If you’ve started shopping around for a website, you’ve probably noticed the prices are all over the map. One person quotes you $500. An agency quotes you $25,000. A friend tells you to just use Squarespace for twenty bucks a month. So which is it?

Here’s the honest answer most web designers won’t give you, followed by exactly what we charge here at Flying Turtle Studio. Real numbers, no “contact us for a quote” runaround.

The Honest Range You’ll See Out There

Across the industry, a small business website generally falls into three buckets.

• DIY website builders like Wix, Squarespace, and GoDaddy run roughly $200 to $600 a year, and you build it yourself.
• A freelancer or small studio typically charges $2,000 to $8,000 for a professional, custom site.
• A full agency runs $10,000 to $35,000 and up, especially for anything complex.

Most professional small business sites land somewhere between $3,000 and $15,000. That’s a wide spread, and the reason is simple. “A website” can mean a clean six-page site that makes you look credible, or it can mean a sprawling custom platform with e-commerce and integrations. They are not the same animal, and they shouldn’t cost the same.

So let me stop talking in ranges and tell you what we actually charge.

What We Charge at Flying Turtle Studio

A standard brochure-style website is $2,500. That covers six pages: Home, About, Services, a second service page, Gallery, and Contact. A working contact form is included. We ask for 30% upfront to get started, and the balance on completion.

What’s Included and What Costs Extra

A few things people are always glad to hear.

• Your first year of hosting is free. We run our own hosting through FTS Hosting, so we keep it in-house.
• Extra pages are $150 each if you need more than the six.
• Ongoing maintenance is $75 to keep your site updated, secure, and running after launch.
• SEO is quoted separately, based on how competitive your market and goals are. Honest SEO pricing depends entirely on scope, and anyone who gives you a flat number sight-unseen is guessing.

There’s one thing we don’t do, and that’s e-commerce. We focus on brochure and marketing sites for service businesses. If you need a full online store, we’re not the right shop for you, and we’ll tell you that upfront instead of fumbling through it.

A Real Example: The Website That Landed a Major Contract

Here’s why I treat a website as an investment, not just an expense.

We built a site for a brand-new startup in the forklift truck repair and servicing business. They had no prior web presence at all. The website we built was their entire first impression to the world.

Shortly after we finished, they landed a major contract. The kind that changed the trajectory of the company and accelerated their growth. A serious client looked them up, saw a business that appeared established and professional, and felt confident signing on.

That’s the whole point. For a new business, your website isn’t decoration. It’s often the first thing a potential customer judges you by, and it can be the difference between getting taken seriously and getting passed over.

Can’t I Just Build It Myself for Cheap?

You can. And for some people, that’s genuinely the right call. But let me be straight with you about what the cheap route actually costs, because it’s rarely as cheap as it looks.

The Hidden Cost of DIY Builders

Those DIY builders aren’t really “free” or “twenty bucks a month.” The real cost is your time and your skills. You still have to handle the structure, the graphics, the DNS setup, and the dozen technical details that trip people up. Most business owners I talk to can’t realistically do their own SEO either, so the site goes up and then just sits there, invisible to the people searching for it.

The Ownership Trap Nobody Mentions

There’s a bigger issue almost nobody talks about. With Wix or Squarespace, you don’t actually own your website. You only own your content. You’re renting the platform.

If you ever want to leave, you can’t pack up your site and take it with you. You start over from scratch. When you own your site, it’s yours, and that’s a real difference worth understanding before you commit to a platform you can’t walk away from.

So What Should You Budget?

If you’re a small service business in New Jersey that needs to look credible and start bringing in customers, a professional six-page site at $2,500 is a realistic, honest number to plan around. Add a bit if you need extra pages or want to invest in SEO, and budget $75 for ongoing maintenance so the site doesn’t fall apart after launch.

What you’re really paying for isn’t pixels. It’s a first impression that makes people trust you, and a site you actually own.

Let’s Talk

If you are in Phillipsburg, Allentown, Bethlehem or the Lehigh Valley and are getting ready to build your first real website, or replace one that isn’t pulling its weight, we’d love to help.

You can reach Flying Turtle Studio at (908) 574-0126 or visit flyingturtle.net. We serve Hunterdon, Warren, Somerset, and Morris Counties, along with Allentown Bethlehem and the Lehigh Valley.