How much does a professional website cost in 2026

You ask three studios for a website quote and get three numbers that look nothing alike: $600, $3,500 and $12,000. Are you being ripped off? Probably not — each one is selling you something different. This guide explains what a professional website actually costs in 2026, and what you're paying for at each tier.

Prices by type of website

• →Landing page ($500 – $2,000): a single page built to convert. Ideal for campaigns or validating a product.
• →Corporate site ($2,000 – $6,000): several pages, blog, forms, baseline SEO. Your company's calling card.
• →Online store ($4,000 – $15,000): catalogue, payments, order and inventory management. Price rises with the number of products and integrations.
• →Custom platform ($15,000 and up): functionality specific to your business, dashboards, private areas, bespoke logic.

Cheap template vs custom build

The $600 site is almost always a WordPress template set up in an afternoon. It works for the first month. The trouble comes later: slow loading, dependence on plugins that break, near-impossible to rank well, and a design identical to a thousand other businesses. A custom site costs more because someone designs your structure, your speed and your SEO from scratch.

Templates aren't always bad: for a small, temporary project they can do. But if the website is a serious sales channel, the difference shows up where it matters — how many people arrive and how many buy.

What you're actually paying for

A professional website is more than design. The budget covers:

• →Strategy and architecture (which pages, what hierarchy, what call to action)
• →Visual design and user experience
• →Development, performance and mobile responsiveness
• →Technical SEO so Google can find you
• →Analytics to measure what works

Recurring costs nobody mentions

1. 1. Domain. $10–15/year. Your address on the internet.
2. 2. Hosting. From free (on modern platforms like Cloudflare) to $30/month depending on traffic and needs.
3. 3. Maintenance. Updates, backups, support. Anywhere from $0 (a static site) to a monthly fee if it's an active store.

How not to waste your money

The most expensive website isn't the best one, and the cheapest almost never is. What matters is the relationship between what you invest and what the site generates. A $4,000 corporate site that brings in two clients a month pays for itself; a $600 one that never appears on Google is worth nothing, however cheap.

At Claw Studio we build fast websites, optimised for search and designed to convert — not just to look good. If you want to know which tier fits your business, tell us about it and we'll give you a clear quote.