Search “how much does a website cost” and you’ll get a range so wide it’s useless: $0, $1,100, $5,000, $25,000. All of those numbers are true for someone. The useful question is what a small business in Denver actually needs to spend in 2026 to get a site that looks like the company, loads on a phone, and makes it easy to call or write.
Here’s the honest map.
The four prices you’ll be quoted
1. “Free” — Wix, Squarespace, WordPress.com, a nephew
The software is cheap. Your time is not. A contractor who spends two weekends fighting a template has not saved $1,100. They’ve paid in evenings, and the site still looks like a template. Free also usually means a branded domain, a builder watermark, and a monthly plan the moment you want a real URL.
2. $1,000–$3,000 — a freelancer on a platform
You can get a decent site here. You can also get a ghost. Quality is a lottery, revisions are a fight, and when the freelancer moves on, you’re left with a login and no one who remembers how it was built.
3. $5,000–$15,000 — a traditional agency
This is what 5280 Design used to charge, because that’s what weeks of layout, code, and meetings used to cost. For a restaurant group or a funded startup, it can still be the right number. For a plumber in Lakewood who needs home, services, about, and contact — it is overkill. You’re paying for process, not for four pages.
4. $1,100 — a custom site built with AI, directed by a studio
This is the number that only recently became honest. AI now does the production that used to take a team: first-pass layouts, code, image crops, draft copy. A designer in Denver still chooses, edits, and stands behind the launch. That’s why we can sell a real site for $1,100 instead of five figures — not because we care less, because the labor changed.
What $1,100 includes (and what it doesn’t)
Included: a custom business website, typically home, about, services, and contact. Mobile-ready. Fast. Search-friendly. Launched on your domain. Not a leftover theme with a swapped logo.
Not included: a Shopify store with 400 SKUs, a member portal, or a custom app. We’ll say so before anyone spends a dollar. Hosting is separate: $240 a year, and that price is what includes free maintenance and updates.
The costs people forget
- The domain. Ten to twenty dollars a year. Bring one you own, or we’ll help you get one.
- The photos. Phone photos of the actual work beat stock. We can shoot or source; don’t buy a pack of “smiling handshake.”
- The copy. You know the business. We shape it so a stranger can understand it in thirty seconds.
- The year after launch. A site that nobody updates is a brochure that yellows. That’s why hosting with us includes the small changes.
Denver, specifically
We’ve built sites for travel nurses, peach farms, window companies, lawyers in Golden, arborists in Centennial. Look at the work. The $1,100 offer is for that kind of business: a company that needs to be findable, clear, and easy to hire — not a venture-backed product.
If a larger shop quotes you $8,000 for the same four pages, ask what you’re buying besides the hours. If a builder quotes you $0, ask what the third year costs when the template is stale and nobody on staff wants to log in.
The number we’d want, if we were you
Pay $1,100 for the site. Pay $240 a year to keep it live and current. Spend the rest on the actual work — ads, trucks, peaches, whatever you sell. Start a site if that sounds like the arrangement you wanted all along.