Building it yourself with a website builder
Website builders such as Wix and Squarespace charge a monthly plan. In October 2026 their business plans worked out at roughly $25 to $60 a month in Australian dollars, plus a domain name for around $12 to $20 a year.
The plan is the cheap part. You write every word, take and size every photo, and work out how to get the site in front of Google. That time comes out of your evenings.
Paying someone once
A freelancer or an agency builds the site for a one-off fee. Before you pay, ask who hosts it afterwards, who renews the domain and the security certificate, and what a change costs.
A site nobody looks after goes stale. The old mobile number stays up, so do the services you stopped doing, and the footer still says 2022.
A build plus a monthly fee
This is how I price. You pay for the build once. The monthly fee covers hosting, the security certificate, daily backups and a set number of changes each month, which you ask for by text.
You know the cost for the year before you start, and you never have to log in to anything.
What a tradie website costs per month
A website builder plan is about $25 to $60 a month, and you do the work. A one-off build has no monthly fee for the build itself, but the hosting and the domain still cost something every year, so ask who pays for them.
Mine is $99 a month on Basic and $179 on Premium, for hosting, backups and changes by text. Spread the Basic build over twelve months and you pay $198 a month for the first year, then $99.
What changes the price
Pages are the biggest thing. Four pages (home, services, about, contact) is a small site. A page for each job you want more of and each suburb you want work in is a bigger build, and it is what brings in searches like “switchboard upgrade Prospect”.
After that: who writes the words, whether your photos are edited and sized for phones, and extras such as a booking request form or before and after galleries.
What mine cost
Basic is $990 to build and $99 a month. Four pages, written by me from a fifteen minute phone call. You can spread the build over twelve months with nothing up front.
Premium is $2,490 to build and $179 a month. A page for each job and each suburb you want, with before and after galleries. Every price, and what is not included, is on the pricing page.
What to check in any quote
Is the domain registered in your name? It should be, whoever builds the site. Do you get the site’s files if you leave, and what does moving it cost? Is there a lock-in period, and how much notice do you give to cancel?
Ask for a fixed price in writing. A quote that says “from” with no ceiling is a starting point for an argument.