How much does a small business website cost in Australia?

Updated November 2, 2026 · 5 min read

In 2026, a small business website in Australia costs about A$6–21 a month to build yourself on a website builder, or A$30–70 a month on a plan that takes bookings or payments. Paying someone costs roughly A$600–3,000 for a template site, A$3,000–10,000 for a custom-designed site of five to ten pages, and from about A$8,000 once it takes bookings or sells online. On top of that, budget about A$22 a year for a .com.au domain and, if someone looks after the site, around A$50–200 a month for maintenance.

Small business website cost at a glance

Building it yourself

Website builders charge by the month. Prices below are the regular rates on each builder’s pricing page in October 2026, not first-year promotions.

Over a year, that is roughly A$70–800 in plan fees before your own time and any add-ons. The real cost of building it yourself is the hours: writing the words, choosing photos, setting up bookings or payments, and keeping it all current.

What web designers and developers charge

Employed multimedia specialists and web developers earn a median of A$66 an hour, according to Jobs and Skills Australia. Graphic and web designers earn a median of A$1,850 a week full-time, or about A$49 an hour over a 38-hour week, according to its designers profile. Expect a freelancer or agency to charge well above that, because their rate also covers time they can’t bill, software, insurance, super and profit. A quote is roughly hours multiplied by rate, so when two quotes differ a lot, ask each for the hours behind it.

Web designers price their work in one of three ways, and it’s worth knowing which you’re being offered:

• A fixed price for the project. The safest for you, as long as the scope is written down.
• By the hour. Fair for small changes, open-ended for a whole site.
• A monthly plan. A lower upfront cost, with hosting and changes bundled in; check the minimum term and who owns the site if you leave.

What pushes the price up

• Custom design instead of a template. A design made for your business takes more hours than adapting an existing one.
• Number of pages. Every service, location or product range that needs its own page adds writing, design and testing.
• Bookings and payments. Taking bookings, deposits or orders means more screens, more testing and often a monthly fee for the booking or payment service.
• Connections to other tools. Sending bookings to a calendar, orders to your accounting software or enquiries to a CRM each adds work.
• Words and photos. If the developer writes the copy or arranges a photographer, that is usually priced separately.
• Moving an old site. Carrying over pages, products and search rankings from an old website takes planning.

The yearly running costs

For example, a A$6,000 custom site with A$20 a month of hosting and A$100 a month of care costs about A$7,460 in its first year and about A$1,460 a year after that, including the domain. These are example figures; put in your own quotes.

Before you sign a quote

• Whose name is on the domain? Under auDA’s licensing rules, a .com.au is licensed to a business with an ABN or company number. Make sure that is your business, not the developer’s.
• Who owns the design, words and photos? Ask for that in writing, along with the admin logins for the website and hosting.
• Fixed price or estimate? Ask what happens when you change your mind about a page or feature.
• What’s included? Copywriting, photos, setting up your Google listing, training and a warranty period are often extra.
• What will you pay every month? Hosting, the builder plan, booking software and plugins, and who pays each one.
• Is GST included? Most price guides don’t say.
• Unfair terms. Since November 2023, small businesses with fewer than 100 employees or turnover under A$10 million have been protected from unfair terms in standard form contracts, such as one-sided rights to change the price, according to the ACCC.

Which option fits

• Just opened, need to be found: a builder plan or a template site, a clear page per service, and your Google listing.
• Your brand and several services matter: a custom site of five to ten pages.
• Bookings or payments run your day: budget for a site with booking built in, or a builder plan with scheduling, and compare the monthly fees over three years.
• Selling products online: compare a store builder’s fees per sale with the cost of a custom store before you choose.

Sources

• Jobs and Skills Australia: Graphic and Web Designers, and Illustrators (2026)
• Jobs and Skills Australia: Multimedia Specialists and Web Developers, earnings from the ABS Survey of Employee Earnings and Hours
• Wix: Plans
• Squarespace: Pricing and Scheduling
• Shopify Australia: Pricing
• WordPress.com: Pricing
• auDA: .au Domain Administration Rules: Licensing (June 2026)
• ACCC: Contracts

Build ranges are rounded from 2026 price guides published by Australian web agencies. Builder, domain and hosting prices were checked on the providers’ own pages in October 2026 and can change. They are not quotes.