"How much should I pay for a website?" is the question we hear most often from tradies. The honest range is $0 to $25,000 — and the answer depends on what you actually need it to do.

The five tiers, with real numbers

$0 — DIY on Google Business Profile. No website at all. For sole operators in tight-knit communities, this is fine for year one. You miss out on SEO, but you save $5k.

$300–$1,500 — DIY template (Wix, Squarespace). Works for sole operators who need an online business card. Don't expect to rank for anything competitive.

$2,500–$5,000 — Freelancer or small studio template build. Custom-feeling site on WordPress or Webflow. Probably what 70% of tradies actually need.

$5,000–$12,000 — Premium designed site with SEO foundation, photo shoot, copywriting. Sweet spot for established, growth-mode trade businesses. (Our own builds start at $1,500 for a lean job-booking site and scale up from there — see websites for tradies.)

$15,000–$25,000+ — Bespoke / multi-page / custom integrations. Builders with project portals, multi-location operators, anyone needing custom quoting tools. Rare but real.

Where the money goes

  • Strategy and copy (20–30%): the most underrated investment. Cheap sites usually mean cheap words.
  • Design (25–35%): the visual layer that justifies your premium pricing.
  • Photography (15–25%): the single biggest believability lever for tradies. Stock photos are a trust leak.
  • Development (15–25%): actually building it. Smaller share than most people think.
  • SEO setup (5–10%): structured data, schema, sitemap, image alt tags. Usually skipped in cheap builds.

Red flags in a quote

  • "$500 for a 5-page website" — usually means a copy-paste template, no strategy, no support.
  • No mention of hosting, ongoing updates, or what happens if you want changes.
  • Photography excluded — they'll use stock, and your site will look like everyone else's.
  • No measurable goal: "make you look professional" isn't a goal. "Drive 30+ qualified enquiries/month from organic search" is.

Our take

Spend on conversion, not decoration. A lean $1,500–$3,000 site with click-to-call, real photos and suburb pages will out-earn a $10k brochure site every time. Step up to the $6–10k tier when you're established and the photography, copywriting and SEO depth will pay back through better lead quality. More than $15k makes sense only when you have specific custom integration needs.