How Much Does a Contractor Website Cost?

Two contractors in the same trade, in the same city, asking for the same website, will get quotes of $1,800 and $22,000. Both are real prices for real work. The difference is almost never the design.

The ranges

Template build — $700 to $2,500. Five to eight pages, an existing theme, your copy.
Custom build, small studio — $2,500 to $8,000. Ten to twenty-five pages, written copy, proper service and location structure.
Full-service agency — $10,000 to $30,000 upfront plus a retainer. Includes strategy work, sometimes photography and video.
Monthly plan with the build included — $50 to $350 a month, no upfront fee.

Ongoing costs are separate and routinely forgotten: hosting, SSL, software updates, backups, and someone to call when it breaks. Budget $100 to $350 a month for that, or confirm in writing that it is included.

Where the money actually goes

Most contractors assume they are buying design. On a typical build, design is under a third of the cost. The bigger items are invisible from outside.

Page count is the real variable

A roofing company doing residential re-roofs, commercial flat roofs, storm damage repair, gutters and skylights needs five service pages, not one. If it wants calls from six towns, that is six more. Thirteen pages of real content is a different job from five, and it should cost differently.

This is why the cheapest quote is often the most expensive outcome. A five-page site that cannot rank for anything specific costs $1,800 and returns nothing, which is worse value than $6,000 that returns steadily for years.

Copy is the hidden line item

Fifteen pages needs 7,000 to 12,000 words specific to your business. Somebody has to write them. If the quote does not say who, assume it is you, and price your own time honestly — most contractors who agree to write their own copy have not delivered it three months later, and the project sits.

Photography of real work

The one place stock imagery genuinely costs contractors money. A homeowner comparing three roofers can tell instantly which one is showing its own completed jobs and which is showing a stock photo of a roof built to another country’s codes. You do not need a photographer — a phone camera, decent light and the habit of shooting every finished job will beat any stock library.

How to read a contractor website quote

Four questions turn a vague number into a comparable one:

How many pages, listed by name? Not “up to 10 pages” — the actual list.
Who writes the copy, and how many words? This alone can double or halve a quote.
What happens on launch day plus one? Who updates it, who hosts it, who fixes it at 9pm on a Friday.
If I leave, what do I keep? The domain must be in your name. So must the hosting account and the content.

A builder who answers all four plainly and in writing is worth more than one who is $2,000 cheaper and vague on any of them.

Red flags in a contractor website quote

The domain registered in the builder’s name. The most common way contractors get held hostage, and it is usually not malice — just sloppiness that becomes leverage later.
A price that only appears after a call. There is a reason it is not published.
Guaranteed first-page rankings. Nobody can guarantee this. What they can do is rank you for your own company name and call it a result.
No live sites to look at. Ask for three URLs of sites they built that are still up, then open them on your phone.
A slow, dated site of their own. If they cannot do it for themselves, they will not do it for you.

When a cheap site is the right call

If your work comes entirely from referrals and a builder relationship you have had for eleven years, and you have no intention of chasing search traffic, a $1,500 site that proves you are real, licensed and insured is a perfectly rational purchase. Do not let anyone talk you into a lead generation build you do not need.

That changes the moment a referral source retires, or a competitor starts appearing above you for the work you want. At that point structure starts to matter, and structure is the part that costs money.

We build contractor sites on one monthly plan — $50 a month, no upfront fee, everything yours from the first day. See what the plan covers, or the pages we build for roofing, electrical and general contracting companies.