§The honest comparison

What a website really costs.

These are the industry's own published numbers for 2026 — not ours — placed next to our fixed prices. Most owners discover the real cost of a website a year after buying it. We'd rather you see it up front.

What you're buyingTypical market (2026)Raikowski Software Studio
Professional small-business website$2,000 – $8,000 per project
$2,800

Pro Site — 4–6 pages, CMS, on-page SEO. A fixed number near the bottom of the range, published up front instead of quoted after a call. Pay in full or on a payment plan.

Simple starter website$1,500 – $5,000 (freelancer projects)
$1,200

Starter Site — 1–3 pages, contact form, mobile-first. Pay in full or on a payment plan.

Hosting, security, backups & upkeep$1,100 – $5,000 / year, usually scattered across vendors
$588 / year

Essentials Hosting at $49/mo — managed hosting, SSL, weekly backups, monitoring, one bill

Managed maintenance with human support$95 – $350/mo (freelancers) · $200 – $1,000/mo (agencies)
$149 / month

Maintenance Plan — everything in Essentials plus monthly checks, quarterly micro-update, planning call

Local SEO retainer (single location)$500 – $2,000 / month
$600 / month

GBP management, citation building, content briefs, monthly report — published, not quoted

Google Ads management$400 – $900 / month, or 10–20% of your ad spend
$400 / month flat

Never a percentage of spend — you own the ad account and pay Google directly, so the fee doesn't climb with your budget

Leaving your providerOften unpriced, slow, or quietly painful
Free

You pay for your site once — then it's yours: code and assets included. The Launch Handoff (export + setup guide) is free and there's no exit fee, with any project or cancellation.

Market figures are drawn from published 2026 industry pricing guides for small-business web design, website maintenance, and local SEO services, and are re-verified quarterly. Last verified June 2026. Our prices are fixed and current — the same numbers you'll find on the pricing page.

Why we publish a number — when most shops won't.

Almost every quote in this market arrives after a discovery call, because the number depends on what the salesperson thinks you'll pay. The studio is one experienced operator with no agency overhead, no commissioned sales team, and its own managed cloud infrastructure — so the cost of a project is knowable in advance, and we'd rather print it than negotiate it. Three things that holds us to:

  • Every site is designed, not generated — no template-store clones
  • The price you see is the price you pay — no scope-creep invoices
  • You pay for your site once, then you own it — and leaving is free, no exit fees