Ask five Houston web companies what a website costs and you'll get five answers that aren't comparable — a monthly number here, a project quote there, a "starting at" that triples once you describe what you need. So here's the whole market, laid out honestly, including where we sit in it.
Option 1: DIY builders — $12–50/month
Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy. You pay $12–50 a month and build it yourself. For a side project, that's genuinely fine. For a business, two costs hide under the low sticker price. First, your time: most owners spend a weekend fighting templates, publish something that's 80% done, and never touch it again. Second, you're renting. Stop paying and the site is gone — you can't take a Wix site with you, because there's nothing to take. The builder owns the platform; you lease a page on it.
Option 2: Subscription agencies — $100–175/month, forever
A big slice of the "affordable website" market now runs on the "$0 down, $149/mo" model. Somebody builds the site, and you pay monthly for as long as you want it to exist. It sounds painless, so do the two-year math on a typical $150/month plan: $150 × 24 months = $3,600 — and at the end you own nothing. Cancel and the site comes down. Year three starts the meter again. It's the same rented arrangement as a DIY builder, with better production values and a higher rent.
Option 3: Traditional agencies — $5,000 and up
A full-service Houston agency will typically quote $5,000–$15,000 for a small-business site, sometimes more. Some of that work is excellent. The honest question is whether a five-page site for a pressure washing or landscaping company needs an account manager, a discovery workshop, and a six-week timeline. For most local service businesses, that budget buys more process than result.
Option 4: An owned build — typically $1,500–$5,000, one time
This is where we sit. Typical builds run $1,500–$5,000, paid once: for a small-business site that usually means up to five pages, fast and mobile-first, a contact form, on-page SEO, and Google Business setup. When it's paid, it's yours — source code, content, and domain. Host it anywhere. There is no meter. Ours are quoted up front to your exact scope, so you know the whole number before any work starts.
Ongoing care is optional and separate: $49/month covers hosting, SSL, monitoring, and small edits. Run the two-year comparison against the subscription model: once the build is paid, ownership costs $49 × 24 months = $1,176 over the next two years — versus $3,600 of rent that never ends. And the difference compounds: by year three the subscription starts the meter again, while your build was finished long ago.
The comparison in one place
- DIY builder: $12–50/mo + your weekends. Rented. Fine for hobbies.
- Subscription agency: $100–175/mo forever. ~$3,600 over two years, own nothing.
- Traditional agency: $5,000+. Usually owned, often more process than a local business needs.
- Owned build (us): typically $1,500–$5,000 once — quoted up front — plus optional care from $49/mo. Own everything from day one.
What moves the price up
Honest pricing means saying what costs extra. More pages, done-for-you copywriting, a second language, a simple store — each moves a quote up, and each should be priced before work starts, not discovered on an invoice. A quote or estimate calculator — the single best lead tool for a service business — is quoted with the build, since its logic is custom to how you price jobs. Our full add-on list is public, and everything on it is quoted up front. If a web company won't tell you what moves the price before you sign, that tells you something too.
How to compare quotes, whoever you talk to
Whatever you're quoted — by us or anyone — ask three questions. One: what's the total over two years? Two: when I stop paying, what do I keep? Three: what does a change cost after launch? Those three answers turn any pricing page into an apples-to-apples comparison. You can see what our answers look like in practice on the sites we've shipped for Houston businesses.