A small business website is normally priced as a flat project fee rather than by the hour. Typical starting prices are $300–$800 for a single-page landing site, $800–$2,500 for a standard 4–6 page brand site, and $2,500–$6,000+ for a build with booking, e-commerce, or custom functionality. Quote the scope, not the hours — the same rule holds for a much smaller personalized digital good, like pricing a personalized lullaby or kids' story. Custom Work lets you offer clearly scoped commissions and services: you set the price, the scope and the delivery time, and followers submit a brief and pay before you start.
Those three tiers are Brillay editorial estimates, not survey results. The landing-page and brand-site tiers are benchmarked against Upwork's published project ranges of $300–$1,500 for landing page design and $1,500–$5,000 for business website design (Upwork, Hire Web Designers). The booking, e-commerce, and redesign tiers further down this page have no matching published benchmark and are unsurveyed assumptions — treat them as a starting point to test, not as market data.
Sourcing note: price benchmarks in this guide come from Upwork's published project-cost ranges; wage and employment-projection figures come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and O*NET OnLine; adoption figures come from Clutch's 2025 small-business website survey; Brillay mechanics are quoted from Brillay's own public pages with an access date.
There are 36,207,130 small businesses in the United States, and 99.9% of all U.S. businesses are classified as small under the government's size standards. Website adoption among them is high but not universal: Clutch reports that 83% of small businesses have a website, up from 64% in 2018, and that 17% are still offline (Clutch, The State of Small Business Websites in 2025, published August 21, 2025). Pricing an incoming "can you build me a site?" request as a scoped, flat-fee build turns it into paid work instead of a favor — the same shift that turns "can you teach me the opening?" into priced chess lessons rather than a free favor.
What determines how much to charge for a small business website?
The price of a small business website tracks scope and complexity, not the hours you guess before seeing requirements. Six variables move the number: page count, design complexity, functionality, who supplies the copy and images, the platform or CMS, and how fast the business needs the site live. Settle all six in writing before quoting.
- Page count and structure. A single landing page is a different job from a home/about/services/contact/blog structure.
- Design complexity. A templated theme with color and logo swaps costs less to produce than a fully custom layout.
- Functionality. Contact forms, appointment booking, a product catalog, or payment collection each add build and testing time beyond static pages.
- Content ownership. State clearly whether the business supplies final copy and images or you're also writing and sourcing them — that alone can double the timeline.
- Project scope. Define the feedback and changes covered by the project price so additional work can be priced separately.
- Timeline. A rushed launch for an event or opening date justifies a premium over your standard delivery time.
Demand for the work is growing modestly rather than collapsing. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 5 percent employment growth for web developers and digital designers from 2025 to 2035, faster than the average for all occupations, in the 2025–35 employment projections released August 27, 2026. The Occupational Outlook Handbook states the projection this way:
"Overall employment of web developers and digital designers is projected to grow 5 percent from 2025 to 2035, faster than the average for all occupations." — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: Web Developers and Digital Designers, reflecting the 2025–35 employment projections released August 27, 2026 in news release USDL-26-1422 (BLS)
How much should you charge by project scope?
Common starting prices for a small business website are $300–$800 for a single-page landing site, $800–$2,500 for a standard 4–6 page brand site, $1,500–$3,500 once booking or intake forms are added, $2,500–$6,000+ for an e-commerce starter, and $800–$2,000 for a redesign. The last three are unsurveyed editorial estimates.
How these ranges were set (methodology, published September 2026): they are Brillay editorial estimates, not survey results — no sample of freelancers was polled, and no proprietary Brillay transaction data is behind them. Each range was benchmarked where a published equivalent exists, then set at or below the low end of that range because published agency-style cost guides blend in overhead, project management, and multi-person teams that a solo builder doesn't carry. Two published anchors were used: Upwork lists landing page design at $300–$1,500 and business website design at $1,500–$5,000 per project, and Upwork's own cost guide puts the cost of a website at $300 to $5,000 across industries and use cases. Where no published benchmark matches the row, the row is labeled an unsurveyed editorial estimate.
| Project scope | What's typically included | Suggested starting price | Nearest published benchmark |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single-page landing site | 1 page, template-based design, business info and a contact form | $300–$800 | Upwork lists landing page design at $300–$1,500 per project |
| Standard brand site | 4–6 pages (home, about, services, contact), custom design touches | $800–$2,500 | Upwork lists business website design at $1,500–$5,000 per project |
| Site with booking or intake | Standard site plus an appointment or intake-form integration | $1,500–$3,500 | Unsurveyed Brillay editorial estimate; nearest wider anchor is Upwork's $300–$5,000 overall website cost range |
| E-commerce starter site | Standard site plus a product catalog and checkout | $2,500–$6,000+ | Unsurveyed Brillay editorial estimate; Upwork's business-website guide lists a "Custom-designed small business site: $2,000-$10,000+ (including design, development, and content)" |
| Redesign of an existing site | Audit of the current site plus a rebuilt version | $800–$2,000 | Unsurveyed Brillay editorial estimate; no matching published benchmark found |
Treat every figure above as a starting point you adjust, not a promise of what any specific client will pay or what you'll earn from a given number of orders. Clutch reports that 90% of small businesses plan to invest in their website over the next 12 months; that figure measures planned website spending in general and does not measure repeat purchases from the same freelancer.
