Ask three web designers what a website costs and you will get three answers, none of which are numbers. "It depends on your requirements." "Let's book a discovery call." "What's your budget?"
You do not quote like that. If someone asks what it costs to run a new circuit, you can give them a range on the phone. So here are actual numbers, including the bands above and below where I sit.
The five price bands in Melbourne
Do it yourself
$0 – $500Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy. You pick a template, you write the words, you upload the photos. The platform fee is $20–$40 a month forever.
Honest verdict: fine if you enjoy it and have the weekends. Most tradies start one, get halfway, and it sits half-finished for two years. If that sounds like you, skip this band — a half-built site is worse than none.
A small operator or freelancer
$800 – $2,500Someone builds it properly, writes the words for you, and hands it over. Four to eight pages, mobile-first, contact form, photo gallery, Google listing set up. Two to three weeks.
This is where most sole traders and small crews should be, and it is where we sit — our builds start at $799.
A small agency
$2,500 – $6,000More pages, a page per service, suburb pages, professional photography sometimes bundled, a proper SEO setup, and usually a project manager between you and whoever builds it.
Worth it if you have several vans, multiple trades under one business, or you are competing hard in a crowded area. Overkill for a one-man operation.
A full agency
$6,000 – $20,000+Strategy workshops, custom design from scratch, brand work, content strategy, ongoing retainers.
There are trade businesses this makes sense for — commercial contractors, multi-site operations, anyone whose average job is five figures. If your average job is $400, this is not your band.
"Free" website, monthly fee
$99 – $250/moNo upfront cost. You pay monthly, usually on a two or three year term, and the site is "included".
Read the section below before you sign one of these.
The monthly deals, honestly
These get pitched hard to tradies, because "nothing upfront" is an easy yes when you are busy. The maths is worth doing on paper.
$150 a month for three years is $5,400. That is agency money for a small-operator website. And with most of these arrangements, at the end of the three years you own nothing — not the site, not the domain, not the hosting. Stop paying and it disappears.
The domain is the part that stings. If it is registered in their name rather than yours, your business address on the internet belongs to somebody else. People discover this at exactly the worst moment — when they want to leave.
Three questions before you sign anything monthly:
- Whose name is the domain registered in? (It should be yours.)
- What happens to the site if I stop paying?
- What is the minimum term and the exit fee?
If the answers are vague, that is the answer.
What actually drives the price
Four things, roughly in order of how much they move the number:
- Page count. A four-page site is genuinely half the work of an eight-page one. Every page needs writing, building and testing.
- Who writes the words. This is the hidden one. Copywriting is often the biggest single chunk of the job, and cheap quotes usually assume you are writing it. Most tradies never do, and the site sits unfinished. Ask explicitly.
- Whether anyone sets up your Google listing. A website with no Google Business Profile is a shop with no sign. Some quotes include it, most do not.
- Photos. If you have your own job photos, you save money. If someone has to shoot them, that is a photographer's day rate on top.
The question that reveals most about a quote: "who writes the content?" If the answer is you, add a fortnight and a fair chance the project never finishes.
The ongoing costs nobody mentions upfront
Whatever you pay to build it, these continue. They should be in your name and paid by you, directly to the providers:
- Domain name: around $20 a year for a .com.au. Note that a .com.au requires an ABN — which is also why it should be registered under yours.
- Hosting: $15–$25 a month for a small site. Anyone quoting $80 a month for hosting a five-page trade website is charging you for something else.
- SSL certificate: should be free and included. If it is a line item, ask why.
- Maintenance: genuinely optional. Useful if you want someone keeping it current and your Google listing active. Not required for the site to keep working.
Budget roughly $220 to $320 a year in unavoidable running costs. Anything above that is a service you are choosing, not a cost you are stuck with.
Is it worth it for a tradie?
Here is the honest arithmetic. If a $1,200 website wins you two jobs in its first year that you would not otherwise have had, most trades are square or ahead. Everything after that is profit, and the site keeps working for three or four years.
That is a low bar. But it is only low if the site actually does its job — loads fast on a phone, shows your work, and makes the number tappable. A slow, ugly site with no photos will not win you two jobs, and it does not matter what you paid for it.
The other half is the referrals you are already getting. Almost everyone who is given your name looks you up before ringing. The website's first job is not finding you new customers — it is not losing the ones you have already won.
What to ask for in a quote
Whoever you go with, get these in writing before you pay a deposit:
- The number of pages, listed by name
- Who writes the content
- Whether your Google Business Profile is included
- How many rounds of changes are included, and what happens after that
- Who owns the site, domain and hosting when the final payment is made
- A go-live date
- What ongoing costs you will carry, and to whom
Any decent operator will answer all seven without hesitating. That is really what you are testing.