A contractor website typically costs $2,500–$10,000 to build well, depending on who builds it and how much of the work is custom. Template builds from freelancers run cheaper, custom agency builds run higher, and the monthly cost of hosting and upkeep matters more than most contractors expect. At Placed, website rebuilds start at $2,500 — and this post explains exactly what moves that number up or down, so you can compare quotes without guessing.
What are you actually paying for?
Every website quote is some mix of the same four ingredients. When two quotes are thousands of dollars apart, it’s almost always because they contain different amounts of these — not because one company is ripping you off.
| Ingredient | Cheap version | Good version |
|---|---|---|
| Design | Purchased template | Built for your company |
| Copy | You write it | Written for search intent |
| Structure | 5 generic pages | Page per service + area |
| Search setup | None | Titles, schema, indexing |
A $1,000 website usually means a template with your logo dropped in and whatever text you send over. That’s not a scam — it’s just a different product. The problem is when a template build is priced like a custom one.
Typical price ranges in 2026
Here’s what contractors around here actually run into when they collect quotes:
- DIY builders (Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy): $200–$500 per year in subscriptions, plus your evenings. Fine as a placeholder, weak for ranking.
- Freelancer template build: $500–$2,500. Quality swings wildly — the portfolio tells you more than the price.
- Small local agency, custom build: $2,500–$10,000. This is where most established contractors should be shopping.
- Larger agency or national contractor-marketing firm: $10,000–$30,000+, often bundled with mandatory retainers.
The question that matters more than price: who owns the site when you stop paying? Some companies build on proprietary platforms you can never leave. If you cancel, the site vanishes. Always ask: “If we part ways, do I keep the website, the domain, and the content?” The answer should be yes to all three, in writing.
Why do some contractor websites cost $10,000+?
Scale, mostly. A plumber who serves one city with six services needs a fundamentally smaller site than a multi-crew company covering three counties with twenty services. Each service and each city that deserves its own page adds design, copy, and search work. Photography, custom illustration, financing integrations, and job-application systems add more. None of that is padding — but it’s also not what a five-page local site needs on day one.
The hidden cost: what happens after launch
The build price is half the story. Websites need hosting, software updates, security patching, backups, and small content changes — forever. There are two honest models for this and one dishonest one:
- Honest model 1: you own everything and pay hosting yourself (roughly $10–$40/month), handling updates or paying hourly when something breaks.
- Honest model 2: a maintenance or SEO retainer that includes upkeep. Ours works this way — ongoing SEO at Placed starts at $800/month and routine website upkeep is included in it, so there’s no separate maintenance bill.
- The dishonest one: a low build price with a high mandatory monthly fee that mostly pays for nothing, on a platform you can’t leave. The website equivalent of a lease with no buyout.
Cheap websites are only cheap if they bring in work. A $500 site that never ranks costs more than a $5,000 site that does.
Does a more expensive website rank better?
Not automatically — Google doesn’t know what you paid. But the things that make a site rank tend to come standard in better builds: a page for each service you want to be found for, fast load times, clean titles and headings, schema markup, and copy written around what homeowners actually search. A beautiful site with one “Services” page listing everything you do will lose to a plainer site with ten focused pages, most days of the week. If ranking is the goal, the website build and the search strategy should be planned together, not bolted on later.
How to compare quotes without getting burned
Ask every company the same five questions and write down the answers:
- Do I own the site, domain, and content outright?
- Is this a template or built from scratch — and can I see three recent builds?
- How many pages are included, and what does another service page cost later?
- What exactly happens after launch, and what does it cost monthly?
- What’s included for search — titles, schema, Search Console setup — or is that extra?
The cheapest and most expensive quotes usually eliminate themselves at question one or three.
Those numbers are what we charge, not a national average. If you’re a contractor in Clark County, our web design in Vancouver WA page shows what’s included at each price point.
Frequently asked questions
How much should a small contractor pay for a website?
For an established contractor who wants the site to generate work, $2,500–$7,500 covers a proper custom build in most markets. Below that you’re usually buying a template; above it you’re paying for scale you may not need yet.
How long does a contractor website take to build?
A focused custom build typically takes 3–6 weeks. Timelines stretch when content and photos are slow to arrive — that part is usually on the client side.
Is a monthly website subscription worth it?
Only if you own the site and the fee buys real work — updates, changes, search improvements. If canceling means losing the website, it’s a rental, and rentals are almost never worth it for an established business.
What does it cost to keep a website running?
Hosting alone runs roughly $10–$40/month. Bundled upkeep through a retainer costs more but includes the labor — at Placed it’s folded into ongoing SEO rather than billed separately.