"How much does a website cost" doesn't have one answer, because "a website" isn't one thing. A $12/month template, a $5,000 agency retainer and a $650 bespoke build can all technically produce a live site. What actually differs is what you own at the end of it, and that's the part most pricing pages skip past.
The subscription model: you're renting, not owning
Builder platforms charge a low monthly fee that feels painless, until you add it up. $20 to $50 a month, forever, is $240 to $600 a year with nothing to show for it if you ever stop paying, the site disappears. It's not a bad option for testing an idea fast, but it's genuinely a rental, not an asset, and most small businesses keep the same site for years without realizing that math.
The agency retainer model: paying for access, not just a product
Larger agencies often price a website as the entry point into a monthly retainer, hosting, "maintenance," small edits, all bundled into an ongoing fee that can run $200 to $1,000+ a month. Sometimes that's genuinely worth it if you need constant changes. Often it's paying indefinitely for a site that, technically, could have been finished and handed over.
The one-time build model: higher upfront, yours outright
This is the model I build under: a fixed price, paid once (split into a deposit and a completion balance), for a custom-coded site you fully own from day one. No subscription required to keep it live, no monthly fee just to exist online. It costs more than a template up front, and less than most people assume compared to a full agency retainer, because you're paying for the build itself, not indefinite access to it.
The real question isn't the price, it's what happens in year two
Ask any option one thing: if you stopped paying today, what would you still own? With a subscription platform, usually nothing. With a retainer, it depends entirely on the contract. With a one-time build, the answer is simple, you own the whole thing, hosting is a separate, usually small, ongoing cost, and nothing about the site itself depends on continuing to pay someone.
None of these models are automatically wrong for every business. But "how much should a website cost" is really "what am I actually going to own," and that's worth asking before comparing numbers. See the full breakdown on the Pricing page, or read what actually makes a small business website convert once it's live.