( Cost )
Website Cost by Industry: What Six Kinds of Small Business Actually Pay in 2026
What a website costs in 2026 for contractors, restaurants, dental and medical practices, real estate agents and law firms — the feature each industry needs, what it adds to the price, and the sourced ranges.
( The Short Answer )
In 2026 a contractor website costs $800–$3,000 from a freelancer and $5,000–$15,000 from an agency; a restaurant site $2,000–$5,000 plus $179–$499 a month for online ordering; a dental or medical site $3,000–$15,000 once HIPAA forms are included; a real estate site $2,500–$14,000 with IDX; a law firm site $2,000–$15,000. The industry sets the features, and the features set the price. Our packages run $349–$1,299 in every one of them — the full cost guide has the tiers.
Every website cost guide gives you one range, and the range is useless because it is averaging a plumber's five-page site with a dental practice's fifteen-page one. The two are not the same product. They share a domain name and a contact form, and almost nothing else that costs money.
So this guide splits the number by industry. Each row below comes from a dedicated guide with its own sources; the point of putting them side by side is to show what actually moves the price, which is almost never the design.
Website cost by industry, 2026
| Industry | Typical pages | DIY builder | Freelancer or template shop | Agency custom | What moves the price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contractors & home services | 4 – 6 | $300 – $600 a year | $800 – $3,000 | $5,000 – $15,000+ | Booking and estimate tools, reviews, service-area pages |
| Restaurants | 4 – 8 | $200 – $800 a year | $2,000 – $5,000 | $6,000 – $15,000 | Online ordering at $179 – $499 a month on top |
| Dental practices | 8 – 15 | ~$480 a year + your time | $3,000 – $6,000 | $6,000 – $15,000+ | HIPAA-compliant forms and online scheduling |
| Real estate agents & brokerages | 6 – 12 | $200 – $1,000 + $10 – $50 a month | $2,500 – $6,000 | $6,000 – $25,000 | IDX listings at $60 – $150 a month |
| Medical practices | 8 – 15 | $500 – $2,500 | $5,000 – $12,000 (solo) | $15,000 – $30,000+ | HIPAA hosting, intake forms, patient portal |
| Law firms | 6 – 12 | $240 – $1,200 a year | $1,000 – $5,000 | $7,000 – $25,000+ | Practice-area pages, intake, bar advertising rules |
Read the table left to right and the pattern is obvious. The DIY column barely changes by industry — a builder charges the same $20 to $50 a month whether you fix boilers or fill teeth. The agency column swings by a factor of five. Everything in between is the industry's specific features, and those are what you are actually paying for.
Why the industry sets the price
Three things vary by industry, and each one is a line on the quote.
- Compliance. A dental or medical site that collects a patient's name and symptoms is handling protected health information, so the form has to run through a tool with a HIPAA business-associate agreement — Jotform's HIPAA tier is $99 a month billed annually, IntakeQ's forms plan is $54.90. A law firm site has to follow the state bar's advertising rules, which in New York have meant an "Attorney Advertising" label on the home page. A plumber has none of this.
- Integrations. Restaurants need ordering and reservations, which are monthly platforms rather than build costs: ChowNow runs $249 to $449 a month, OpenTable $149 to $499 plus per-cover fees. Real estate needs IDX so listings appear on the site, at $60 to $150 a month plus setup. Contractors want online booking — Housecall Pro is $59 to $299 a month, Jobber $29 to $399. None of these is design work, and all of them show up in the total.
- Content volume. A contractor site needs six pages and a gallery. A law firm needs a page per practice area and a bio per attorney; a medical practice needs a page per service. Every extra unique page is $150 to $400 of copy if someone else writes it, before it is designed.
The six industries, one paragraph each
Contractors and home services
The cheapest custom site in the table, and the one where a good site pays back fastest, because a booked job is worth hundreds or thousands of dollars. BrightLocal's 2026 consumer survey found 97% of people read reviews for local businesses and 54% then go to the business's website. The site's job is to turn that visit into a call, so the money goes on the estimate form, the reviews and the service-area pages, not on animation. Full breakdown: contractor website cost.
