"How much does a website cost?" is the most-asked question in our inbox, and the honest answer — it depends — helps nobody. So here are the actual ranges we see in Alaska in 2026, including for work we don't do.
The tiers, honestly
$0–$500 — DIY builders. Squarespace, Wix, Shopify's templates. Legitimate choice when you're pre-revenue or testing an idea. The cost isn't the subscription — it's your weekends, and a design ceiling you'll hit the day you start caring about search traffic.
$500–$2,500 — freelancer template builds. A template, your logo, your copy pasted in. Fine for a placeholder. The catch: most of these ship with no search foundation — no schema, no real page speed work, no local landing pages — so the site exists but doesn't work.
$3,500–$15,000 — custom studio builds. This is our lane. Real discovery, wireframes before design, copy direction, performance built in, and a search foundation from day one. Where you land in the range is mostly page count, custom functionality (booking, ecommerce), and how much content help you need.
$15,000+ — custom platforms. Booking engines, member portals, multi-location systems, ecommerce with real catalog complexity. The budget goes into engineering, not more beautiful pages.
Where the money actually goes
On a $7,500 build, roughly: a third to strategy and design (discovery, wireframes, visual system), a third to build and content, and a third to everything that makes it work after launch day — speed, schema, analytics, local search plumbing, QA on real phones. The last third is the part cheap builds skip, and it's the part Google notices.
The three places Alaska businesses overpay
- Rebuilding too often. A site rebuilt every two years because it "feels stale" usually had a content problem, not a design problem. Built right, the design lasts five-plus years and the content evolves monthly.
- Paying agency prices for template work. If the proposal doesn't include wireframes and discovery, you're buying a $1,500 build at a $6,000 price.
- Monthly "maintenance" that's just hosting. $100+/mo to keep a small site online is 2012 pricing. Modern hosting for a marketing site costs almost nothing — pay monthly for marketing work, not for the lights.
What we'd tell a friend
Match the site to the revenue moment. Pre-revenue? DIY is fine, spend your money finding customers. Established and invisible on Google? A $5k–$10k build with a real search foundation typically beats $10k of ads on a site that leaks. And whatever you buy — own the domain, the hosting, and the analytics yourself, from day one.
Want the number for your project specifically? Get a custom plan — we scope in writing, and if a DIY builder is honestly your best move, we'll say so.