A site in your name · yours outright · from $4,500
Renting a website is cheap. Here is what it actually costs.
The monthly ones are genuinely cheap and they genuinely work. What is never on the pricing page is what happens the day you want to leave, and on most of them the answer is that you cannot — not with your pages, anyway.
This is the other option. It costs more once and nothing after that, and at the end of it you are holding the thing rather than borrowing it.
→ For a business running on a Facebook page and a phone number.
Built in New Bern, North Carolina. A business in Craven County gets the kickoff in person; anywhere else gets the same build over video, on the same terms.
A website build starts at $4,500.
That is a floor for the whole thing — the pages, working email that does not land in junk, your search listing, the two policy pages the law now requires, and one tool of your own built in. What yours costs is agreed before any work begins.
It is a floor because I quote the job rather than the category. I would rather be honest about where it starts than advertise a number I cannot hold.
What the number buys
Seven things, and six of them are the ones people forget.
Most quotes for a website cover the pages and stop there. Then the mail goes to junk, nobody can find you, and there is no policy page the day a form starts collecting names.
You see the look before I build it. Several complete designs and you pick one. Not a mood board and not a template — finished pages you can click, so the choice is made on the real thing rather than on a description of it.
A website that belongs to you
Built for your business rather than picked off a rack, on a domain and hosting in your name. You hold the accounts. I do not sit between you and anything.
Email from your own address that lands in inboxes
The records that tell the world your mail is really yours. Skip them and a quote sent to a customer goes to junk, which is the failure nobody notices until they lose the job.
Findable, and right when somebody shares it
Your site submitted to Google with your business details in the form it reads directly, checked against what your Google listing already shows the public, and the link showing your name and a real picture when it is pasted into a message rather than a blank box.
A privacy page and a terms page in your name
The moment a form on your site asks for a name and an email, California law reaches you whatever state you trade in, and there is no size threshold to hide under.
One working tool built into the site
Not a contact form. The arithmetic your business actually runs on — the tip-out, the reorder point, the job quote — sitting on your own site where your customers or your crew can use it.
Handed over so it survives without me
Every account tested by you logging into it while I watch, not a list of passwords in an email. If I disappear, nothing about your business stops.
A way to be paid, on your own account
A button that sends your customer to a payment page your own provider runs, for a deposit or a single item, tested with a real payment before you get the keys. Your account, never mine, and the card details never touch anything I built. If you have no account yet, opening one is quoted separately.
The difference
The question is not what it costs. It is what you are holding at the end.
A template subscription
- You rent it, and the rent never stops
- Leaving means rebuilding — Wix exports no design, no layout, no pages
- Stop paying and it goes dark: Squarespace expires a site 15 days past due
- Even editing it is rationed — GoDaddy meters changes in monthly AI credits
A site you own
- Paid once. Upkeep is optional and you can stop it
- The files are yours — any developer can pick it up tomorrow
- Nobody can switch it off but you
- The tool your business actually runs on is built into it
Every line on the left was read off those companies' own help and pricing pages, the first three on 3 September 2026 and the GoDaddy one on 10 September 2026 when the product it named was retired. Terms change, so if you are weighing this up, go and check them again rather than taking my word for it.
“I got a cheaper quote.”
You probably did, and sometimes the cheaper quote is the right answer. I will tell you so on the first call, and that call costs you nothing.
What a cheap quote buys is a thing, handed over. What this buys is a partner, starting before the first decision gets made — we work out together what your business actually needs this to do, and which of the unknowns are worth spending money on and which are not. That part matters more than the build does.
And it does not stop at launch. When something breaks, when a supplier changes something under you, when you need somebody to look at it on a Saturday and tell you straight what is happening — that is the person who built it. Not a ticket, and not a stranger reading it for the first time.
What this is not
Not a reason to leave something that is working.
If you have a site you like, people find it when they search for you, and your mail arrives — then you do not need me, and I will say so on the call. The businesses this is for are running on a Facebook page, on nothing at all, or on a subscription they resent and cannot leave.
It is also not a claim that those platforms are badly built, because they are not. What they will not do is hand you the thing, and they have nowhere to put the one piece of software your business actually runs on — which is the part you cannot buy monthly at any price.
And it is not the only number here. A tool on its own is a smaller job and a smaller number: builds start at $2,500. That is a floor, not a quote. What yours costs is agreed before any work begins.
Not sure a site is the thing you need
Then buy the answer before you buy the build.
The AI Fit Assessment is a read of how your work actually runs, on video with your screen shared, and a written list of what is worth building with a price beside each line. If a website is not the first thing on that list, it will say so, and the whole fee comes off whatever you do build.
After the build · optional · stop whenever you like
Keeping it running, after it is built.
You already have something I built, it is running, and you would rather a small change took one message than a morning of your own. This is for the fortnight where a price list moves, a photograph is wrong, or a form stops arriving somewhere.
Nothing about a build needs this. What was made for you is yours outright and it keeps working whether or not you ever send me another message. This is for the version of you who would rather not be the one editing it.
Upkeep is $400 a month.
That is the whole monthly price, and it includes 60 minutes of changes a month. It does not roll forward, anything past it is quoted, and stopping it turns nothing off — what was built stays yours and keeps running.
Anything bigger than a small change gets quoted on its own, and I will say which side of that line a request falls on before I touch it. Stopping this turns nothing off — what was built is yours outright, it keeps running in your own accounts, and there is nothing for me to switch off.
- — Small fixes and changes as they arise — a price that moved, a photograph swapped, a detail corrected, a broken thing put right
- — The updates underneath it, so what was built stays current rather than quietly aging
- — A reply from me rather than a queue, inside 48 hours and any day of the week
- — An honest answer on whether something you want is inside this or needs quoting, before I start it
60 minutes a month, and it does not roll forward. An unused month does not bank, because six banked hours spent at once is a promise I could not keep against the hours I actually have.