What a Small Business Website Actually Costs in Missoula
Three quotes landed in the same Missoula inbox last month, all for the same job: a five-page site for an electrician. Home, Services, About, Reviews, Contact. One said $1,900. One said $5,400. One said $12,000. All three were honest quotes. None of them were for the same product.
That inbox is the whole pricing problem. Local studios mostly do not publish prices, so owners collect numbers that cannot be compared and pick the middle one out of superstition. The ranges below are 2026 numbers, and they explain what each quote is actually selling.
What each quote is selling
For a small business site of five to ten pages, a freelancer typically charges $1,500 to $5,000 and an agency $5,000 to $15,000. A first professional site with real strategy behind it lands closer to $10,000 to $30,000. Those are the working tiers for 2026.
The $1,900 quote is a proven template with your branding on it: fast, fine, and limited. The $5,400 quote is custom design for your pages, help with the copy, and SEO foundations. The $12,000 quote is strategy, custom design on every page, professional copywriting, and training so you can run it. Which one you need depends on the job the site has to do. An electrician whose calls come from Google reviews needs the site to look credible. A firm competing on commercial bids needs the site to do the selling.
I price flat, not hourly, and I have written the reasons on this blog. One of them: fixed pricing is generally better value and lower risk than an hourly rate. Hourly billing charges you for the developer's learning curve. The full tier breakdown is in the sources below.
What moves the number
Four things decide where you land inside the range. Customization: every page designed from scratch costs more than a proven layout carrying your brand. Content: who writes the words. Most quotes assume you hand over finished copy, and professional copywriting is usually a separate line item. Stack: a WordPress or Webflow build costs less than a custom-coded site. Function: booking, payments, and customer portals are separate products wearing a website costume.
Two guardrails from a 2026 breakdown of real project costs: under $1,500 is a template with a handshake, and over $25,000 for a brochure site needs a reason you can say out loud. Most small web-design projects reviewed on Clutch this year came in under $10,000.
The Missoula part
Here is the local wrinkle: almost nobody here publishes pricing, so the range above is your starting point and the quotes are your real data. Ask every quoter the same five questions: who writes the copy, who supplies the images, who owns the domain and hosting when it is done, what support costs after launch, and can I talk to a past client. Any decent developer welcomes all five. The vague quotes reveal themselves fast.
The bill after the build
The quote is a deposit. Domain, hosting, updates, and fresh content keep costing money, and a well-built site's three-year total often lands near double the build price. Budget 15 to 25 percent of the build cost every year for upkeep: a $5,000 site costs about $1,000 a year to keep alive and current.
The domain is $12 a year. Make sure it is in your name before you pay for anything else.
Sources
- WPZoom: How Much Does a Business Website Cost in 2026 (freelancer $1,500-$5,000, agency $5,000-$15,000 for 5-10 pages)
- Sayenko Design: Website Cost Summary 2026 (first professional site $10,000-$30,000; fixed pricing beats hourly on value and risk)
- 2026 project-cost breakdown (under $1,500 is a template with a handshake; most Clutch small projects under $10,000)
- Small-business website budget guide 2026 (15-25% of build cost per year for upkeep)
- HyperWeb: the five questions to ask every developer before you sign