Restaurants
Cheap to build and expensive to run, because the ordering platform costs more per year than the site did. Toast's 2025 reservation data has 65% of diners booking directly on a restaurant's own website, and a US Foods survey found 83% read the menu before they arrive — so the menu goes on the page as text, never as a PDF, and the ordering link is the most important element on the site. Full breakdown: restaurant website cost.
Dental practices
Where the specialist-agency premium is steepest. Dental marketing agencies quote $5,000 to $25,000 for the build and $1,000 to $5,000 a month afterwards; a generalist builds the same fifteen pages for a fraction of that, and the HIPAA form tool is a $55 to $129 monthly subscription either way. Full breakdown: dental website cost.
Real estate agents and brokerages
The site is a shell around the listings feed. IDX is what makes it useful, and IDX is a subscription — Showcase IDX is $94.95 a month, IDX Broker $60 to $149 — plus a setup fee that ranges from nothing to $2,000 depending on how deeply it is integrated. The design tier matters less than whether the feed is wired properly. Full breakdown: real estate website cost.
Medical practices
Dental's rules with bigger numbers: HIPAA hosting at $100 to $500 a month instead of $20, a patient portal at $5,000 to $15,000 if you build one, a business-associate agreement before any form goes live. Most of the cost is compliance, which is why the DIY column is nearly empty — a builder without a BAA cannot legally collect patient information. Full breakdown: medical practice website cost.
Law firms
The widest range in the table, from $1,000 freelancer builds to $50,000 legal-marketing packages, and the one where content is the whole cost — a practice-area page runs $250 to $600 to write, a bio $150 to $400. FindLaw's 2024 survey found nearly nine in ten people visited at least two firm websites before contacting one, so the bios and the practice pages are the sales team. Full breakdown: law firm website cost.
The costs that are the same in every industry
Domain, hosting, email and updates do not care what you sell. Budget $200 to $2,400 a year for a site you can edit yourself, or $50 to $500 a month for a maintenance plan that does it for you — the maintenance cost guide has the tiers. The industry premium is on top of that, not instead of it.
What we charge, whatever the industry
Our website packages run $349 for three pages, $689 for ten and $1,299 for fifteen, in every industry above, with the copy written and the first design in 48 to 72 hours. Industry integrations — a booking tool, an IDX feed, a HIPAA form platform — are quoted in writing as add-ons, because they are subscriptions to someone else's product and pretending they are part of a design fee is how quotes get padded.
Those prices sit at the bottom of every column in the table, so it is worth saying why. GoodFirms' 2026 survey has 63% of agencies quoting $1,000 to $15,000; the difference between that and $689 is the discovery-call sales process, the hourly meter and the account manager, none of which change the site. We took them out and published the number. The pricing page has every package, and the money-back guarantee is what makes it safe to check.
Frequently asked questions
- Which industry has the most expensive websites?
- Medical practices, once compliance is counted: HIPAA hosting at $100–$500 a month, a business-associate agreement, a patient portal at $5,000–$15,000. Law firms have the widest range, from $1,000 freelancer builds to $50,000 legal-marketing packages, but the median is lower than medical.
- Which industry has the cheapest websites?
- Contractors and home services. A five-page site with an estimate form and reviews runs $800–$3,000 from a freelancer, and the industry's own guides put DIY under $500 a year. The site is simple; the return on it is not, because a single booked job covers the cost.
- Why does a restaurant website cost so much to run?
- Because the ordering and reservation platforms are monthly subscriptions: ChowNow $249–$449, Owner.com $249 plus 5% of each order or $499 flat, OpenTable $149–$499 plus per-cover fees. The site itself is $2,000–$5,000 once; the platform can cost more than that every year.
- Do I need an industry-specialist web agency?
- Rarely. The industry-specific part of a site is usually a third-party tool — a HIPAA form platform, an IDX feed, an ordering system — that any competent builder can integrate. Specialists charge $5,000–$25,000 plus monthly retainers for the same integrations. What you do need is a builder who has read your industry's rules.
- What is the same in every industry?
- Domain, hosting, email and updates — $200–$2,400 a year if you edit the site yourself, or $50–$500 a month on a maintenance plan. Copy costs $150–$400 a page when someone else writes it, whatever the page is about.
