price for a defined scope, which is safer for you than an open hourly arrangement.

Count your own hours honestly. A builder is cheap in dollars and expensive in evenings. If your time is worth more on the tools or with customers, the cheapest option on paper is not the cheapest in practice.

What does a website cost every year?

This is the part most quotes leave out, and the part you pay forever. These are published prices, checked on 12 November 2026.

Two worked examples

A small online store on Shopify Basic, paid yearly. $42 a month is $504 a year. Add a domain at about $22 and you are near $526 a year before apps. Shopify also charges a card rate on online sales. On the Basic plan its page lists 1.7% plus 30 cents for standard domestic cards; other card types and international cards are charged at different rates.

A brochure site on Squarespace Basic, paid yearly. $17 a month is $204 a year. Add a domain at about $22 and the total is near $226 a year.

Registrars often advertise a first year for a few cents. Look at the renewal price, which is what you pay from year two. To register a .com.au name you generally need an ABN or ACN. auDA, which manages .au names, says com.au names are for businesses with a connection to Australia, and business.gov.au gives the same eligibility rules.

This guide covers the cost of building a website. For care plans and what each level includes, see our full guide to how much website maintenance costs, and for WordPress specifically, WordPress maintenance cost in Australia.

What makes one quote higher than another?

When two quotes for "a small business website" are thousands of dollars apart, the gap is nearly always in these six things.

1. Number of pages. Each page needs planning, writing, design and testing.
2. Design. A proven theme matched to your brand costs less than a design drawn from scratch.
3. Content. If the supplier writes the words and sources the photos, that is in the price. If you do, it is not.
4. What the site does. Bookings, online sales, memberships and calculators all add build and testing time.
5. Connections. Linking to your booking system, accounting software or customer list takes time to set up and prove.
6. Moving an old site. Bringing across pages, products and search rankings is real work, and skipping it can cost you traffic.

Ask each supplier to state all six in writing. Two quotes are only comparable when the scope behind them is the same.

What is usually left out of a website quote?

None of these is a trick. They are separate jobs, and a good quote says plainly which are in and which are out.

• Writing the page text. Often assumed to be yours.
• Photos and licences. Stock photos and photo shoots cost extra.
• Logo and brand colours. A website project usually starts from an existing brand.
• Search set-up. Page titles, descriptions and Google Search Console.
• Ongoing SEO. GoDaddy Australia puts this at anywhere from $300 to $3,500 a month.
• A privacy policy. Good practice when you collect personal details. Whether the law requires one depends on your business; see AI privacy for small business.
• Training. Being shown how to edit your own site.
• Changes after launch. New pages and fixes once the project is closed.

Add these to the build price before you compare. A low quote that leaves out content and search set-up can end up dearer than a higher one that includes them.

Why do AI-built websites cost less?

AI tools such as Claude and ChatGPT now produce first drafts of page text, layouts and code in minutes. Work that took a designer and a developer weeks can take days. Less time means a lower build cost.

The saving applies to production, not to judgement. AI does not know your service area, check your claims, test your enquiry form or decide what your customers need to read. People still do that, and it is where a website succeeds or fails.

A fair way to think about it: AI lowers the cost of making pages. It does not lower the cost of getting them right. Our AI-built websites use AI for the first and people for the second. If you are weighing AI against a builder, see AI website or website builder.

Can you build a small business website for free?

Close to it, yes. GoDaddy Australia says a site can cost "anywhere between $0" on its free builder "to over $30,000" for a large custom build. Other builders have free tiers too.

Free plans have limits that matter to a business:

• The address is usually a sub-address of the builder, not your own .com.au name.
• The builder's branding often shows on your site.
• Features such as online payments, bookings or removing ads sit on paid plans.
• You still supply every word, photo and decision.

A free site is a reasonable way to test an idea. For a business that wants customers to trust it, your own domain name is the first thing worth paying for.

Is a website worth the cost for a small business?

More small businesses now say yes. auDA's Digital Lives of Australians 2026 research found 56% of small businesses have a dedicated website, up from 49% in 2025.

The better question is what the site has to earn. Work it out before you spend:

1. Estimate what one new customer is worth to you over a year.
2. Add the build cost to three years of running costs.
3. Divide the total by the value of a customer.

That gives you the number of extra customers the website must bring in over three years to pay for itself. For many trades and local services it is a small number. If it is not, build something smaller.

How do you compare website quotes fairly?

Send every supplier the same short brief, then line up the answers.

1. Write down the pages you need and what each one is for.
2. Say who will supply the content. You, them, or shared.
3. Ask for a fixed price against that scope, not an hourly estimate.
4. Ask for the yearly running cost in writing: domain, hosting or plan, maintenance.
5. Ask who owns what. Your domain, website and accounts should be in your business's name.
6. Ask how long it will take and what you need to provide by when.
7. Ask what happens if you want to leave. Can the site be moved to another host or supplier?

The ownership question matters most. If a supplier registers your domain name in their own name, moving away later becomes hard. For more on choosing a supplier, see how to choose a web design company.

Why do we not publish our own prices?

Because the six drivers above change the answer for every business. A single price on a page would be wrong for most of the people reading it.

We quote after a short discovery call and put the scope, the price and the yearly running costs in a written proposal. Nothing starts until you approve it. You can see exactly what each of our three website packages includes, and roughly how long each takes, before you get in touch.

Common questions