Should you price a website as a flat fee or by the hour?
A flat fee tied to a defined scope is the clearer default for a small business website: the client knows the full price before agreeing to anything, and you are not justifying every line of an hourly invoice. Hourly billing fits open-ended maintenance after launch, where the work genuinely varies week to week. A quick creative commission follows the same scoped, flat-fee logic — see how to price a caricature commission for the same reasoning applied to a single-deliverable creative order.
| Situation | Flat project fee | Hourly billing |
|---|---|---|
| Scope is written down before work starts | Best fit — the price is fixed to a named deliverable | Client carries the overrun risk and often resists |
| Scope is vague or the client is still deciding | Risky — you absorb every extra round | Better fit, with a written hour cap |
| Maintenance and small fixes after launch | Awkward — the work varies month to month | Best fit |
| Rush timeline for a fixed launch date | Best fit — charge a premium on the fixed price | Harder to cap or predict |
| Client wants total budget certainty before signing | Best fit | Weakest fit |
Two published hourly anchors are useful when sanity-checking a flat quote. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a median annual wage of $92,650 for web developers in May 2025 and $104,000 for web and digital interface designers (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). O*NET OnLine, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor, expresses the same 2025 web-developer median as $44.54 per hour. On the freelance-marketplace side, Upwork reports a median hourly rate of $21 for web designers, with rates typically between $15 and $30 (Upwork, Web Designer Hourly Rates).
"Design, build, or maintain Web sites, using authoring or scripting languages, content creation tools, management tools, and digital media." — O*NET OnLine, Web Developers occupation summary, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor (O*NET OnLine)
Those wage figures describe employment and marketplace bidding, not what you must charge, so use them only for arithmetic. As an illustrative assumption rather than a measured benchmark — no public dataset reports hours per freelance website project, so substitute your own tracked hours — a landing page that takes 15–20 focused hours works out to roughly $25–$45 per effective hour inside a $300–$800 flat fee, once revisions are counted. Log your actual hours on the next two builds and re-run that division before setting your next tier. The same effective-hourly math is worth running if you're instead pricing a per-session gaming coaching offer.
How developers get paid for code-review DMs and how designers get paid for portfolio and design feedback cover the same flat-fee-over-hourly approach for adjacent request types many web builders already field.
What should a small-business-website package include?
A small-business-website package should name six things before payment: the exact pages and sitemap, who supplies copy and images, the platform or CMS you build on, the project scope, the delivery time, and any separately priced add-ons. Anything left unnamed becomes a free revision later.
- Page count and sitemap. Name each page included in the website.
- Who provides content. State whether final copy and images come from the business or from you, and list your added cost when you provide them.
- Platform. Say whether you're building on a specific website builder, a CMS, or fully custom code, since that affects what the business can edit later.
- Project scope. Define the feedback and changes covered by the project price and price additional work separately.
- Delivery time. Publish a delivery time you can meet within your selling platform's delivery window.
- Add-ons. Offer ongoing maintenance, copywriting, SEO campaigns, and paid ads as separately priced add-ons.
Followers pay upfront; you can decline a request. On a multi-week build, that payment-first order is what protects your time, without a separate deposit conversation.
When should you raise your website pricing?
Raise your website pricing when demand or capability changes, not on a calendar. Four concrete triggers justify a higher price: your build queue is consistently full, your portfolio now shows completed sites in the client's niche, incoming requests keep exceeding your defined scope, or you have added real technical range such as booking flows or checkout integrations.
- Your queue is consistently full. If you're regularly turning down or delaying new build requests, your current price is likely below what demand supports.
- You have a stronger portfolio. Completed sites you can show — especially for a niche similar to a new client's business — justify pricing above where you started.
- Requests keep exceeding your defined scope. If a "standard brand site" listing repeatedly turns into a build with booking and e-commerce, either enforce the boundary or price the next tier explicitly.
- You've added real technical range. Learning to build booking flows, e-commerce checkouts, or custom integrations supports pricing above a template-only build.
You can raise your listed price for new requests at any time without changing what a client already paid for. Revisit pricing after a genuine shift in demand, portfolio strength, or scope rather than on a fixed schedule.
For Brillay users: how to list a website build
On Brillay, you can list a website build through Custom Work, with the scope, price and delivery time written down before the build starts; larger builds are split into separately priced phases, and a quick stack or platform recommendation can sell on its own as a Paid Question. The pricing guidance above applies wherever you sell.
