An agency build vs. a subscription: three years of costs

There are two common ways to pay for a business website. You can pay an agency once for the build and then pay separately for hosting and edits. Or you can pay a monthly price that covers the build, hosting and changes.

The sticker prices are hard to compare because one is a lump sum and the other is a monthly bill. Three years puts them on the same footing.

The subscription side

Our plan is $50 a month. Over 36 months, that is $1,800.

If you pay yearly, it is $500 a year, or $1,500 over three years. Card payments are $52 a month or $520 a year to cover the processing fee, so $1,872 or $1,560 over the same period.

That price covers:

• The custom design and build, with no setup fee.
• Hosting with HTTPS and backups.
• Every change you ask for: text, photos, prices, hours, new pages and design tweaks.
• Security and software updates, and fixes.
• Contact and quote forms emailed to you, with a copy kept on file.
• Google Analytics, Search Console, Bing and Google Business Profile setup.

Third-party costs such as domain registration are extra and passed on at cost. New features like online stores or logins are quoted separately.

The agency side

Published 2025 to 2026 agency pricing guides and buyer surveys put most agency-built business websites between $3,000 and $15,000. Boutique agencies run about $4,000 to $9,500. Full-service agencies run about $9,500 to $20,000. In Clutch's 2026 buyer survey, 61% of small business buyers spent under $10,000.

The same sources give 4 to 8 weeks for a standard custom site, 8 to 16 weeks for a complex one, and 3 to 6 months for an online store or a web app.

That is the build only. After launch, most agency sites carry two more costs.

Maintenance

Someone has to host the site and keep its software updated. Those guides put maintenance at about $50 to $200 a month.

Edits

Changes after launch are usually billed by the hour, at about $50 to $150 an hour. A new page, a price update or a fresh set of photos each becomes a small invoice.

An example over three years

Here is one example. It is not an average, just a build in the middle of the published ranges.

• Agency build: $8,000 upfront.
• Maintenance: $100 a month x 36 months = $3,600.
• Agency total: $8,000 + $3,600 = $11,600 over three years, before a single hourly edit.
• Blackjay: $50 a month x 36 months = $1,800, with the build, hosting, updates and every change included.

Ten edits a year at one hour each, at $100 an hour, would add another $3,000 to the agency side over three years. On the plan, those edits cost nothing extra.

Even at the low end, a $3,000 build plus $50 a month of maintenance comes to $3,000 + $1,800 = $4,800 over three years. That is still more than twice the plan, before any edits.

What the numbers leave out

Cost is only part of the choice. Here are the other things worth weighing.

Time to launch

Our sites go live in 5 days from when we have your content. A standard agency build of 4 to 8 weeks means one to two months without the new site.

Who you talk to

At many agencies, your contact is an account manager who passes requests to a designer or developer. With us, you talk directly to the engineer who builds your site.

What happens to edits

When every edit costs money, owners stop asking. Prices go stale, old photos stay up, the hours are wrong for a season. When changes are included, the site tends to stay current because there is no reason to hold back.

The cost of an old site

Keeping a dated site is not free either. Before RW Gate rebuilt with us, customers asked the company whether it was still in business, because the old site looked so neglected. Its inquiries are now about four times what the old site brought in.

Quality

A lower price does not have to mean a lower bar. We audit every client site every week with PageReflect, our own audit platform. Our client sites score 95 on Google Lighthouse performance, against 63 for the other business websites we've audited, and load their main content in under 3 seconds (PageReflect audits, Oct 2026).

When an agency build makes sense

A one-time build can be the better choice in some cases. If you have an in-house developer who will host and maintain the site, you may not need a monthly service. If the project is a large custom build, such as a store with complex inventory or a full web app, it may not fit a standard plan at all.

We do custom builds too. Stores, booking systems, logins and full web apps are priced on request, with no minimum project size, and quoted before any work starts.

How to compare your own quotes

If you have an agency quote in hand, ask what maintenance costs per month, what an edit costs, and whether security updates are included. Add those to the build price over 36 months, then set the total next to $1,800.

Or let the cost calculator on our Tools page do the math with your own agency quote.

Want a second quote to compare?

Call or text (603) 805-0919.

Or send a message through the contact page.

Free, no pressure. You get a clear plan and price either way.