Website design cost: how much should a website cost in year one and year two?

A website costs anywhere from nothing to thousands in year one, and the number that decides whether it was a good deal is the year-two number — which almost nobody publishes. Here is what the audited prices actually are, and what they turn into.

What the market charges

51 builders, priced from their own published pages. Year one is the number every quote leads with; the two columns beside it are the ones the industry leaves off the page.

Every figure comes from that builder's own published pricing, and every one of them has its own page on this site with the sources and the date they were read. Two rows are the whole argument on their own: Carrd renews at the rate it sells at, and so does Webflow's Basic plan, while Shopify's first three months at $1.00 are followed by $25.00 a month on the annual plan.

The number that decides it: year two

The first-year price is a marketing number, and it is the number the market compares on. The second year is the bill. Across the 51 builders audited here, 29 publish both rates, so the step can be computed rather than guessed: 19 of them renew at exactly the rate they sold at, and the 10 that print a step run from 1.51x to 33x. 4 of the 51 publish no price at all — no rate, no second rate, no renewal figure — which means their year-two cost is not a number anyone can quote. Another 18 print a first-year rate and stop: the price is on the page and the second year is not. GoDaddy is one of them — its builder page carries $9.99/mo billed annually, and no tier's renewal price is published anywhere we could read.

That is the whole mechanism, and it is arithmetic rather than rumour: a builder whose second year costs four times its first has not changed the work, it has changed the invoice. The audited step behind every multiple is in Why do website builders increase renewal prices by 2x to 4x after year one?, and the domain has its own version of the same problem in Is a free domain for the first year actually free?.

Is $1,500 a good price for a website?

It depends which $1,500, and which year. Forbes Advisor's 2026 guide puts a professional design at $1,500 and up and a DIY build at $0 to $450, with hosting at $15 to $150 a month — and that guide is one of four price pages on the first page of this query, next to GoDaddy's, Squarespace's and Wix's. So $1,500 is a plausible figure for a site that was built, and an alarming one for a renewal, depending on which invoice you are looking at.

The rest of the market quotes the same way, and these were read on 2026-10-22:

The $199 package is Nexvertise Digital's — five pages, hosting and three months of maintenance. The £299 is Harris Digital Web Design's, the AU$299 is Logoinn's, the $399 is LogoVent's, the $1,200 is dreamworth's, and the $1,500 to $3,000 is what a thread in r/webdesign says a custom design runs to. The freelancer and agency bands are the ranges the search engine's own summary of that page one gives.

Every one of those quotes covers the design and stops there. Underneath it are the bills that repeat — the domain, the hosting, and whoever keeps the site up — and a quote that does not bundle them leaves three more prices to find. A builder's plan covers the site and the hosting, but the domain still renews on its own and the maintenance is still either yours to do or a third price, so neither side of this page is a single fee. The difference that is worth a reader's time is not how many bills there are. It is that the repeating ones are written down here, with the date they were read, and a design quote arrives with the one-off and nothing else. The comparison the market never puts in one place is not which is cheaper — it is which kind of bill each half of the price is, and the second half of a design quote is whichever of the three bills nobody bundled for you.

The question the page one does not answer, because nobody publishes it: what does the second year cost? On the audited numbers, a first year of $1,500 that renews at 3.68x is a second year of $5,500 — and the number nobody quoted you is the one that decides whether you keep it.

What to check before you sign

1. What does it renew at? Not what it sells at — what it renews at. If the

second rate is not published, that is the answer.

1. Does the domain renew at cost? A free first-year domain is a first-year

price on a domain you will keep for ten.

1. What do you own when you leave? The document, or a subscription.
2. What does the work include in year two? A site that has to be rebuilt

every year is a subscription, whatever the first invoice says.

Sources

• One audited page per builder on this site, each with the published rates and

the date they were read.

• Why do website builders increase renewal prices by 2x to 4x after year one?

— every multiple in this table, with both rates behind it.

• Is a free domain for the first year actually free? —

the other recurring line.

• What happens to my website if I cancel my builder subscription?

— what you own at the end, and what a subscription is.