Web Design

Project fees dominate. A typical small business marketing site from a real agency runs 5,000 to 25,000 dollars, and custom builds with heavy content, integrations, or ecommerce climb well past that. Most agencies quote a fixed fee tied to a defined page count and feature list, then bill change orders for anything added later, which is where budgets usually slip.

The recurring layer is the care plan: hosting, backups, plugin updates, and small edits, usually a few hundred dollars a month. A growing minority sell the whole thing as a subscription, a website as a service model where the client pays monthly and never owns a large invoice, but often never owns the site either. Read that contract before signing it.

The bottom of the market is being absorbed. AI site builders and polished templates now produce a passable five page site in an afternoon, so agencies can no longer charge five figures for assembly work. The response is a split. One group moves down and productizes, selling fast template based builds on subscription. The other moves up, selling strategy, conversion work, custom design systems, and ongoing optimization retainers where the launch is the beginning rather than the invoice.

Tooling is shifting too. Webflow, Framer, and similar platforms let designers ship without a separate development phase, which compresses timelines and shrinks teams. Buyers should expect faster builds than a few years ago, and should be suspicious of six month timelines for a marketing site with no unusual requirements.