What should a local business website cost?

A local business website should cost less than the work it books, and the only way to know that number is to start from what one job is worth to you. A plumbing company that replaces sewer lines and a plumbing company that clears drains aren't answering the same question, so an agency that quotes a flat figure before asking what a job is worth is selling a product rather than pricing a decision. Metcalf Media doesn't publish a price for that reason and sets the figure on a call instead.

What follows is how to work the number out yourself, so you can hold any quote you get — from anybody — against something real.

What's the money actually buying?

Three separate things, and most quotes blur them together.

• The build. The pages, the writing, the structure, the speed, the code underneath it.
• The upkeep. Hosting, security, the form that quietly stops sending, the platform update that breaks a layout on Sunday.
• The changes. A new service page when you add a service. A new town page when a crew starts driving there. New photos when the truck gets wrapped.

The third one is where most websites quietly die. A site nobody touches after launch stops ranking, because a search engine reads a stale site the way a customer reads a dusty window. That's why a website is worth treating as something maintained rather than something delivered, and why the shape of the fee matters as much as the size of it.

Why does what I charge for a job change what a site is worth?

Because a website is a bet on volume, and the size of a bet only makes sense next to the size of the payoff.

Work it out on the back of an envelope. Take what you actually clear on an average job, not the invoice total. Ask how many extra jobs a year the site would have to produce before it has paid for itself. If the answer is one, you're looking at an easy decision. If the answer is more work than you book in a good quarter, you're looking at a hard one, and the honest move is to say that out loud rather than going shopping for a cheaper site.

For a plumbing company the answer usually lands well clear of the cheap end of the market, because one repipe or one sewer line carries a lot of marketing on its own. A business selling a low-ticket service at volume has to produce a great deal more work before the same maths clears, and it's a slower yes.

There's a market number worth holding that against. Around $1,500 a month is common. The national retainer shops that sell to local service businesses charge roughly that and host a website as part of it, which means most owners already have an anchor in their head before they ask anybody a question.

That's their number, quoted here because it's the sharpest honest comparison available rather than because it's anybody else's. What it's useful for is calibration. It tells you that the going rate for a maintained local website is a monthly line rather than a one-off cheque, and it gives you something concrete to hold the rest of this against.

What does a cheap website cost later?

The bill arrives long after the invoice, in pieces.

• It's built on a platform you can't export from, so moving means starting over.
• It has five pages, so it ranks for your business name and very little else.
• Nobody wired up what happens to a lead that arrives on a Saturday night.
• There's no tracking, so you can never say which half of the marketing worked.
• It looks fine on the laptop it was built on and cramped on the phone everybody uses.

None of that shows up on launch day. All of it shows up as jobs you never heard about.

Should I pay once or monthly?

A one-off build with nothing behind it is the cheapest thing to buy and the most expensive thing to own. The moment it needs a change you're either paying by the hour or leaving it stale, and stale is the option most owners pick without deciding to.

A monthly arrangement is only better if changes are genuinely included. Ask it directly: if I call you in March because we just started covering a new town, what happens? Listen for whether that's included or quoted. Metcalf Media prices the build, the hosting and the ongoing changes as one monthly figure for exactly that reason, because a site that costs extra to change doesn't get changed.

Does where I work change the answer?

It changes how many pages you need, which changes the build. Somebody searching from Broken Arrow types Broken Arrow, not Tulsa, and lands on whatever page actually talks about their town. One page listing every town you cover ranks for none of them, and a business covering a dozen towns needs more site than a business covering one.

So the quote should move when your service area moves. If an agency's price is the same whether you work one town or twelve, ask what you're buying.

What should I ask before signing anything?

The answers tell you more than the price does.

• Who owns the domain, and whose name is on the registrar account?
• Who owns the hosting, and can I move the site out without asking permission?
• Is a page added later included, or quoted?
• Can I watch one of your sites load on a phone, on cell data, right now?
• What happens to a form fill that lands on a Saturday night?
• Do you take a percentage of anything?

An agency that answers all six without hedging is worth more than one that's slightly cheaper.

So what should it cost? Whatever makes sense against one booked job, which is why the figure gets set on a call rather than printed on a page. Bring two things to it: what you clear on an average job, and how much more work your crews could actually absorb. That conversation will tell you whether the answer is yes, not yet, or no — including when the honest answer is that the site you already have is worth keeping.