Small business3 min read
What should a small business website cost?
Three real price brackets, and how to tell which one your business actually needs.
For most small businesses, yes. Publishing prices — even as ranges or a starting figure — filters out enquiries you were never going to win and stops you being assumed expensive. The main exception is genuinely bespoke work where the range is so wide a number would mislead, and even then a starting price usually helps.
People contact the businesses that published, and you never hear from them.
The usual reasoning is that hiding price forces a conversation where you can sell value. That worked when customers had to phone around. Now they open five tabs, and the two that show pricing get considered.
| Situation | What to publish |
|---|---|
| Standard services | Exact prices |
| Varies by size | Price per unit — per foot, per room, per pound |
| Varies by condition | A range, plus what moves it up |
| Fully bespoke | A 'starting from' figure |
| Callout work | Your callout or diagnostic fee at minimum |
| Genuinely unquotable | A typical project range, honestly labelled |
Even in these cases, saying something is better than saying nothing. 'Most projects fall between X and Y' or 'call for current rates' both beat silence.
They already know roughly what you charge — they can ring and ask, or their customers tell them. The benefit of publishing to customers outweighs the tiny disadvantage of competitor visibility.
Publish a standard rate and handle exceptions privately. Most businesses do this. What you should avoid is having no public rate at all so that every quote is invented from scratch.
The opposite, usually. Clear pricing at a fair level filters out bargain hunters and reassures serious customers that you are established and consistent.
Whenever they change, and review them at least annually. Make sure whoever maintains the site can change a price in minutes without calling a developer.
ROVQIX Growth
SEO & growth team, ROVQIX
The ROVQIX growth team handles technical SEO, Core Web Vitals and AI-search visibility for the sites we build. Recommendations here are the ones we apply to client projects and to rovqix.in itself.
ROVQIXdesigns and builds production web platforms — Next.js front ends, Node.js APIs and the infrastructure behind them. Tell us what you're building and we'll scope it with you.
Three real price brackets, and how to tell which one your business actually needs.
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