“How much does a website cost?” is a bit like asking how much a house costs. The honest answer is “it depends”, which is exactly the answer nobody wants. So here’s a more useful one: what a small business in Sydney can expect to pay in 2026, what drives the price up or down, and the ongoing costs that rarely make it into the first quote.
We’ve included our own prices so you have real numbers to compare against, not a range so wide it’s meaningless.
The three broad options
1. Do it yourself with a website builder
Platforms like Wix, Squarespace and Shopify let you build a site yourself for a monthly subscription. Shopify’s Australian plans, for example, currently start at $42 a month on yearly billing for its Basic plan. The trade-off is time. You’re the designer, copywriter, photographer and SEO specialist, and the result usually looks like what it is. For a brand-new side business testing an idea, that’s perfectly fine.
2. A professionally built small business website
This is where most established small businesses land: five to fifteen pages, written and designed around what your customers need to know, built on a platform such as WordPress that your team can update. In Sydney, the website cost for this kind of site ranges from a couple of thousand dollars with freelancers to well into five figures with larger agencies. The difference is mostly in strategy, writing, design quality and what happens after launch.
3. Custom builds and online stores
Ecommerce, booking systems, member portals and integrations with your other software add real complexity. Every product page, payment option and shipping rule has to be built, tested and maintained.
What we charge, and what’s included
- Starter website, from $4,000 + GST. Up to five or six pages. Ideal for a tradie, clinic or professional service that needs a credible, fast site that turns visitors into calls.
- Business website, from $10,000 + GST. Up to 15 pages, with service and location pages, SEO and AI search optimisation set up properly from day one.
- Custom and WooCommerce websites, from $14,900 + GST. Online stores, bookings and integrations, quoted after a scoping session.
Each one is a fixed written quote, not an hourly estimate that grows. You can see everything side by side on our pricing page.
What actually drives website cost
- Number of unique pages. Ten service pages that each need their own research, copy and layout cost more than one long page.
- Who writes the words. Supplying finished copy saves money. Having it written for you, by someone who understands search, is usually worth it.
- Design approach. A refined template is faster. A fully custom design takes longer and costs more.
- Functionality. Bookings, quote calculators, member areas, multilingual content and integrations each add time.
- Content migration. Moving 80 blog posts from an old site, and redirecting them properly so you keep your Google rankings, is real work.
- Photography. Real photos of you, your team and your work beat stock images every time, and they’re a separate cost.
The ongoing costs nobody mentions upfront
A website is closer to a car than a brochure. It needs running costs to keep working well:
- Domain name. A .com.au address usually costs tens of dollars a year. Note that .au domains have an Australian presence requirement, so register it in the business’s name, not your developer’s.
- Hosting. From a few dollars a month for basic shared hosting to considerably more for faster managed hosting. Cheap hosting is often the reason a site feels slow.
- Licences. Premium themes, plugins and tools often renew yearly.
- Maintenance. WordPress, themes and plugins need regular updates, security checks and occasional fixes. Our Website Care plans start at $149 a month + GST and cover updates with a safety snapshot first, restores, uptime monitoring and monthly malware checks.
- Marketing. A website on its own doesn’t bring visitors. Budget something for SEO, Google Ads or content, even if it’s modest at first.
A few Australian obligations worth knowing
- Privacy. If your site collects personal information through forms, you should have a clear privacy policy. Some businesses are also covered by the Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles, so check whether yours is.
- Email marketing. If a form signs people up to a newsletter, the Spam Act requires consent, a clear sender and an easy way to unsubscribe.
- Accessibility. Building to WCAG accessibility guidelines makes your site usable for everyone and reduces discrimination risk. It’s far cheaper to build in than to retrofit.
How to compare quotes properly
- Ask exactly how many pages are included and who writes the content.
- Check who owns the domain, the hosting account and the website files at the end.
- Ask whether basic SEO is included: page titles, descriptions, headings, speed, schema and a sitemap.
- Ask what happens after launch, and what support or maintenance costs.
- Look at real sites they’ve built and check how fast they load on your phone.
The lowest upfront website cost is rarely the cheapest website over time. A site that looks fine but doesn’t bring in enquiries costs you every month it’s live.
Want a fixed quote for your website?
Sources: Shopify Australia: pricing · auDA: the .au Australian presence requirement
