Ask most agencies what a website costs and you'll get two words: "it depends." Then a discovery call. Then, eventually, a number with no breakdown and no way to tell if it's fair.
We think that's daft. So here's the straight answer.
The honest price ranges
A small business website in Australia generally falls into four brackets, and what you pay tracks fairly closely to what you get.
Do it yourself — $0 to a few hundred dollars a year. Wix, Squarespace, or similar. The platform does the heavy lifting; you do the work. It can look perfectly decent. The cost is your time, and the ceiling is fairly low — these sites are rarely built to rank on Google or to turn visitors into enquiries. Fine for a side project; thin for a serious business.
A freelancer — roughly $800 to $3,000. A single person builds your site. Quality swings enormously depending on who you get. Good ones are great value. The risk is what happens afterwards — freelancers move on, get busy, or vanish, and you're left with a site nobody's looking after.
A small agency — roughly $1,500 to $8,000. A proper site, built by a team, with design, copywriting and search setup handled. This is the sweet spot for most small businesses that want the site to actually do a job. Prices vary because scope varies — more on that below.
A large agency — $10,000 and well up. Custom design, custom development, a project manager, a process. Genuinely worth it for larger or more complex businesses. For a local trade or a single-location service business, you're usually paying for overhead you don't need.
What actually drives the price
Within those brackets, four things move the number:
Number of pages. A five-page site is less work than a fifteen-page one. Simple.
Custom vs template design. A site built on a well-chosen template is faster and cheaper, and on modern tools it looks sharp. Fully custom design costs more — sometimes it's worth it, often it isn't for a small business.
Copywriting. Words are work. If the price looks low, check whether you're expected to write all the content yourself.
Functionality. A brochure site is straightforward. Add online booking, payments or e-commerce and the price climbs, fairly.
The hidden costs nobody quotes you
This is where the real money leaks, so check for all of it before you sign:
- Lock-in contracts — being tied in for 12 months whether the work's good or not.
- Hosting markup — being charged well above cost for hosting, with no easy way out.
- "We own your website" — some builders keep your site on a platform you can't leave, so you can never take it elsewhere.
- Change fees — being billed every time you want a word updated.
A fair deal has none of these. You should own your website outright, be able to host it anywhere, and never be locked in.
What we charge
Because the whole point of NABA is not hiding this: our websites are fixed-price, one-off, and you own them outright. The Starter is $1,500 for a 3–5 page site. The Proper Job is $3,000 for a larger, semi-custom site with copywriting included. The Full Box is $5,000 for a bigger site with booking or light e-commerce. There's an optional $90/month Care Plan for hosting and upkeep — optional, cancel any time, no lock-in. All prices are on our site, because if a price is fair there's no reason to hide it.
What a fair deal looks like
Whoever you choose, a fair website deal means: a clear fixed price before you start, no lock-in contract, you own the site and can host it anywhere, and one round of changes built in. If you're getting all of that, the number is probably fair. If you're not, the number is the least of your problems.
Want a straight quote with no discovery-call runaround? Our prices are on the site, and you can ask for a quote in plain English any time.