How much does a contractor website cost in 2026?

What does a contractor website cost in 2026?

Most remodelers pay somewhere between a few hundred dollars a year for a DIY site and about $15,000 for a custom agency build. The more useful question is what the site has to do: show finished work, cover your service area, and get quote requests from a phone. A cheap site that does none of those is not a bargain.

The ranges below are published estimates from builder, freelancer and agency guides. They are not audited prices, and they change with platform fees and labor rates.

Option	Typical upfront cost	Typical ongoing cost	Best for	Main risk
DIY builder (Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy)	Roughly $200 to $800 for the first year, all-in	About $25 to $50 a month for a business plan	Owners with time to build and update it	Hours of setup, and a generic site that is hard to keep current
Freelancer	Roughly $1,500 to $5,000	Hosting, plus fees for changes	Owners who want custom work and have a clear brief	Quality and availability depend on one person
Agency (contractor niche)	Roughly $5,000 to $15,000	Hosting and a monthly retainer	Companies that want strategy and ongoing work	Price, and retainers that run for years
Done-for-you local package	Basekey: $990 (Starter), $1,900 (Growth), $2,900 (Autopilot)	Optional care plan at $149 a month	Remodelers who want Maps and AI-answer setup included	Scope differs by package, so read what is excluded

The Basekey prices are the figures on basekey.org as of 2026-11-01. Its page lists photography, copywriting, extra pages and the domain as not included, with the domain billed at cost.

When is a DIY builder enough?

A DIY builder is enough when you have one trade, a small service area, and the time to write your own pages and keep them current. It is the cheapest route in cash terms, but the hours are real. Setup, photo editing, and writing every page are cost even though none of it shows up on an invoice.

A DIY site becomes a problem when you need several service pages, town pages, a quote flow, and regular updates. At that point the monthly fee is often lower than the hours you would spend keeping it right, and the template look makes it harder to stand out in local results. Choose DIY only if you will actually maintain it.

Two Rivers Kitchen & Bath: demo site for a fictional business — Demo site: Two Rivers Kitchen & Bath, Austin, US. A fictional business built by Basekey.

What drives the price of a contractor website?

Scope drives price more than platform. Page count, custom design, quote tools, and how much copy and photography you need account for most of the gap between a $1,000 site and a $10,000 one. Platform choice matters less than people expect.

Number of pages. Each trade, each town and each project type adds a page.
Design work. A template with your logo costs far less than a layout built from scratch.
Quote or booking tools. A calculator or request flow needs setup and testing.
Content. Writing the copy and shooting the project photos can cost more than the build.
Search and local setup. Google Business Profile links, local pages and structured data take time to do correctly.

"Plastering" by Anasskoko, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What does a remodeler actually need on the site?

A remodeler needs a site that shows finished work, names each trade and town, and makes it easy to request a quote from a phone. Those features matter more than animation or a long list of generic pages.

Google's own guidance says there is no special markup or extra file needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. It does say that key text should be in text form, with images and videos supporting it, and that Business Profile information should stay current. Those are the basics a contractor site has to get right.

Need	Why it matters
Service page for each trade (kitchen, bath, basement, additions)	Matches how homeowners search and gives each service a clear URL
Local page for each town you serve	Shows which areas you work in
Project gallery with captions (town, scope, timeline)	Real photos plus written detail prove the work
Quote request form and click-to-call button	Visitors on a phone can act in one tap
Business name, address and phone number matching your Google listing exactly	Consistency helps search engines and AI systems match your business to one entity
Reviews displayed next to the work they describe	Gives visitors and AI systems the proof they need to trust the page
Link to your Google Business Profile	Connects the site to your Maps listing

What are the hidden costs?

The build price is rarely the whole bill. Domain renewal, hosting, photography, copy, edits, and ongoing care usually come on top. Ask each vendor to list them in writing.

Cost	What to check
Domain	Renews every year at the registrar. Basekey bills it at cost.
Hosting	Often included with a builder. A separate hosting bill can apply to custom builds.
Photography	Usually not included. Phone photos of real jobs can work if they are sharp and well captioned.
Copywriting	Often not included. Generic copy is the most common reason a site reads like every other one.
Extra pages	Each added service or town page may be billed separately.
Care plan	Basekey's optional care plan is $149 a month and covers monthly checks, content updates and a quote-request count each month.
Post-launch changes	Freelancers and agencies often bill changes by the hour.

Monthly fees add up. One builder guide estimates ongoing costs of $50 to $300 a month for hosting, maintenance and updates, and warns that a rented site can cost more over ten years than one you own.

"Roof tiles packed in crate 1" by W.carter, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

How do you compare two contractor website quotes?

Put every quote on the same list: pages included, design work, photography, copy, domain, hosting, edits, and the monthly fee. Two quotes that look $500 apart can differ by $3,000 once the exclusions are added. For example, a $900 quote that leaves out photos, copy and extra town pages can cost more in the end than a $1,900 quote that includes them. The first number is only the starting point. Ask who owns the files and the domain if you leave, and whether you can export the content.

If you want to see what a site could look like for your company before you commit to anything, Basekey offers a free mockup at basekey.org.