Every week someone in the Treasure Valley asks me some version of the same question: what should a website cost? The honest answer is “it depends,” but that’s not useful, so here’s the version I give business owners across the table in Meridian, Eagle and Boise.
The short answer
For a small business website built by an experienced local designer — five to ten pages, custom design, mobile-first, set up to rank — expect to land in the low-to-mid four figures. Bigger sites with e-commerce, booking systems, membership areas or dozens of pages move into the mid-to-high four figures and beyond. Anything under about a thousand dollars is almost always a template with your logo dropped in, and anything over ten thousand for a simple brochure site should come with a very good explanation.
What actually drives the price
Four things move the number more than anything else:
- Number of pages and how much is custom. A six-page site with one layout system costs less than a twenty-page site where every page is designed from scratch.
- Functionality. Online booking, e-commerce, gated content, integrations with your CRM or scheduling software, multi-location setups. Each one is real work.
- Content. If you have photos, copy and a clear message, the project moves fast. If the designer is writing your copy and sourcing photography, that’s a second project inside the first.
- SEO built in vs. bolted on. A site engineered from day one to rank — proper structure, fast load times, local landing pages, schema — costs more up front than a pretty site with no plan behind it. It’s also the only version that pays for itself.
What you should get for it
At the price range above, from any competent designer, you should expect: a custom design (not a purchased theme with your colors), a site that loads in under two or three seconds on a phone, clean on-page SEO on every page, a Google Business Profile that’s connected and consistent with the site, training so you can update it yourself, and someone who answers when it breaks. If any of those are missing from a quote, ask why.
The quotes to be careful with
The cheapest quote in town is rarely the cheapest site. A $500 build that never ranks costs you every customer who searched for you and found a competitor. Watch for monthly “rental” plans where you never own the site, quotes that don’t mention speed or SEO at all, and agencies where you’ll never talk to the person actually doing the work.
How I price it
I quote a fixed price after a short call, based on the four factors above. No hourly billing, no surprises. Most of my Treasure Valley clients are small businesses, clinics, churches and nonprofits in Boise, Meridian, Eagle and Nampa — you can see the range of what that looks like on my projects page.
If you’re budgeting for a new site or trying to figure out whether your current one is worth fixing, get a free audit. I’ll tell you where you stand and what it would take — no pitch attached.
