Average Cost of Website Design for Small Business in 2023

If you’re looking to design a website for your small business, you may have certain questions:

• What is a reasonable price to pay for a domain name?
• What could be the average cost of website design for a small business?
• How much does it cost to hire a web development company to build a website?
• How much does it cost to maintain a website monthly?

We have prepared this complete guide to answer all these questions. Being a leading web development company, we have an in-house team of web developers, and we interviewed some of these web developers to make sure we deliver the best details about small business website cost.

What is the Average Cost of Website Design for Small Business?

The approximate cost of basic custom website development can range from USD 10,000 to USD 25,000. The average cost of a website development includes factors, such as design, pages, functionality, domain, web hosting, drag, and drop a website, or customization.

We will take you through the whole process, and by the end, you will have a complete idea of the website development cost in Canada as well as in other countries.

There are mainly three ways to create a website:

1. Using website builder or drag and drop solution
2. Using an open-source solution like WordPress
3. Hiring a web development company

Let’s check how much it cost to make a website using these different platforms.

First, we will look into the drag-and-drop solution in which you will get an idea about average web design cost and pros and cons. Without any further due, let’s dive into it.

1. Website Built Using Drag and Drop Solutions (Starts from $5 per month)

If you opt to develop your website using drag-and-drop solutions, then you can start creating your own website within a range of 2-6 hours of work. Certainly, it also depends on how familiar you are with the platform.

Drag and drop website is suitable for you if

• You need a personal or portfolio website so that you can showcase it
• You want to have a quick solution within a very limited period of time

You can design various types of websites using a website builder, such as a single-page website, portfolio website, or blog site. If you choose a drag and drop solution, here is the website design pricing table for you.

How Much Does it Cost to Build a Website Using Drag and Drop Solution?

Factors	Pricing	More Information
Monthly plans	$5 – $50 per month	It covers, hosting, domain name, storage, bandwidth, and secure socket layer certificate
Apps integration	$0 – $20+ per month	You can add paid or free apps to increase your website functionality
Security	$0	You don’t need to pay for the security of the website additionally.
Support	$0	You will be provided support, it is included in the subscription.

How much do websites cost to build using a website builder?

The cost to develop a professional small business website using a website builder can range from $5 per month to $100 per month. This depends on the monthly subscription and integrations you include on your website. Here, the average website cost depends on the plan you choose for a website builder company.

Now, let’s check the advantages and disadvantages of using drag-and-drop solutions.

Advantages	Limitations
Drag and drop is an affordable option	Need to pay subscription cost every month
No coding or web development experience required	Basic plans have fewer customization options
Website builders help to create your website within a few hours of work	Not all website builders offer you responsive design

2. Website Built Using WordPress – An Open Source Solution ($5,000 – $50,000 or more)

Being a top WordPress web development services company, we are often asked, how much does it actually cost to develop a WordPress website? The answer to this question depends on the need for tools that you want to include in your website to grow your business.

WordPress website development is suitable for you if:

• You want a customized website
• You want a flexible and easy-to-use solution for the content management

To build a WordPress site you will require some technical skills or you can even hire professional web developers. Using WordPress you can have full control over your site.

Basically, it depends on designing a simple WordPress site or a sophisticated site with more features. Further, if you choose WordPress development. Here’s the detailed information about the approximate cost in the table.

How Much Does it Cost to Develop a Website Using WordPress?

Factors	Pricing	More Information
Monthly subscription	Free	No subscription is required as WordPress is free to use.
Plugins/Integrations	$0 – $150+ per month	You can add paid or free plugins or integrations. Some charge one-time fees while others have monthly or annual subscriptions.
Themes	$0 – $50+ upfront cost	You can use free as well as paid themes. If you purchase a paid theme, then you need to pay one time charge for it.
Hosting	$2.95 – $50+ per month	To host the WordPress website, you will require to purchase a WordPress hosting plan depending on your requirements.
Security	$0 – $200 per year	Security is a crucial factor for website protection. You can purchase additional security plugins to add strong protection to your website.
WordPress developer help	$15 – $40 per hour	If you are planning to design a custom wordpress site, then you might need developers’ help. Here, the hourly rate may vary depending on location and web application development company.

How much does it actually cost to develop a website using WordPress?

The cost to design a website using WordPress can range between $5,000 to $50,000 or even more. Certainly, it depends on your requirements

To design a WordPress website, the client needs to choose the best suitable template for their business. Then, they should discuss the requirements with the designer to get the exact WordPress website.

