What a website should cost in Brooklyn in 2026

Ask five agencies what a website costs and you'll get five speeches and no numbers. Owners tell us this all the time: three calls, two "discovery meetings," a proposal PDF with a cover page, and still no price on the first page. So here are the numbers, as plainly as we can put them, then what the money actually buys, then a worked example you can copy with your own figures, and finally the exact words to use so nobody can dodge you again.

What agencies around here actually charge

There are four price tiers for a local business website in this city, and almost every quote you'll ever see falls into one of them.

• Custom design shops: $2,500 to $10,000. A real designer, a real developer, a project manager, and a five-to-eight page site built for you. This is the right tier for a business with several locations, an online store, or a complicated booking system. For a single-location dentist, vet, or restaurant, most of that budget goes to process, not to anything a customer sees.
• Budget studios: around $499 plus $25 a month. A template with your name, colors, and photos dropped in. Fast and cheap, and you get exactly what that sounds like: your business poured into the same mold as everyone else's. The words are usually yours to write, and the photos are usually stock.
• Agency care retainers: $99 to $499 a month. Sold on top of a build, or on their own for an existing site. Covers hosting, updates, and a set number of changes. The range is wide because "care" can mean anything from "we renew the hosting" to "we redesign a page every quarter."
• Site builders: about $25 a month. The drag-and-drop tools you see advertised. The software is cheap because you're the labor: the design, the words, the photos, the phone testing, the fixing when something moves, all of it, usually at 11pm after closing.

None of those tiers is a scam on its own. The problem is that most owners can't tell which one they're being sold, and almost nobody adds up what it costs after year one.

What the money actually buys

Take a $5,000 quote and ask where it goes. Most of it isn't the website. It's hours. A kickoff meeting, a "discovery" session, two or three revision rounds, a project manager relaying messages between you and a designer, a developer converting the design into code, and someone to write the words if you're lucky. Every one of those hours is billed, and every meeting you ask for adds more.

The thing you actually need is much simpler. A site that loads fast on a phone, says what you do and where, shows your prices, looks like your real shop, speaks your customers' languages, and gives people one obvious button to call or book. That's it. A tax office doesn't need an animated hero video. A dental office doesn't need a blog about hair trends. A repair shop doesn't need a "brand story" page.

Here's a quick way to see through any quote. Ask the seller to split the price into three piles: design, words and photos, and the technical build. Then ask how many hours are in each pile. If they can't answer, they haven't thought about where your money goes either, and you're about to pay for their guess.

Most of a big quote isn't the website. It's hours.

How to get a real number tonight

You can settle this in one evening with a phone and an email. Do it in this order.

1. Write down what you actually need. One line per page: home, services with prices, about, contact. Add booking if you take appointments and a menu page if you serve food. Five to seven pages is normal. This stops a seller from padding the scope.
2. Email three sellers the same message. Copy and paste this: "I run a [type of business] in [neighborhood]. I need a [number]-page site with [booking / a menu / a contact form], in [languages]. Please send me the total first-year cost in one number, including build, hosting, domain, and any required monthly plan, and tell me who owns the domain and files. Thanks." Sending the identical message to all three is what makes the answers comparable.
3. Give them 48 hours. A seller who can't answer a plain email in two days will not answer a broken-form email in month seven either.
4. Put the answers side by side. Four columns: build price, monthly price, first-year total, who owns what. If a column is blank, that's the answer.
5. Check their own site on your phone. Over cell data, not wifi. If an agency's own site is slow on a phone, they'll build yours the same way. Our 30-second phone check takes half a minute.
6. Ask for one site they built for a business like yours, and open it on your phone too. A portfolio of screenshots on a laptop tells you nothing about the thing your customers will see.

What to say when they won't give you a number. Most price-dodging isn't dishonest; it's habit. These lines break the habit politely.

• When they say "it depends on scope": "I understand. For the scope in my email, what's your number?"
• When they say "let's set up a discovery call": "Happy to, after I have a ballpark. Is it closer to $500 or $5,000?"
• When they say "we don't do hourly": "That's fine. What's the total for the first year, including the monthly plan?"
• When they say "hosting is separate": "Then please add it in. I want one number I can compare."
• When they say "we have a special this month": "What's the price next month, so I know what I'm renewing at?"

Write the answers down while they talk, then ask for the same in an email. The gap between what someone says on a call and what they'll put in writing tells you more than either answer alone.

A worked example: the true first-year cost

Numbers only mean something side by side, so here's a hypothetical single-chair dental office comparing the four tiers. Plug in your own figures; the shape stays the same.

