A plain-English breakdown of website costs for McHenry County small businesses, from DIY builders to studio builds, including the monthly costs most quotes leave out.
If you have asked three people what a website should cost, you have probably heard three answers that are thousands of dollars apart. Your nephew can do it for a few hundred. A builder ad says you can start for free. An agency in the city quoted you more than your truck.
None of those people are necessarily wrong. They are pricing different things. The trouble is that almost nobody explains what the difference actually buys you, so business owners end up comparing a monthly subscription to a custom build as if they were the same product.
This is our attempt to lay it out plainly — what a small business website costs in 2026, where the money goes, what you pay every month after launch, and what we charge at Identity Start, here in McHenry. We would rather you understand the whole picture and choose the right option, even if that option is not us.
So how much does a small business website actually cost?
For most small businesses, a professionally built website costs somewhere between about $1,500 and $10,000 up front, plus an ongoing monthly cost for hosting and upkeep. A do-it-yourself builder can cost a few hundred dollars a year. Larger agency builds with custom functionality regularly run $15,000 and beyond.
That is a wide range, and it is wide for a real reason. A five-page site for a landscaper and a fifty-page site for a multi-location practice are different jobs, even if both are called "a website." The better question is which of the following categories you actually fall into.
What are the main ways to get a website built?
Broadly, there are four routes. These are general market ranges, not a survey, and you will find people charging above and below all of them.
Do it yourself with a website builder
Squarespace, Wix and similar platforms let you build a site yourself from a template. Their business-level plans generally run in the range of $20 to $50 a month when billed annually, so a few hundred dollars a year once you add a domain.
The subscription is cheap. Your time is not. You are writing the copy, choosing the photos, arranging every page and figuring out the search settings. For a brand-new business testing an idea, that can be the right call.
A freelancer
Freelance designers commonly charge somewhere between $2,000 and $8,000 for a small business site. Quality varies enormously, and so does what is included — some deliver design only, some handle everything through launch, and some disappear after launch day.
A local studio
This is where we sit. A small studio typically handles strategy, design, development, search setup and launch as one process, with the same people involved from start to finish, and usually offers ongoing hosting and support afterward.
A larger agency
Full-service agencies with account managers, multiple departments and custom development often start around $10,000 to $15,000 and climb from there. For a business with complex integrations or a large marketing department, that can be money well spent. For a five-person company in Crystal Lake, it is usually more process than you need.
What does Identity Start charge for a website?
We publish our pricing, because we think you should not have to book a call to find out whether we are in your budget.
Every site starts with a one-time build that covers discovery, wireframing, design, development, SEO setup and launch:
- Starter sites begin at $1,499
- Business sites begin at $2,499
- Ecommerce builds run $2,999 and up, depending on the size of the catalog
After launch, the site runs on a monthly plan starting at $199. That covers managed hosting, security and SSL, software updates, backups, performance monitoring and unlimited reasonable content edits. It is month to month, with no minimum term. The full breakdown, including the higher tiers that add search and content work, is on our pricing and packages page.
If you want an actual number for your situation rather than a range, the estimate builder will give you one in a few minutes.
What add-ons should I budget for?
The build fee covers the website itself: planning, wireframes, design, development, search setup and launch. What goes on the site is a separate question, and it is where most of the difference comes from between a site that looks fine and one that looks like your business.
When you add these services to a website build, they are priced as bundled add-ons, roughly 50 to 70 percent below what the same work costs as a standalone project. The reason is simple: we are already planning and producing your site, so the shoot, the edit and the handoff fold into work that is already happening. Both numbers are below, and you can price any combination in the estimate builder.
Photography and video
A professional photography shoot with custom photos throughout the site, plus three cinematic video banners for your hero sections. $799 with a website build, compared with $1,499 to $2,499 as a standalone shoot. If you only add one thing to a build, this is usually it.
Promotional video
A two-to-four-minute brand story video with up to four interviews, custom b-roll, motion graphics and full post-production. $2,500 with a build, compared with $4,999 to $6,999 standalone. Additional topic-specific videos, such as a service spotlight, recruitment video or testimonial, are $499 each.
Drone video
Licensed aerial video and stills cut into your website and social content, ideal where the scale of the property or the finished project is the selling point, such as landscaping, construction, real estate and venues. $599 with a build, compared with $1,199 to $1,999 standalone.
Motion graphics
An animated logo intro and outro plus custom graphic elements built in your brand colors. $699 with a build, compared with $1,499 to $1,999 standalone.
Logo and branding
A custom logo in full color, black and white and icon form, with a brand guidelines document covering colors, typography and usage. $1,200 with a build, compared with $2,999 standalone. If your logo and colors are not settled yet, decide this before the build starts, because every page is designed around them.
We also produce interactive 360-degree virtual tours embedded on your site, $599 with a build compared with $1,499 to $2,999 standalone.
None of these are required. Plenty of sites launch with the owner's own photos and add video later. But when you compare quotes, check whether the photos and video in a studio's portfolio were part of the build price or an add-on. That is often where two similar-looking quotes stop being similar.
