From $990 professionally built, plus about $15 a month to run. Here is what moves the number.
Resources / Website Cost Guide
A professionally built small business website in Australia starts from about $990, plus roughly $15 a month to host and care for it. DIY builders look cheaper and agencies charge many times more, and both can be the right call depending on what you need. This guide lays out the real price levels, the ongoing costs nobody budgets for, and how to compare quotes that look wildly different.
a professionally built five-page brochure site
hosting and care on Australian infrastructure
typical brief-to-live build time
| Option | Typical cost | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| DIY builder (Wix, Squarespace, Shopify) | $0 up front, $200 to $600 a year | Testing an idea before spending real money. Your time is the real cost. |
| Template build by a freelancer | $500 to $2,000 | A quick presence when budget is the only constraint. Quality varies enormously. |
| Professional custom build (us) | From $990 | A designed-for-you brochure site, built on web standards you own outright. |
| Agency build | $3,000 to $10,000+ | Larger scopes: e-commerce, content programs, brand work, bigger teams. |
The jumps between tiers are mostly about who does the work and how much of it is custom. Here is what each tier actually buys you, and the catch that comes with it.
Wix, Squarespace and Shopify give you hosting, templates and an editor for a monthly subscription.1 Nothing up front, but the work is yours: expect evenings spent fighting templates, and a subscription that never ends. The catch is ownership. You are renting the site, and if you ever leave the platform, you rebuild from scratch. Right choice for testing an idea before spending real money; wrong choice once the business depends on it.
A freelancer applies a pre-made theme, drops in your logo and content, and hands it over. Fast and genuinely cheap, but quality swings enormously, and these builds usually arrive on a stack of plugins that need constant updating. The question to ask before paying: who maintains it after handover? If the answer is nobody, the real cost shows up in year two.
This tier, where our own work sits, means the site is designed around your business rather than adapted from a theme: custom design, help with the copy, and plain web standards with no page builder or plugin subscriptions attached. You own the result outright and it can be hosted anywhere. It suits an established small business that wants the website to earn enquiries, not just exist. The Euro Prestige and Villa Akalli builds are both this tier.
Agencies bring teams: project managers, designers, developers, sometimes brand and content people. That capacity is exactly right when the scope genuinely needs several specialists at once, such as e-commerce at scale or a full rebrand. The premium buys process and coordination, not automatically a better small-business website, and the same overheads make small changes expensive after launch.
Which tier is right comes down to matching the spend to what the site has to do. Want to sanity-check a number for your specific project? Our free website cost estimator gives you one in about a minute.
Five things move the number more than anything else: the amount of custom design, who writes the copy, the number of pages, whether you need e-commerce or bookings, and the overheads of whoever you hire. A $6,000 agency quote and a $1,200 consultancy quote can describe nearly the same website; the difference is layers of process and margin. Compare the inclusions line by line, not the totals.
Three, and they are small but permanent: a domain name (roughly $20 to $40 a year for a .com.au), hosting, and care: updates, backups, security and small changes. We charge $15 a month per site for hosting and care together, on Australian infrastructure, with uptime monitored every five minutes. Whatever you pay, make sure someone is actually doing the care part; an unmaintained site ages badly and gets hacked eventually.
Usually not, once your time enters the ledger. Builders charge $200 to $600 a year forever, templates fight you at every step, and the result rarely looks like your business.1 They are genuinely good for testing an idea this weekend. Once the business is real, a one-off professional build that you own outright tends to cost less over three years and convert better from day one.
Websites from $990, hosting and care from $15 a month, and a typical build takes about two weeks. That is not hypothetical: see the Euro Prestige and Performance build (a mobile mechanic's site with live Google reviews and a quote pipeline) and the Villa Akalli build (a bilingual direct-booking site for a holiday villa). Full pricing is on the services page, with no lock-in contracts.
Website cost estimator: an indicative number for your project in about a minute.
Euro Prestige case study: a $990-tier build in the wild.
All resources: tools, guides and case studies.
A professionally built brochure-style website typically starts from about $990 with an independent consultancy like ours, and runs to $3,000 to $10,000 with larger agencies. DIY builders look cheaper up front but shift the cost into your own time and monthly subscriptions.
Budget for three things: the domain name (roughly $20 to $40 a year for a .com.au), hosting, and someone to keep the site updated, backed up and secure. We charge $15 a month per site for hosting and care, which covers all three jobs except the domain.
A focused brochure site with real content ready to go can be built in about two weeks. Our recent client builds, a mobile mechanic and a holiday villa, each went from brief to live site in that window.
Only if your time is free. Builders charge $200 to $600 a year in subscriptions, and the average owner spends dozens of hours fighting templates. A professional build costs more up front, is usually faster, and you own the result outright.
Scope and overheads. Custom design, copywriting, the number of pages, e-commerce, and integrations all add cost, and agency quotes carry agency overheads. Always compare what is actually included, not the bottom-line number.
General information only. This article does not account for your specific circumstances and is not legal, financial, or professional advice. For guidance on your situation, get in touch.
Tell us what your business does and what the site needs to achieve. We'll send a fixed quote within one business day. No obligation, no lock-in.
Prefer to talk? Call (02) 9053 8789.
Belivanis Information Systems