How much does a website cost in Australia in 2026?

If you have three quotes on the desk and they range from A$500 to A$15,000, you are asking the right question. How much does a website cost in Australia depends on a short list of things, and the quote that does not name them is the one to worry about. We publish our own numbers on our websites page, starting from A$1,000, GST inclusive, so this is written from the side of the table that writes the quotes. We run more than fifteen online stores of our own on the same tools, so we also pay these costs ourselves, every month.

What we charge and what is in it

Our small-site prices are on the page for anyone to read. A one-page site for a sole trader starts from A$1,000, GST inclusive. A five to eight page site for a local business starts from A$2,500. A larger site with bookings or a small catalogue starts from A$3,499. Online stores, web apps and anything custom are quoted after a paid scoping session, because guessing at those is how a builder ends up either overcharging you or walking away halfway.

The word “from” is doing real work in those sentences. It means the price for the build as described, and it moves for the reasons in the next section. What does not move is what is bundled in. Every build includes the first year of hosting on our own servers in Australia, a SolSEO plan so you can watch whether it ranks, a maintenance and support retainer, and the copywriting and photography. Those four items are the ones other quotes leave out, and they are where the surprise invoices come from later.

Nearly every Australian agency page on this query says “it depends” and asks you to book a call. It does depend. It also has a number, and you should be able to read it before you give anyone your phone number.

What moves the number

Page count is the thing everyone asks about and the thing that matters least. A twenty page site where every page uses the same design costs less to build than a six page site where every page is different. The things that move a small business website cost in Australia are these:

• Unique page designs. Each different layout is designed, built and tested on real phones. Five templates reused across twenty pages is cheap. Twenty templates is not.
• Selling online. A catalogue, a cart, payments, shipping rules and GST handling are a second project bolted to the first. This is the line between A$3,499 and a quoted store.
• Integrations. A booking system, an accounting package, a stock feed, a CRM. Each one is a few hours if the vendor has a good connection and a few days if it does not.
• Migration. Moving an existing site means redirecting every old URL to its new home. A site with 300 pages of history needs a redirect map. Skipping it loses your rankings.
• Who writes the words. Copywriting is included in our tiers because a site with no words on it is not finished. If you write them yourself, the price drops and the launch date slips, in our experience, by weeks.
• Who takes the photographs. Real photos of your work and your people. The Local Business tier includes a half day of photography for exactly this reason.
• Rounds of changes. Two rounds of review are normal. Eight rounds is a different project, and a good quote says how many are included.

Four ways to get a website, costed over three years

Year one is the wrong number to compare, because the four routes spend their money at different times. A builder subscription looks cheap in month one and keeps charging. An agency build looks expensive in month one and then costs hosting and maintenance. Table 1 puts all four on the same footing.

Route	Up front	Per year after	Three-year total	Who does the work
DIY builder (Wix, Squarespace, Shopify)	A$0	A$227 to A$2,411	A$658 to A$7,210	You, on weekends
Offshore marketplace freelancer	A$130 to A$900	A$250	A$724 to A$2,244	A stranger, then you
Local freelancer	A$999 to A$2,999	A$350 to A$3,588	A$2,049 to A$12,763	One person, while they are available
Local agency or studio (our Local Business tier)	A$2,500	A$199	A$2,898	A team, with a maintenance plan

Every figure in Table 1 was read from the vendor’s own published pricing page on 22 September 2026.

• DIY builder: Squarespace Basic on annual billing at the low end, Wix Business Elite at the high end, with a .com.au renewal added from year two because the free domain those plans include lasts one year only.
• Shopify sits outside that range: Shopify Basic on annual billing with three paid apps is A$3,381 over three years, before a cent of the 1.7% card fee.
• Offshore freelancer: the cheapest live Fiverr listing at one end, a realistic five-page package plus one Australian rescue at the other. Hosting is GoDaddy’s Australian Economy plan, which costs A$6.95 a month for the first year and A$18.95 a month on renewal.
• Local freelancer: three Perth operators’ published package prices, with ongoing costs from A$350 a year for self-managed hosting up to a A$299 a month care plan.

The honest reading of the table is that the builder wins on price for a one-page brochure that nobody needs to maintain, and it stops winning the moment the site has to sell something, rank for something, or be moved somewhere else. We say more about where that line sits in a separate article on builders versus WordPress.