What drives the price up or down?
Almost every quote you receive is built from the same handful of variables. Knowing them makes it much easier to compare two proposals honestly.
- Number of pages. Each unique page needs to be planned, written, designed and built. A site with ten distinct service pages costs more than one with a single services page.
- Custom design versus a template. Adapting a template is faster. Designing around your brand from scratch takes longer and generally looks like it.
- Who writes the words. Copywriting is one of the most underestimated parts of a website. If you supply finished text, the price drops. If the studio writes it, expect that to be reflected.
- Photos and video. Stock photography is inexpensive. Original photography of your team, your work and your space costs more, and it is usually the single biggest improvement to how a site feels.
- Functionality. Booking systems, online payments, a product catalog, a customer portal or integrations with other software all add development time.
- Search setup. A site built with proper page titles, descriptions, structure and speed is a different product from one that simply looks nice. Some quotes include this work; some do not mention it.
What will I pay every month after the site launches?
Every website has running costs, whether they are itemized or not. At minimum you are paying for a domain name, usually $12 to $20 a year, and hosting. On a builder, hosting is your subscription. With a studio, it is typically bundled into a care plan.
The part people forget is maintenance. Software needs updating, forms need testing, and your hours, services and staff change. Someone has to make those edits. If that someone is you, it costs time. If it is a developer billing hourly, it costs whatever they charge each time you call.
That is the reason our plans include unlimited reasonable content edits. A website that is out of date by March is not doing its job, and we would rather make keeping it current the easy option.
Is a cheap website a bad idea?
Not automatically. A clean, simple site on a builder is far better than no site, and far better than an expensive site nobody updates.
Where cheap goes wrong is when it is cheap because something important was left out. The common ones are no search setup, so nobody finds it; template photos, so it looks like everyone else; no clear way to call or request a quote; and a mobile layout that was never checked. For a lot of local businesses, most visitors arrive on a phone. If the site is awkward there, it is awkward for a large share of the people who find it.
A fair test for any quote is to ask what happens when someone searches for your service in your town, lands on your site from their phone and wants to contact you. If the proposal does not account for each step of that, the low price may not be the bargain it looks like.
What should I have ready before I ask for a quote?
You will get more accurate quotes, and faster ones, if you can answer a few questions first:
- What is the website for — calls, quote requests, bookings, online sales, recruiting, or credibility?
- Roughly how many services or product categories do you need to present?
- Do you have a logo and brand colors you are happy with, or does that need attention too?
- Do you have good photos of your work, team and location, or does that need to be produced?
- Who will write the text?
- Who will make updates after launch?
If the honest answer to the logo question is "not really," it is worth sorting that out first or at the same time. A website is where your brand gets seen the most, and it is much easier to build around an identity that is settled. Our logo and branding work is often done alongside a site for exactly that reason.
What does this look like in practice?
Two of our clients are a reasonable picture of a typical local business site.
Rick Signs & Repairs came to us needing a new logo and a website that made it easy for customers to get a quote, see past work and reach out. We designed the brand, built the site, and photographed and filmed the team at work so the site shows the real business rather than stock imagery.
Custom Scapes & Designs, a landscaping company, needed service pages that showed off finished projects and made quote requests simple. Original photography, drone footage and short looping video do a lot of the work on that site.
Neither was an enormous project. Both were built around the same idea: a local customer should understand who you are, see real proof that you do good work, and be able to contact you within a few seconds.
How long does it take to build a small business website?
A focused small business site usually takes a few weeks from kickoff to launch, and the biggest variable is rarely the design or the build. It is content — getting text approved, photos taken and decisions made. The quickest projects are the ones where the owner has set aside time to review and respond.
Our web design process runs in four stages — discover, plan, design and build, then launch and support — and we will give you a realistic timeline for your project before anything starts.
The bottom line
A small business website in McHenry County can cost a few hundred dollars a year or tens of thousands up front, and both can be reasonable depending on what you need. Most local service businesses land in the low thousands for the build, plus a modest monthly cost to keep it hosted, secure and current.
Whatever route you take, compare quotes on what they include rather than the headline number, account for the monthly cost from the beginning, and make sure someone is responsible for keeping the site up to date after launch.
If you are also weighing which platform to build on, we are publishing a straight comparison of Webflow, WordPress, Squarespace and Wix in the coming weeks. In the meantime, our web design services page shows how we approach a build from the first conversation to launch.
Related reading
- How Much Does Logo Design Cost in Chicago? (2026 Guide) (coming soon)
- How Much Does Video Production Cost in Chicago? (2026) (coming soon)
- Drone Videography Price: What Aerial Video Costs in Illinois (coming soon)
- Webflow vs WordPress vs Squarespace vs Wix: How to Choose (coming soon)
- 9 Signs It's Time for a Website Redesign (coming soon)
Want a real number for your website? Use our estimate builder to price your project in a few minutes, or request a free brand audit and we will show you what your current site is doing well and what to fix first.