Let’s check the advantages and disadvantages of using WordPress solution:

Advantages	Limitations
WordPress is free and easy to use	Coding is required to do major customization
Scale your WordPress website with themes and plugins	It provides frequent updates which leads to uncertainty in plugins
Develop SEO friendly websites	You need to add more plugins for additional features

Furthermore, if you are looking to develop a website using an e-commerce website and want to have a complete idea of it. Check out our complete guide on the best eCommerce website design tips.

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3. Custom Website Design (Starts from $10,000)

Custom website design gives you the option to make it creative and visually appealing to your target audience. Opting for custom web design enables you to create a website from scratch rather than using website templates. Additionally, it also benefits you to stand out from your competitors in the market. Because developing a custom website design enables you to create a website as per your business goals, ideas and with a custom-driven approach.

The custom website is suitable for you if:

• Budget is not your primary concern and you need a complete customized solution to address the complex problems within your organization
• Your main concern is data security and you want to have total control over your data so that no one can access your important data

How Much Does it Cost to Develop a Custom Design Website?

Here is the bifurcation of cost for designing a website from scratch without using any web builder.

Factors	Pricing	More Information
Domain	$1 – $13	You need to buy a domain name for your website.
Web hosting/Integrations	$40 – $500	There are several hosting providers you can choose from depending on your requirement. Remember, some companies might manage the web hosting others don’t.
SSL certification	$0 – $200	It is possible SSL can come into your hosting plan. But, some low-cost plans don’t offer the SSL so you will need to purchase it.
Web development company	$10000 – $15000	To design a website, you will need to hire a professional team of website designers and developers. You are paying experts to create your design.
Monthly website maintenance	$250 – $1000 per year	You may need to pay the ongoing website maintenance costs and updates fees to professionals depending on the contract..

Here, the approximate cost of designing a website for a small business depends heavily on three types of websites:

Types of Website	Approximate Cost Range	Features
Small business website	$10,000 to $25,000	Basic customization Web design Search and filter functionality CMS integration
Medium complex website	$30,000 to $40,000	CMS (Content management system) Design layouts Unique features Analytics Integration Search Console integration
Highly complex website	Starts from $50,000	Purchase Products Payments CMS Blog Platforms Multimedia Creation Customization Analytics integration Search Console integration

In custom web design, you get the opportunity to make strategic planning for your website development. Many small business owners build custom websites according to their business objectives and make it unique. Creating custom websites offers the benefits of using the variety of colors, fonts, and graphics most suitable to the business.

Choosing a custom website design is a one-time investment and gets rid of the monthly costs of website templates. That actually results in cost-saving in the long term. Furthermore, web designers make a proper strategy to build the website according to business objectives in custom website design. Now, we will check the advantages and disadvantages of custom website development.

Advantages	Limitations
You have total control over your website and its database	It takes time to create a custom website
Helps to scale your website as per your future requirements	Costlier compared to readily available template websites
Custom website solution is customer-centric	Takes more time and effort in the process of development
Enables to build SEO friendly website	You need to rely on the developers to manage your website
Helps to develop a clean code website	–
Offers better security than WordPress	–

Moving ahead let’s check the crucial factors having a direct impact on the cost.

6 Core Factors That Impacts the Website Design Cost

1. Buy a Domain Name(Starts from $1 per year)

A domain name is your digital address through which users can visit your website. For example, our domain name is spaceo.ca which is identical to our company’s name. It’s obvious to purchase the domain name according to your company’s name unless that domain is already purchased.

How Much Does it Cost to Buy a Domain Name?

The average cost to purchase a domain lies between $1 to $13.00 per domain name. You can check websites like Bluehost, GoDaddy, Hostgator, and NameCheap to buy a domain name. Furthermore, if the domain name you choose is available only then it will be possible for you to purchase it. Otherwise, you will have to look for an alternative name option for your website.

The purchased domain name is valid for one year. To keep the same domain, you will be required to renew the domain every year as long as you want to keep it.

2. Buy Web Hosting (Starts from $3 per month)

Web hosting is a space on a server on which the files of your website are stored. It provides 24X7 availability of your website over the web.

The cost of web hosting varies on the requirements of resources:

• Storage
• Bandwidth
• Security
• CMS
• CDN
• SSL certificate
• Backup

Generally, the cost of web hosting starts from $3/month to $25/month. Let’s check some website hosting providers.