The ongoing costs most quotes leave out

A website is the cheap part. The website maintenance cost in Australia is what most owners are not told about, and it is why a A$500 site is often a A$3,000 site by year three. The recurring items, roughly in the order they appear on your card statement:

• Hosting. Every site lives on a server that somebody pays for. Cheap shared hosting is slow and the slow shows up in Google. Ours is bundled for the first year and continues on a monthly plan after that, with the figure in your quote.
• The domain. A .com.au renews every year or two. If it is registered in the builder’s name rather than yours, you do not own your website. Check this today.
• SSL and the security layer. Usually free now through the host or Cloudflare. If a quote charges for a certificate on its own line, ask why.
• Plugin and theme licences. Premium WordPress plugins renew yearly. A form plugin, a booking plugin and a page builder can add up to a few hundred dollars a year on a site that was sold as “one-off”.
• Updates and backups. WordPress, its theme and its plugins update constantly. Somebody has to apply them and keep a backup that restores. That is the maintenance retainer.
• Rank tracking and reporting. You cannot tell whether the site is working without measuring it. SolSEO starts from A$24.99 a month, we also offer a free plan with no card required. We bundle the premium version for you at a discounted rate - all included in your annual fee. The pricing is on solseo.com.au.
• Your own hours. The cost nobody writes down. Every hour you spend fighting a page builder is an hour not spent on the business.

Why the cheapest quote usually costs the most

Three things happen to cheap websites, and we have inherited enough of them to say so.

The first is the rebuild in year two. A site built fast on a template, with no thought to speed or structure, does not rank and does not convert, and the owner pays again for a proper one. The A$500 did not buy a website. It bought a delay.

The second is the page builder you cannot leave. Many cheap builds lean on a drag-and-drop builder plugin that stores your content in its own format. Switch it off and the pages turn to shortcode soup. Moving away means rebuilding every page by hand, which is the cost you were avoiding.

The third is the developer who stops answering. One person, one login, one email address, and then a new job or a new country. We have taken over sites where nobody knew the hosting password. The fix is not to avoid freelancers. It is to make sure the domain, the hosting and the admin login are in your name before the final invoice is paid.

Questions to ask any quote, including ours

Put these to every quote on the desk. The answers tell you more than the total does.

• What is the total, GST inclusive, in Australian dollars? A number without those two qualifiers is not a quote yet.
• What does year two cost? Hosting, domain, licences, maintenance. If the answer is “we will see”, assume several hundred dollars and ask again.
• Who owns the domain and the hosting account? The answer has to be you, in your name, with the login in your password manager.
• Who writes the words and takes the photographs? If it is you, ask what happens to the launch date when you are late.
• How many rounds of changes are included? And what a round costs after that.
• What happens if I want to leave? A full copy of the site, the database and the media, handed over without a fee, is the only acceptable answer.
• Will it be measured? Rank tracking and a monthly report, or a launch email and silence.
• Can I see three sites you built and are still running? Live, on real phones, today. Ours are on the websites page, and one of them is a client’s.

The short version

A small business website in Australia should cost between about A$1,000 and A$5,000 up front from someone local, with hosting, maintenance and measurement named and priced for the years afterwards. If you want a written number for your own site, GST inclusive and with the catch stated, tell us what it has to do and we will send one. If you would rather see what a monthly SEO retainer costs first, that is on our SEO and business management page.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a basic website cost in Australia?

A one-page or small brochure site from a local builder starts at around A$1,000, GST inclusive, and a five to eight page site for a local business at around A$2,500. Do-it- yourself builders cost less up front and charge monthly for as long as the site exists.

How much does a small business website cost per month?

After the build, expect to pay for hosting, the domain, any premium plugin licences and a maintenance plan. The total varies by host and by how many paid plugins the site uses. Ask for the year two figure in writing before you accept any quote, including ours.

How much does it cost to maintain a website in Australia?

Maintenance covers updates, backups, security and small changes. On our builds it is bundled into the price for the first year and continues on a monthly plan afterwards, with the figure stated in the quote. A site with no maintenance plan is a site waiting to break.

Is it cheaper to build my own website?

Up front, yes. A builder subscription costs nothing to start and a few hundred dollars a year to keep. It is the right answer for a one-page brochure with no shop. It stops being cheaper once you count your own hours, and once the site needs to rank or sell.

How long does a website take to build?

A one-page site takes a few weeks once the content is ready. A larger site or an online store runs six to twelve weeks. The date slips most often because the words and photos arrive late, which is why we include writing and photography in the price.