• Custom shop: $4,000 build plus a $199-a-month care retainer. Year one: $4,000 + ($199 × 12) = $4,000 + $2,388 = $6,388.
• Budget studio: $499 build plus $25 a month. Year one: $499 + $300 = $799. Words and photos not included, so add your own evenings.
• Site builder: $25 a month, no build fee. Year one: $300 in cash. But say it takes you 40 hours to design it, write it, and fight with it. If you'd otherwise be cutting hair at $35 a cut, two cuts an hour, that's $70 an hour, and 40 hours is $2,800 of your time. Real cost: about $3,100.
• Us: $1,200 to set up, then Essential at $499 a month. Year one: $1,200 + $5,988 = $7,188. Photos, every word, five languages, hosting, the Google listing run properly and five changes a month are all inside it, and there is no second invoice.

Now the other side of the ledger, and use your own numbers rather than ours. Take what a new customer is worth to you across a year, not on the first visit. Divide $7,188 by that figure and you have the number of extra customers the lowest plan has to bring you before it has paid for itself. For most practices turning over $600,000 or more, that number lands somewhere between one and four a month. If it lands much higher than that for you, this is the wrong plan and we would rather you knew now.

Whatever you pay, never pay for mystery.

Why we can charge less, honestly

We're upfront about this: AI does the slow, repetitive part of the work. Claude and other tools build the pages, draft the first version of the text, translate it into Spanish, Georgian, Russian, and Ukrainian, and test that everything works, in hours instead of weeks. We do the part that needs a human. We come to your business, take the photos ourselves, write every word in your voice, and check the whole thing on a real phone before it goes live. You pay for judgment, not for hours.

That is why our numbers look different from an agency quote. There is no price for the website, because the website is not sold on its own: it is inside the monthly plan, along with the Google listing, the photos, the languages and, on Complete, the phone being answered at three in the morning. Essential is $499 a month, Complete $999, Partner $2,000, with $1,200 once to set it all up. One more detail most studios hide: the AI's own usage cost is paid by you at cost, with no markup, on its own line. We would rather print that here than surprise you on a call. After three months you can cancel with thirty days notice and keep everything, which our guarantee spells out.

Common mistakes when buying a website

• Comparing build prices instead of first-year totals. A $499 site with a $79 monthly plan costs $1,447 in year one. A $1,200 site with $25 hosting costs $1,500. They're nearly the same, and the second one might include more. Fix: always compare the twelve-month number.
• Paying for pages nobody visits. Ten-page sites for a three-service business. Fix: list the pages you'd actually send a customer to, and pay for those.
• Letting the seller own the domain. The site is cheap because they keep the keys, and leaving costs you the address. Fix: register the domain in your own account before the build starts. Our ownership guide shows how.
• Accepting "you send us the text and photos." You're doing the hardest part of their job at night, and the site launches late because you never got to it. Fix: ask for writing and photos to be included or priced separately, then decide.
• Signing a contract with no exit. Two-year terms, cancellation fees bigger than the build. Fix: ask what leaving looks like before you sign, and get it in writing.
• Choosing on the pretty mockup. The mockup is a picture. The site is what shows up on a phone at a bus stop. Fix: insist on seeing the real site on your own phone before final payment.

Your checklist before you pay anyone

• I have the full first-year total in one number, in writing.
• I know what the monthly price becomes in year two.
• The domain will be registered in my own account.
• I know who writes the words and who takes the photos.
• I know what a change costs in month seven, and how fast it happens.
• I've seen a site they built, on my own phone, over cell data.
• I know what happens if we part ways, and that I keep everything.
• I've run through the free website checklist so I know what "done" should look like.

Whatever you pay, never pay for mystery. If someone can't tell you exactly what you get and what it costs before you sign, the price isn't the problem. Before you talk to anyone, read our seven questions to ask any web designer. Use them on us too. We'll enjoy it, and if another studio answers them just as clearly, they're probably good people.

Questions owners ask

Is the website inside the plan a real website, or a landing page? It is the full site: design, every word written, photos taken at your business, booking, Google setup, all five languages, live on your own domain in 2 to 4 weeks. It is not priced separately because it is not sold separately. A website nobody maintains starts drifting within weeks, and we would rather be responsible for it than hand it over and walk away.

Why do I have to take a monthly plan? Can't I just pay for the site? Because a site nobody maintains starts drifting within weeks: hours change, prices change, a form breaks. We'd rather be responsible for keeping it accurate for the first year than hand you something that quietly goes stale. It's one monthly price with everything inside, from $499, and a $1,200 setup once. You can cancel with thirty days' notice after the third month, and everything is yours to keep, including the domain and every file. Here's what a monthly plan actually does.

Isn't a $25-a-month builder cheaper? In cash, yes: $300 a year. In real cost, only if your evenings are worth nothing. Price your own time at what you earn behind the chair or the counter, multiply by the hours it takes, and compare again.

Should I ever pay $5,000 for a site? Sometimes. If you have multiple locations, sell products online, or need custom software like a patient portal, a custom shop can be the right call. For a single-location service business, it's usually process you're paying for, not results.

What's the AI usage cost, roughly? It's the small bill the AI tools charge for the work they do on your site. We pass it through at cost with no markup and show it to you as a line item, so you see exactly what the machine cost and exactly what we charged. If any studio won't tell you what their tools cost, ask why.