What a small-business website actually costs in St. Charles County (and what you get for it)

Every week someone asks me what a website should cost. The honest answer is "it depends on who builds it and who looks after it," which is useless, so here's the version with numbers.

There are five ways a business around here ends up with a website. I sell one of them. I've tried to be fair to the other four, including the ones that are cheaper than me, because two of them are the right answer for a lot of people.

What businesses around here actually use

Before the prices, the split. This summer I scanned 446 business websites across St. Charles, St. Peters, O'Fallon and Wentzville — 25 trades, no names published, aggregate only. Roughly:

• 14% are on a managed vendor (Hibu, Thryv, Scorpion, Townsquare). Hibu alone was 24 sites.
• About 10% are on the GoDaddy builder — the single most common platform in the county.
• And outside the county line, most businesses don't have a site at all: in the rural scan, 504 businesses had only a directory listing against 378 with their own domain, and 41 owned a domain with nothing behind it.

So the typical local business site is either self-built or vendor-templated, and the agency-built minority is small. Keep that in mind when you read the agency prices below — most of your competitors aren't paying them either.

1. You build it yourself

Squarespace, Wix, GoDaddy.

What it costs: about $16–25 a month for a basic Squarespace site, $17 for Wix, and GoDaddy advertises around $10 but the renewal price is closer to $17. Add a domain, roughly $15–20 a year. Call it $120–350 a year, plus your evenings.

What you get: a template, hosting, a certificate, a drag-and-drop editor, and a support chat. The design is whatever the template is. The words are yours to write.

Who's looking after it a year later: you. If the form breaks, you find out when a customer tells you.

Right for: a one-person business with more time than money, or anyone who genuinely enjoys tinkering with it. Plenty of good businesses run on a Squarespace site. If that's you, don't pay me.

2. It came free with your software

The website bundled with your scheduling, booking, or field-service platform — Jobber, Housecall Pro, Square, and the booking platforms most grooming and daycare businesses run on.

What it costs: $0 on top of what you already pay for the software.

What you get: a generic page with your logo and a booking button. Usually one template for every business on the platform.

Who's looking after it a year later: nobody. And it disappears the day you leave the software.

Right for: a business that will never care what its website looks like and just needs the booking button to exist. That's a real category and there's nothing wrong with being in it.

3. A managed vendor

Hibu, Thryv, and the like — the companies that call you.

What it costs: this is the one nobody publishes. For Hibu, reviewers report a website-only arrangement at roughly $99–159 a month plus a $99–449 setup fee, on a 12-month contract; the entry bundles with listings and reputation run around $200–400 a month, and the marketing bundles most businesses get sold are $600–1,500 a month before ad spend. Thryv's website comes inside its Marketing Center, reported at roughly $244–349 a month per location with a $250 onboarding fee and a six-month minimum.

What you get: a templated site on their platform, listings management, a support line, and a contract. Check who owns the site when you leave — reviewers report that on some plans it stays with the vendor.

Who's looking after it a year later: a ticket queue. In my scan of 446 local business sites this summer, 64 were on a managed vendor, and 24 of those — more than one in three — had no analytics installed at all. Paying monthly, and nobody measuring whether anyone visits.

Right for: a business that wants one bill for website, listings, and ads and doesn't want to think about any of it. That's a legitimate wish. Just read the contract.

4. A freelancer or an agency

Someone builds it, hands it over, and moves on.

What it costs: a freelancer, $500–5,000 for the build. A local agency, $2,000–10,000 for a 5–10 page site; the cluster most established businesses land in is $5,000–15,000 once copy and photography are in. Then hosting and maintenance at $50–200 a month, or nothing, in which case nobody's maintaining it.

What you get: the best design on this list if you pick well. A real look, real copy, someone who asks about your business before building. An account manager at the agency end.

Who's looking after it a year later: whoever you're paying the maintenance fee to, if you're paying one. Most people stop. The site stays exactly as it was on launch day while the business moves on.

Right for: a business that needs something a template can't do — a big catalog, a proper store, a brand overhaul with a photographer — and has the budget to do it once and do it well.

5. What I do

Built for the business, then looked after, by one person.

What it costs: from $100 a month; most land between $150 and $200. No build fee. You see the site before you pay anything. Month to month after that, cancel whenever. If you want to own it outright and take it somewhere else, I'll price that.

What you get: a site built for your business, not from a template — including the logo and the words if you need them. Then it's minded: checked every day that it's up, the contact form tested every week with a real message, your email settings watched so a quote request lands in an inbox and not a junk folder. Send me a change, I make it. Analytics on from day one, so you know how many people found you and what they searched.

Who's looking after it a year later: me. That's the product. The build is the way in; the monthly is for the site staying right.

Not right for: you if you enjoy managing your own site, if you already have someone who answers when you call, if you want to own it outright and pay nothing monthly, or if you want a promise about ranking in Google. I won't make one.

Where that lands

Line them up by what you pay in year one for a five-page site with a form:

I'm not the cheapest and I'm nowhere near the most expensive. What's different is the last column. Every other option on this list either hands the site to you or hands it to a queue. Mine doesn't get handed off at all.

If you're on one of the first two and it's working, stay there. If you're on three or four and you're not sure anyone's looked at your site since it launched, send me the address and I'll tell you what I find. If it's clean, I'll say so.

Sources

Prices checked September 2026. Vendor pricing changes; check the current pages before quoting these to anyone.

• Squarespace plans: squarespace.com/pricing; summaries at tech.co, websitebuilderexpert.com (Basic $16/mo annual, $25 monthly)
• Wix plans: wix.com/plans; tech.co Wix pricing 2026 (Light $17/mo)
• GoDaddy Website Builder: godaddy.com; hostadvice.com renewal comparison (Basic $9.99 promotional, ~$16.99 renewal)
• Hibu: websitebuilderexpert.com Hibu review ($99–159/mo + $99–449 setup, 12-month contract); websitetherapy.com/vs/hibu (entry bundle $200–400/mo); flashcrafter.ai Hibu review 2026 (bundled marketing $1,100–1,500/mo average, $599 setup)
• Thryv: capterra.com and g2.com Thryv pricing (Marketing Center $244–255/mo); tekpon.com (Professional $349/mo per location, $250 onboarding); checkthat.ai Thryv pricing (6-month minimum on Marketing Center)
• Freelancer and agency ranges: leadpages.com 2026 website cost guide (freelance $500–5,000, agency $5,000–30,000, ongoing $50–200/mo); zentus.agency (local agency $2,200–9,500); getbeefedup.com (boutique agency cluster $5,000–15,000); websitesally.com (agency hourly $75–300)
• Managed-vendor analytics figure and local platform split: 446 small-business websites in St. Charles County, Dot Grid OS, August 2026