The four price bands, plainly
Every quote you will get for a small business website in Thornton, Westminster, Longmont, or anywhere else on the Front Range falls into one of four bands. Do-it-yourself builders like Squarespace and Wix charge a monthly subscription, roughly $15 to $50 a month for the plans most small businesses use, and you do all the work. Freelancers charge anywhere from a few hundred dollars to several thousand, with enormous variation in what you get. Small studios and one-person shops like ours charge fixed packages in the low-to-mid thousands. Denver agencies typically start around $10,000 and go well past $30,000 once strategy, photography, and content are included.
None of these is a scam and none of them is automatically the right answer. A $20-a-month builder site that you actually finish beats a $7,500 site you never launch. The question is not which band is cheapest; it is which band produces a site that gets you calls, at a price you will not regret in a year.
What you are actually paying for
Strip the marketing away and a website price is made of five things: the design, the writing, the technical build, the launch plumbing, and what happens afterwards. Builders give you the first and third as templates and leave the writing, the plumbing, and the upkeep to you. Freelancers usually sell the design and build and quietly skip the writing, which is why so many freelance sites launch with placeholder copy. Agencies sell all five, plus meetings about all five, which is where the price comes from.
For a local service business, the writing and the plumbing matter more than the design. The writing is what convinces a homeowner in Broomfield that you are the right plumber. The plumbing, meaning your domain in your name, hosting you control, a Google Business Profile that points at the site, call tracking, and an accessibility pass, is what makes the site findable and keeps it yours. A beautiful site with none of that is a brochure nobody sees.
- Design: how it looks, and whether it works on a phone in bright sunlight.
- Writing: the words that turn a visitor into a caller. Most underpriced sites skip this.
- Build: the actual pages, speed, and accessibility. Slow sites lose the search before they lose the visitor.
- Launch plumbing: domain, hosting, DNS, analytics, Search Console, Google Business Profile, call tracking.
- Afterwards: updates, backups, security, and the small fixes that otherwise sit broken for a year.
Our prices, and what each one is for
We publish our prices because a website quote you have to book a call to hear is a quote designed to be negotiated up. These are the same numbers as our pricing page, verified on the date above.
| Package | Price | Timeline | Right for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Launch Pad | $2,950 one-time | 2-3 weeks | One location, a handful of services, first real site or a rebuild of a dated one |
| Growth Site | $7,500 one-time | 4-6 weeks | Several services or locations that each need a page, or a B2B firm that needs credibility depth |
| Authority Site | $16,500 one-time | 8-10 weeks | A business competing on content: guides, resources, many pages, serious organic ambition |
| Website-as-a-Service | From $500 setup + $100/mo | 5 days to 2 weeks | A small site with no up-front cost; no minimum term, and the site is handed to you if you stop |
| Care plans | $99 to $599/mo | Ongoing | Hosting, updates, backups, and response times after launch, on any site |
Prices verified 2026-09-08 against our own pricing page. Every package includes WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility, technical SEO, tracking, and full ownership of domain, hosting, and code on final payment.
When the builder is the right answer
If you have the time and the patience, a Squarespace or Wix site is a legitimate choice for a very small business, and we say so on our education page, where we teach people to build their own with AI tools. The honest conditions: you have fewer than five pages of content, you will actually write it, you are comfortable spending a few evenings on it, and you will register the domain and the Google Business Profile in your own name rather than letting the platform or a friend hold them. Where builder sites go wrong is not the platform. It is the half-finished site that launches with the template's stock photos and never gets touched again.
When to pay a Denver agency instead of us
If you need a brand built from nothing, a large content program, custom software behind the site, or a team that can run paid media alongside it, an agency is the right buyer and we will tell you so on the call. Our packages are for the business that needs a fast, credible, findable site that produces calls, built by the person you talked to, at a price you knew before you talked to us. That covers most small businesses in the north metro. It does not cover all of them.
The questions that expose a bad quote
- Who owns the domain and hosting when this is done? If the answer is not 'you', walk away.
- Is the writing included, or am I supplying the words? Unwritten copy is the most common reason a cheap site never launches.
- Will it pass an accessibility check? In Colorado, HB21-1110 makes this a hard requirement for public entities and a sensible one for everyone.
- What does it cost to change my hours or add a photo next year? If the answer is an hourly rate with no ceiling, budget for it.
- Can I see the price before a sales call? If not, the price is whatever they think you will pay.
Common questions
Why is a Launch Pad site $2,950 when a freelancer quoted me $800?
Ask the freelancer whether the $800 includes writing the copy, the accessibility pass, call tracking, Search Console and Google Business Profile setup, and handing you the domain and hosting. It usually includes the design and build only. Some $800 sites are excellent value; most launch unfinished. The price difference is the difference between a site and a template.
Do prices change for Thornton, Longmont, or Fort Collins?
Website builds are done remotely, so the north metro and Boulder County are priced the same as Denver. Our city pages show the price for each market we have written up, and the line under the price tells you which market it reflects.
Is Website-as-a-Service just renting a site?
No, and that distinction matters. The $100 a month covers hosting and maintenance, there is no minimum term, and if you stop paying we hand the site over to you rather than switching it off. It is the up-front cost spread out, not a lease.