Web Hosting Service Provider

There are numerous web hosting providers available for renting space on a server for your website.

Here is the list of the best web hosting companies with their basic shared hosting plan:

Website Hosting Companies	Plan Name	Basic Plan Pricing
A2 Hosting	StartUp	$2.99 per month
DreamHost	Shared Starter	$2.59 per month
SiteGround	StartUp	$4.99 per month
Hostinger	Single Shared Hosting	$1.39 per month.

The third aspect of website development is hiring a professional web development agency.

3. Hiring a Web Development Agency

For designing a professional website for your business, you will need to hire a web development agency. Creating a professional website design is essential because your website reflects your brand identity for your audience.

Once you hire a professional web development company, then your next step is to discuss your requirements. It will help website designers to create their small business website design as they want. So, designers and developers help you from ideation validation to making your small business website live.

4. Number of Pages on Website

Every website has a different number of web pages in it depending upon the type of business. Talking about a service-based website will have at least 10-15 pages. On the other hand, an eCommerce website will have more than 100 pages depending on the product list. Therefore, from a website development agency’s point of view, it takes time to design and build a website. While creating a website from scratch you must take these 7 essential factors into your consideration.

Let’s assume you are planning to design an eCommerce website, and you have 120 products. Even though a professional website designer is using the same template design for all the products. Still, other factors can take time like product description, images, pricing, and testing of pages for the website designer and development team. As these tasks take time, therefore, the website cost increases.

5. Designing of Website

Now, the core part comes with the design of the website. It’s crucial because everyone has different requirements for design for a website. If you want simple features and designs on your own website. If you prefer to have a design that can take much of the time of any designer. Therefore, it ultimately affects the website costs.

Additionally, different pages of the website can have different designs, such as,

• Homepage
• About Us
• Contact us page
• Product/Service page
• Portfolio page
• Testimonial page

For more details, you can even contact the professional web design team to discuss web design for your website. Although, ask for examples of high-end quality web design as well as the simple website to get a vivid idea of the budget for website development cost.

6. Functionality

Adding functionalities to your website enables the ability to a better user experience. It simply means adding features to your website. To be precise, adding the feature of accepting online payments. Furthermore, provide signup or registration functionality, create an email list or integration of email marketing providers, add web forms, and chatbots, and provide automated answers to the queries on your website.

These all functionalities can take the time of a website development team. Not only this, some of the integrations you decide to include in the website can be subscription-based.

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FAQ About Website Cost for Small Business

1. What is a wireframe in design?

A wireframe of a website refers to creating a basic outline and structure of a website how it would look once made. It helps designers have a perfect idea of the requirements of the clients in designing a website.


2. What is the difference between wireframe and mockup?

A wireframe is created as a structured outline of a whole website, you can say a sketch of a website. While mockup is the advanced step of a wireframe by adding images, graphics, and UI components to a wireframe.

Wireframe	Mockup
A sketch design to convey the concept of new product functionality	A visual design of new product functionality to present how the product will look like.
It contains the format and structure of content	It includes the components like fonts, colours, icons, and images
It requires approximately 6-8 days	It requires approximately 5-7 days

3. What is the difference between mockup vs prototype?

A mockup is the graphical representation of a future product that contains the images, graphics, or UI components. While a prototype is a visual representation of how a user will interact with a product.

Mockup	Prototype
Graphical representation of a future product	A prototype is a visual presentation of the final product.
It contains images, fonts, colours, and UI components	Connect all elements for a complete interactive flow of the product
The mockup contains the dummy content	Users can interact with prototypes

4. How much does a website cost in Canada?

The average development cost of a website for a small business starts from $10,000, and there is no upper limit. Certainly, the cost of a website depends on the requirements and features that a project owner wants to include.

Get Your Custom Website Design Cost

Answer to your question – how much does it cost to build a website for a small business? There is no fixed cost to design a website. The cost of website design involves several factors like domain, hosting, SSL, functionality, and others factors as per your requirements. Therefore, the best idea to get the estimated cost for your website design is to consult web design firms or a web development agency and discuss your requirements. Also, you can ask them about their previous work and discuss with them the cost to have a budgeting idea.

Want to have a website for your business? Or confused about which type of website is best suitable for your business? We have an expert team of web developers to help you. You can contact us by filling up the below form.