The SiteRoot team7 min read
Ask three people what a small business website costs and you will get three answers that do not overlap. That is usually not because someone is trying it on. It is because "a website" is five or six separate purchases bundled into one sentence, and every quote includes a different set of them.
So here is each part on its own, what it costs in Australia, and whether you actually need it.
Your address: the domain name
A .com.au costs roughly A$10 to A$30 a year, depending on which registrar you buy it from. Cheap first years are common, and they usually renew higher, so look at the renewal price rather than the sign-up price before you commit.
Two things worth knowing before you buy one.
- A .com.au needs an Australian business number or a registered business name behind it. You cannot buy the address first and sort the business out later.
- Whoever registers it should be you. If a designer registers your domain under their own account as a favour, your address is not actually yours, and getting it back later is a slow conversation with someone you have stopped paying.
Hosting, and the padlock
Hosting is renting the space your website sits in. Shared hosting for a small business site runs about A$10 to A$30 a month. Below that you are usually on a promotional first year. Well above it you are paying for capacity a five page site will never touch.
The padlock in the address bar comes from a certificate. A certificate costs nothing now at the basic level, it is included by most hosts, and it expires every few months and has to renew. That renewal is the part that quietly breaks. A site whose certificate lapsed shows visitors a full page browser warning before they see a word you wrote, and nothing tells you it happened except your customers going quiet.
If hosting is quoted to you as a separate line, ask who is watching the certificate.
The design and the build
This is the line with all the variance in it. The ranges below are what we see quoted around us in Australia, not a survey, so treat them as a way to read a quote rather than as a price list. Get three and you will see the spread for yourself.
- A solo designer or small studio, five to ten pages: about A$500 to A$3,000.
- An agency, same brief: about A$3,000 to A$8,000, often more.
- Anything custom, with bookings, payments or a system to connect to: A$10,000 and up, quickly.
The spread is real and it is mostly scope, not cheek. An agency quote includes discovery, revisions, project management and someone answering the phone in eighteen months. A A$700 quote includes a template with your logo on it. Both can be the right buy. They are not the same purchase, and the trap is comparing the numbers as though they were.
The words
Almost nobody quotes for this, and it is the part that decides whether the site works.
Copywriting for a small business site is usually A$500 to A$2,000 if you hire it out. If it is not in the quote, it is not being done, which in practice means one of two things happens: you write it yourself at 11pm across three weekends, or the site goes live with the designer's placeholder text still sitting on the services page. Both are extremely common.
Ask the direct question: who is writing the words, and is it in this price?
The photos
Also usually not quoted. A local photographer for a half day is A$400 to A$1,200. Stock photos are A$10 to A$50 each, or free from the open libraries if you can find something that does not look like a different business entirely.
Photos are worth more than most owners expect. A real photo of your own van, shopfront or finished work outperforms the best stock image available, because the whole question in the visitor's head is whether you are real.
The part that shows up after launch
Here is where most website budgets actually go wrong. Not the build. The changes.
You will want to change your prices. Add a service. Swap the hero photo for something from last week. Fix the spelling of a suburb. Each of those is either an email to your designer with an hourly rate attached, typically A$80 to A$200 an hour with a minimum, or it is you learning an editor you use four times a year and have to relearn every time.
Owners describe the same ending often enough that it is worth naming: the site was fine in year one, the prices went out of date in year two, and by year three it was quietly doing damage because the opening hours on it were wrong.
Whatever you buy, get the answer to this before you sign: what does it cost me to change one sentence, and how long does it take?
Adding it up
For a plain, honest five page site done properly, the first year in Australia lands somewhere around A$1,500 to A$5,000 all in, and then A$200 to A$600 a year to keep it alive if nothing changes. Nothing ever changes for free.
You can spend a great deal less by doing the design and the words yourself on a builder. You can spend a great deal more, and for a business with bookings, stock or multiple locations you probably should.
Where SiteRoot sits in that
We should be straight about our own numbers, since this is our blog.
SiteRoot is A$16.50 a month including GST (A$15 plus GST). Hosting is in that. The certificate and its renewal are in that. Changes are in that, so editing a price or swapping a photo does not start a billable conversation. There is no setup fee and nothing above it to upgrade to.
The trial terms, in full, since this is a post about money: 14 days free, then A$16.50/month (A$15 + GST). Card asked for during your 14 days, one free trial per customer, cancel anytime.
The domain is not in that. You buy it from a registrar in your own name, for the A$10 to A$30 a year above, because your address should belong to you and not to us.
What you are buying is a site built from a conversation about your business rather than from a blank canvas, and the ability to change it yourself afterwards without booking anyone. What you are not buying is a designer who knows your industry personally, a photographer, or someone doing your marketing. If those are what you need, the A$5,000 quote is the honest answer and we would rather say so here than after you have signed up.
Five questions that sort out any quote
Take these to whoever you are talking to, including us.
- Is the domain registered in my name, and can I move it?
- Who renews the certificate, and what happens if it lapses?
- Who writes the words, and is that in this price?
- What does it cost me to change one sentence next March?
- What is the total for year two, with nothing new added?
The last one is the one that catches people. Year one is the number in the proposal. Year two is the number you actually live with.