Paid Questions let a follower pay your set price to ask you one private question, and you send back one written reply, privately. Brillay's own feature page says: "You reply privately with text, so it’s fast to send and easy for the follower to save and reference later."
Custom Work accepts attached files from the client and lets you deliver text plus files of any allowed type and/or a link. Brillay's feature page describes the delivery as "a written note plus up to 5 files (video, audio, images, PDF, Word, Excel, or PowerPoint), and/or a private link (Google Drive, Loom, Dropbox…) for anything larger," and adds that "the follower can also attach their own files when they order (a track, a resume, a screenshot), so you have everything you need before you start". That is what lets a client hand over a logo, a brand guide, or existing copy at checkout.
For each custom request, set a delivery time of up to 5 days — the maximum a creator may promise on Brillay.
A multi-week project does not have to fit inside one 5-day listing. Split larger builds into phases — a "Discovery & Wireframe" service first, then a separate "Full Build & Launch" service — so each phase is its own priced, paid-upfront request that fits inside the 5-day cap. Brillay collects the client's order for a website you deliver elsewhere. Deliver the work through the client's hosting account, a website builder, a repository, or a private handoff link.
What do you keep after Brillay and Stripe fees?
On a $500 website build a Brillay creator keeps about $445, on $1,500 about $1,336, and on $3,500 about $3,118, using U.S. domestic-card assumptions. No monthly fee, you only pay a small platform fee when you get paid. 8% platform fee when a follower pays for work, 5% platform fee on tips and goals. Card processing is separate. Both figures below are planning estimates.
Brillay's pricing page lays out the same shape: the follower pays only the displayed price, and creator earnings are what's left after the platform fee and payment processing (brillay.com/pricing, accessed September 2026).
Clients can pay without creating an account, and each custom request is a one-time purchase rather than a membership. Payments and payouts run through Stripe (brillay.com/how-it-works, accessed September 2026), and Stripe's published rate for a standard domestic card payment in the United States is 2.9% + $0.30 per successful charge (Stripe pricing). International cards, currency conversion, and manual entry carry additional Stripe fees, so the table below is a simplified U.S. domestic-card estimate.
| You charge | Stripe processing, 2.9% + $0.30 | Brillay fee, 8% on a Custom Work order | You keep, estimated |
|---|---|---|---|
| $500 | $14.80 | $40.00 | $445.20 |
| $1,500 | $43.80 | $120.00 | $1,336.20 |
| $3,500 | $101.80 | $280.00 | $3,118.20 |
These are planning estimates, not guaranteed payout amounts. Actual deductions vary with card type, currency, refunds, and disputes — check your dashboard for the exact figure on any order.
Frequently asked questions
Short answers on where this guide's price ranges come from, whether a creator has to host the client's site, how template and custom builds should differ in price, what happens when a build outruns Brillay's 5-day delivery cap, whether a business license is required, and what Brillay charges on a website sale.
Where do the price ranges in this guide come from?
The scope table is a set of Brillay editorial estimates published September 2026, not survey data, and no sample of freelancers was polled. The landing-page and brand-site rows were benchmarked against Upwork's published project-cost ranges of $300–$1,500 for landing page design and $1,500–$5,000 for business website design, and sanity-checked against the $92,650 median annual wage the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports for web developers in May 2025 (BLS). The booking, e-commerce, and redesign rows have no matching published benchmark and are unsurveyed assumptions.
Does a creator need to host the client's website?
No. Brillay handles the paid request and delivery for a website you host elsewhere. Deliver the finished build as files or a link to wherever the site lives — the client's own hosting account, a website builder, or a repository — and be explicit in your listing about who owns that hosting relationship going forward.
Should a template-based site cost less than a fully custom build?
Generally yes, since a templated build takes less design and development time than a custom layout coded or designed from a blank page. Price the difference into your tiers rather than charging the same rate regardless of how much original work a project requires.
What if a website build takes longer than Brillay's 5-day delivery cap?
Split the project into phases and sell each as its own custom request — for example, discovery and wireframes as one paid listing, then the full build and launch as a second. Each phase then fits inside the 5-day maximum delivery time that Brillay's listing editor enforces, verified in the Brillay creator dashboard in September 2026, and the client pays upfront before that stage of work starts.
Do I need a business license to sell website builds through Brillay?
Local business licensing, contractor registration, and tax rules vary by location, so confirm what applies where you operate — setting up Stripe payouts on Brillay does not settle those local rules for you.
What does Brillay charge on a website sale?
Brillay takes the platform fee set out in the fee section above from the price the client pays (on a $500 build that comes to $40.00), and Stripe's card-processing fee is a separate deduction from your earnings. There is no monthly fee. There is no follower minimum, and payouts run through Stripe once a client's payment is collected.
Put Custom Work, Paid Questions, Tips, and your other offers behind one Brillay link, then turn the next "can you build my business a website?" DM into a scoped, paid project. (Create your free Brillay page)
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