"How much should a website cost?" is the first question every business owner asks, and the industry's favourite answer — it depends — is technically true and completely useless.
So here are actual numbers. Australian small-business websites cluster into three price brackets, each bracket buys a genuinely different thing, and most of the horror stories come from expecting one bracket's outcome at another bracket's price.
The three price brackets
| Bracket | Typical price | What it really is |
|---|---|---|
| DIY / template | $0 – $1,000 | You (or a freelancer) filling in a template |
| Professional custom | $2,000 – $8,000 | A designed, built-for-you marketing asset |
| Agency / complex | $20,000+ | A project team, or genuinely complex functionality |
The gap between brackets isn't polish — it's who does the thinking. In the first bracket you do all of it. In the second, someone is paid to think about your customers, your copy, your Google ranking and your conversion rate. In the third, several someones.
What $500 actually buys
Template builders like Wix, Squarespace and cheap WordPress themes are legitimate tools, and for a hobby or a brand-new venture testing an idea, they're a fine start. But be clear about what the money buys: software, not outcomes. Nobody is thinking about whether your headline converts or why you don't rank for "your trade + your suburb".
The costs are also less "one-off" than they look. Builder subscriptions, premium plugins, stock photos and apps stack up to a real annual spend — over three years, a "free" website routinely costs more than a professional one-off build, and at the end you still own a template that looks like ten thousand other sites and often can't be exported anywhere.
The $2,000 to $8,000 sweet spot
This is where most established small businesses should be, and it's where the economics quietly favour you: a site in this bracket only needs to generate a handful of real jobs to pay for itself outright.
At this price, a competent studio should deliver all of the following — treat missing items as red flags:
- Custom design (not a purchased theme with your logo swapped in)
- Copy that says what you do, written for customers rather than for you
- Mobile-first build that passes Core Web Vitals
- Technical SEO: metadata, structured data, sitemap, Google Business Profile link-up
- A contact or booking flow with spam protection
- Analytics, so you can see whether any of it works
- Your name on the domain and full ownership of the site
When $20,000 is justified
Some projects genuinely cost this much: e-commerce with inventory integrations, customer portals, multi-location businesses, custom web applications. You're paying for engineering and a project team, and for the right project it's worth every dollar.
What isn't justified is a five-page brochure site quoted at $20,000 because the agency has a Surry Hills office and a business development team. If your requirements fit on one page, get a second quote. The difference funds a lot of marketing.
The costs nobody quotes upfront
Whatever bracket you buy in, budget for the ongoing costs — this is where comparisons get distorted:
- Domain and hosting — modest annually, but quality varies enormously
- Maintenance — updates, backups, security patches, uptime monitoring
- Content changes — the "can you just update the menu" emails
- Rebuild cycle — template sites tend to get rebuilt sooner; custom sites age better
Ask any provider two questions before signing: what does year two cost? and what happens if we part ways? If the answers are vague, the real price is higher than the quote.
What we charge, and why
Since this whole article argues for price transparency, here are ours: kotrix.IT websites start at from $990 +GST for a landing page + basic seo, from $3,990 +GST for a full company site + bookings/automation, and from $5,900 +GST for custom builds — with ongoing care from from $99/mo +GST if you want the maintenance handled too. Every item on the "should deliver" checklist above is included, because that list is ours.
We can hold prices under the traditional-agency bracket because AI-accelerated delivery compresses the build weeks, not the thinking. The full breakdown — including what each package contains — is on the pricing page, and if you're still not sure which bracket your project belongs in, book a free consultation and we'll tell you honestly, even if the answer is "start with a template".