Pricing guide
Most pricing guides are written to hide the real answer. Here it is up front: the sticker price matters less than the monthly bleed that follows it. This guide covers both.
There are only four real options, and each hides its true cost in a different place. DIY builders (Wix, Squarespace) charge $16–50/month — $192–600 a year, forever, for a site you build yourself on a platform you don't own. Freelancers charge $1,000–5,000 up front, plus hosting, plus whatever their availability looks like next year. Agencies charge $35,000–60,000 for a custom build, then $200–500/month in 'maintenance' — and the contract often says they own the code. Design subscriptions run $2,500–5,000 per month with unlimited requests, which is excellent value right up until you do the annual math.
A $35/month builder subscription is $2,100 over five years. A $300/month agency maintenance contract is $18,000 over the same period — often more than the original build. The web industry's core business model is not building websites; it is renting them back to their owners. When you compare quotes, multiply every monthly number by 60 and add it to the sticker price. The rankings change dramatically.
Modern edge infrastructure (the same class of hosting used by major tech companies) has a free tier generous enough to run most business websites at genuinely $0/month — no servers, no database, unlimited bandwidth. A studio that architects for it can charge once and hand over everything: code, content, domain, admin keys. Our own pricing on that model: $2,950 for a premium 5-page site, $7,500+ for large builds with galleries and admin tooling, $15K+ for web and mobile apps. After launch: $0/month, with optional care plans if you want a team on call.
The proof it works at scale: we launched a national nonprofit's site — 2,100+ photos, an admin panel, a zero-downtime domain cutover — for $7,500 against agency quotes of $35–60K. It has cost $0/month since launch day.
Who owns the code and content when we part ways? What happens to the site if I stop paying you? What is the all-in five-year cost, including every monthly fee? Can my team update content without paying you? If a vendor squirms on any of these, you've found where the real price lives.
Send us your current site. We'll return a finished premium remake — free — and a fixed quote with no monthly anything.
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