Websites

What does a website cost for a small business?

What drives the price of a website, where the line to a web app runs, what you need ready before the build starts, and which costs continue afterwards.

By Daniel Aideborn · Published 17 September 2026 · 4 min read

Short answer: the price follows how much has to be built, how much of the content already exists, and what the site has to do beyond informing people. A site that presents the company costs less than one that takes payments, books appointments or pulls records out of another system.

Below is what actually drives the price, what you need to prepare, and which costs keep running after launch. Liovall's own package prices are further down, read from the same price list as the pricing section on the home page.

What the price depends on

• Scope. How many pages, how many of them are unique, and how much is reused between them.
• Features. A contact form is simple. Payments, accounts, booking and connections to other systems are builds of their own, each with its own failures to handle.
• Content. Finished text and finished images make the build faster. Writing from scratch takes time, whoever does the writing.
• Design. A site built on an existing design foundation costs less than one where every view is drawn from nothing.
• Technical groundwork. Domain, email, measurement and technical SEO have to be configured once, even when it is the same work every time.
• Maintenance afterwards. Who edits the text in six months, and how often do you expect something to need doing?

Two quotes for the same site can differ a great deal without either being wrong. They contain different amounts of work. That is why comparing a number is harder than comparing what the number covers.

Website or web app: this is where the price splits

A website presents. A web app lets someone sign in and do something: see their cases, upload files, follow an order. The difference is rarely visible from outside, but it decides the price, because an app needs accounts, permissions, stored data, and a way to correct that data when it goes wrong.

If you are unsure which side of the line your project is on, When is a website enough, and when do you need a web app? takes the levels one at a time.

What to have ready before the build

1. What the site should get a visitor to do: get in touch, book, buy, or simply understand what you do.
2. Which pages you want, and roughly what belongs on each of them.
3. Text and images, or a decision about who writes and produces them.
4. Access to the domain and the business email, or whatever is needed to move them.
5. Who owns the content afterwards, and who should be able to change it without calling anyone.

Costs that continue after launch

• Domain. A yearly fee to whichever registrar you use.
• Hosting. A static site can run for close to nothing. An app with a database costs something every month.
• Business email. Per mailbox per month, at your provider.
• Maintenance. Updates, security fixes and small changes to the text.
• New content. More pages and new text cost time, whoever produces them.

The exact amounts depend on the providers you choose, so I quote no figures for them here. Always ask what the price includes and what is billed separately. That is where unexpected costs usually appear.

Liovall's package prices

The three launch packages have a fixed price, agreed before anything is built. Complete Launch is quoted from, because its scope varies between engagements.

Larger software products (SaaS), web applications and iOS apps are quoted separately and are not automatically part of any package. Exactly what each package contains is listed in full in the pricing section.

Five questions that make two quotes comparable

• Is it a fixed price or time and materials, and what happens when the scope changes?
• Who owns the code, the content and the accounts when the work is done?
• What is included after launch, and for how long?
• How do I change a piece of text myself afterwards?
• Which running costs are added, and who are they paid to?

The same questions work whoever you ask. A supplier who answers them plainly is easier to compare than one who only sends a number. If you want me to look at your case, the services are on the home page and the contact box is at the bottom of it.

Related services: Websites