How much does a custom website cost?
A focused one-page Starter site is $750. Most Sonoma County small businesses spend $1,800 for a Practice site of up to ten pages, and $3,500 for Growth at up to twenty. Every build ships with the matching Sentinel audit at launch, included rather than billed. E-commerce and custom web applications are scoped separately.
Everything below is a real range, not a "starting at" hook. Most quotes land in the middle of their range. I send a fixed-price quote within 48 hours of receiving your brief, and the number on that quote is the number on your invoice. For the full first-year picture including hosting and domain costs, see what a small business website costs in the North Bay.
Starter
- One focused, mobile-responsive page
- Services, service area, trust details, and contact action
- On-page SEO and appropriate structured data
- Contact form with lead routing
- 30 days post-launch support
- Hosting and monthly care are separate
Practice
- Up to 10 pages, fully responsive
- Local SEO + schema + llms.txt for AI search
- Service area pages per city
- Custom contact forms + lead routing
- Google Business Profile setup
- Sentinel All-Category audit at launch, a $499 report, $0 due
- 30 days post-launch support
- Launch in 4 to 6 weeks
Growth
- Up to 20 pages, or a full redesign
- Migration from WordPress, Wix or Squarespace
- Preserves content + SEO equity, zero-downtime DNS cutover
- Location pages, FAQ cluster, reviews with schema
- All-Category audit + Plan Conformance on the pages I build
- Launch in 4 to 6 weeks
E-commerce
- Stripe or Square checkout
- Inventory management
- Tax + shipping integration
- Order management dashboard
- Email/SMS order confirmations
- Launch in 6 to 10 weeks
Custom web app
- Booking + reservation systems
- Member portals / login
- Owner dashboards (live KPIs, search)
- Staff kiosks (Easy Breezy-style)
- Custom backend integrations
- Launch in 8 to 14 weeks
Monthly care
- Host, $79. Hosting, SSL, backups, uptime monitoring, 30 minutes of content swaps
- Local, $149. 2 hours of edits, monthly SEO, GEO and AEO monitoring, review requests, quarterly citations, and a quarterly All-Category re-audit I run for you
- Grow, $299. 4 hours of edits, 2 pages or 1 long page, continuous SEO, GEO and AEO monitoring, a monthly re-audit, and a written monthly summary of what moved and what to do next
- Monitoring watches where you rank, whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews cite you, your Core Web Vitals, your schema, and broken links. You get the report either way, and I fix what is in scope
- I do not run ads, and I do not post to your Google Business Profile
- 14 day cancel, and you take the files
Realtor personal brand site
- RealEstateAgent schema (full)
- Bio, sold portfolio, neighborhood guides
- IDX integration (BAREIS-ready)
- Lead capture → CRM webhook
- Syndicated reviews + market reports
- SEO + GEO + AEO baked in
- More detail →
What you don't pay for
- Sales rep commissions, Justin handles every project personally.
- Hourly billing, every quote is fixed-price with written change orders if scope shifts.
- Platform lock-in, you own the code, the domain, and the hosting credentials at launch.
- Ongoing "retainer" pressure, monthly care is optional and cancellable.
What it really costs to run a small business website
The build cost is one piece. Your real annual website spend looks more like:
- Build (one-time): $750 Starter, $1,800 Practice, or $3,500 Growth
- Domain (annual): ~$15
- Hosting + SSL + monitoring (monthly): $79 to $299 with my care plan, or $10 to $30 on a basic shared host you manage yourself
- Email marketing (optional): $0 to $30/mo depending on contact volume (I set up on your own infrastructure so you don't get locked into Mailchimp)
A typical Sonoma County small business spends $2,500 to $6,000 in year one including build + 12 months of care, and roughly $1,000 to $3,000/year after that.
Pricing FAQs
Why are your prices lower than most North Bay agencies?
I don't carry agency overhead, no big team, no sales-rep commissions, no offshored production. Justin builds every site himself. The savings go to you, not to a salesforce.
Is the price fixed or hourly?
Every quote is fixed-price. You see the total cost before I start. Scope creep is handled with a written change order so you always know what something costs before approving it.
What's included in the base price?
Custom-built site, mobile-responsive design, on-page SEO, schema.org structured data, llms.txt for AI search engines, Google Business Profile setup (or optimization if you have one), contact form with lead routing, SSL certificate, and 30 days of post-launch support. Hosting is separate ($79 to $299/month) or you can host elsewhere.
Do you charge a deposit?
Yes, 50% to start, 50% at launch. For larger custom builds I'll sometimes split the second half into milestone payments.
What if I already have a Squarespace, Wix, or WordPress site?
I can migrate it. The work includes a URL and content audit, redirects for changed URLs, preservation of relevant metadata, and post-launch monitoring. Migration scope and pricing depend on the existing site, and search visibility can change during a move.
Do you do ongoing SEO work?
Yes, optionally, through monthly care. Depending on the plan, that can include search, GEO, and AEO monitoring, reporting, recommendations, and scoped improvements. The exact inclusions are listed with each care tier.