A contractor website costs anywhere from $200 a year on a do-it-yourself builder to $15,000 up front from an agency, and the sticker price tells you almost nothing. What matters is the three-year cost including hosting, updates and the weekly work that brings calls, and who owns the result. Priced that way, the options land closer together than the quotes suggest, and the cheap one is rarely the cheap one.
The four ways a contractor website is sold
| Model | Typical price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Do-it-yourself builder | $16 to $50 a month | A template, hosting, your evenings. No one measures it, no one updates it, and the builder's code decides how fast it is on a phone. |
| Freelancer | $1,500 to $6,000 once | A WordPress or builder site, usually a purchased theme with your logo on it. Hosting, plugin updates and security are yours after launch, or $30 to $100 a month extra. |
| Agency build | $6,000 to $20,000 once, plus $100 to $500 a month for "maintenance" | A custom design, a project manager, a launch. The weekly search work is a separate retainer, often $1,000 to $3,000 a month, or it does not happen. |
| Monthly engine (ours) | $700 to $1,300 a month, $500 setup, 12 months | The rebuild, hosting, updates and the weekly local search work in one fee. You own the code. Measured against a written speed promise. |
The price ranges for the first three are our reading of published rate cards and quotes; they move by region and by how good the person is. Ours are fixed and on the pricing section.
The three-year cost
Put the same roofing company through each model for 36 months. Numbers in the middle of each range above:
| Model | Build | Hosting and upkeep, 36 months | Local search work, 36 months | Three-year total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DIY builder | $0, plus about 60 hours of your time | $1,100 | $0 (none happens) | $1,100 and the hours |
| Freelancer | $3,500 | $2,200 | $0 (not included) | $5,700 |
| Agency build + retainer | $12,000 | $7,200 | $54,000 at $1,500 a month | $73,200 |
| Standard Engine | $500 | $25,200 ($700 a month, all in; the weekly search work is in Growth and above) | $25,700 | |
| Growth Engine | $500 | $34,200 ($950 a month, all in, including the weekly local search work) | $34,700 | |
Two things jump out. First, the DIY and freelancer rows are cheap because nothing happens after launch: no one measures the site on a phone, no new pages get written, the plugin that breaks in month nine stays broken. Those rows do not buy calls; they buy a brochure. Second, the agency row is expensive because the build and the ongoing work are sold by different people at different margins. The engine model exists to put them in one fee at a price a 5-truck company can carry.
Compare three-year totals, and compare what happens in month nine.
What is usually missing from the cheap one
- Phone speed. Templates and builders are built to look good in a desktop demo. Run the quote's own portfolio sites through Google's phone test before you sign; here is how. If their best work loads in 6 seconds, yours will too.
- The first screen. A call button under the thumb, your trade and town in the headline. Templates put a slogan there. See the first phone screen.
- Hosting that stays up. The $5-a-month shared host is fine until the day a storm sends your whole county to your site at once. Ask where the site is hosted and what happens when that goes down.
- Updates. WordPress and its plugins need updating every few weeks. Unpatched, they get hacked; the first sign is usually Google warning homeowners away from your site.
- The weekly work. The service pages, the town pages, the Google Business Profile photos and posts, the review replies. This is what moves a site up the map, and it is never in a one-time price.
- Ownership. On a builder you own nothing; you rent the page. With some agencies you own the design but not the code or the domain. Ask, in writing; our short answer on ownership says what to ask for.
Six questions that expose a bad quote
- What does your last three sites score on Google's phone speed test? They should know. If they do not, they have never looked.
- Who owns the code, the domain and the content when we part ways? The only acceptable answer is "you do".
- What happens in month nine? Who updates it, who measures it, who writes the next page, and what does that cost?
- Is the first screen on a phone part of the design review? Ask to see a phone mock-up before a desktop one.
- What is in writing? A speed number, a delivery date, a refund condition. A promise that is not measurable is decoration.
- Can I see it next to my competitor's site, on a phone, before I pay? That is literally what our free audit is.
Our prices, stated plainly
Three engines, each a 12-month agreement billed monthly, each starting with a $500 setup fee and the first month. The 12 months start the day you approve the staging site, not the day you pay. You own the code.
| Engine | Monthly | Today | Includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | $700 | $1,200 | Custom-coded rebuild for your trade and towns; hosting, SSL, daily backups, a second copy in reserve; updates and fixes. |
| Growth | $950 | $1,450 | Standard, plus weekly local search work (service pages, towns, Google profile) and a monthly note with calls, speed and rankings. Recommended in most audits. |
| Dominance | $1,300 | $1,800 | Growth, plus content written to be the answer AI assistants cite, your local record kept straight, and a competitor review every quarter. |
Three promises come with every engine, in writing: your full first payment back if you do not love the staging site within 14 days; mobile performance 90+ and main content under 2.5 seconds at launch, or no monthly fee until it is; staging in 14 days or the first month is free. We do not promise rankings, AI citations or a number of leads, because nobody can. The $700 breakdown lists every item in the Standard fee; this page works out how many jobs the fee has to win to pay for itself.
Questions contractors ask about price
Why monthly instead of a one-time price?
Because a website is not finished at launch. The work that brings calls happens every week after it. A one-time price pays for the brochure and leaves the engine off. A monthly fee pays for both and lets a small company start for $1,200 instead of $12,000.
Why a 12-month agreement?
The weekly search work takes months to show in the map and in calls, and we carry the build cost up front. Twelve months is the window where both of those pay off. The term starts when you approve the site, and the first 14 days have a full refund.
What if I already have a site I like?
Then the audit will say so; it is written from measurements, not from a sales script. If the site is fast and the first screen works, the Growth engine can run the weekly work on it. If it is not, the audit shows you the gap on a phone next to your competitor and you decide.
Is $700 a month expensive for a small contractor?
It is one small job a month in most trades. Whether the site brings that in is the question the audit is built to answer before you spend anything.
Sources
- Builder pricing: the plan pages of the major site builders; business plans with a custom domain run from about $16 to $50 a month as of November 2026, and move often, so check the current page.
- Freelancer and agency ranges: our reading of published rate cards and quote examples as of November 2026; they vary by region and are ranges, not averages.
- Easy Design Agency prices and promises: pricing and terms.
- Speed test: Google, PageSpeed Insights, mobile tab; thresholds from web.dev.
See this on your own site.
The free audit measures your site on a real phone: load time, the first screen, the call button, what Google's AI says about you next to the competitors. Written, back within one business day. No call.