Ask five Houston web companies what a website costs and you'll get five answers that aren't comparable — a monthly number here, a project quote there, a "starting at" that triples once you describe what you need. So here's the whole market, laid out honestly, including where we sit in it.
Option 1: DIY builders — $12–50/month
Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy. You pay $12–50 a month and build it yourself. For a side project, that's genuinely fine. For a business, two costs hide under the low sticker price. First, your time: most owners spend a weekend fighting templates, publish something that's 80% done, and never touch it again. Second, you're renting. Stop paying and the site is gone — you can't take a Wix site with you, because there's nothing to take. The builder owns the platform; you lease a page on it.
Option 2: Subscription agencies — $100–175/month, forever
A big slice of the "affordable website" market now runs on the "$0 down, $149/mo" model. Somebody builds the site, and you pay monthly for as long as you want it to exist. It sounds painless, so do the two-year math on a typical $150/month plan: $150 × 24 months = $3,600 — and at the end you own nothing. Cancel and the site comes down. Year three starts the meter again. It's the same rented arrangement as a DIY builder, with better production values and a higher rent.
Option 3: Traditional agencies — $5,000 and up
A full-service Houston agency will typically quote $5,000–$15,000 for a small-business site, sometimes more. Some of that work is excellent. The honest question is whether a five-page site for a pressure washing or landscaping company needs an account manager, a discovery workshop, and a six-week timeline. For most local service businesses, that budget buys more process than result.
Option 4: An owned build — from $1,500, one time
This is where we sit. A build starts at $1,500, one time: up to five pages, fast and mobile-first, contact form, on-page SEO, and Google Business setup. When it's paid, it's yours — source code, content, and domain. Host it anywhere. There is no meter.
Ongoing care is optional and separate: $49/month covers hosting, SSL, monitoring, and small edits. Run the same two-year comparison against the subscription model: $1,500 build + $49 × 24 months = $2,676 versus $3,600 — you pay about $900 less and own everything from day one. Every year after that, the gap widens by another $1,200.
The comparison in one place
- DIY builder: $12–50/mo + your weekends. Rented. Fine for hobbies.
- Subscription agency: $100–175/mo forever. ~$3,600 over two years, own nothing.
- Traditional agency: $5,000+. Usually owned, often more process than a local business needs.
- Owned build (us): from $1,500 once, optional care from $49/mo. $2,676 over two years, own everything.
What moves the price up
Honest pricing means saying what costs extra. More than five pages runs $100 a page. A quote or estimate calculator — the single best lead tool for a service business — is $500. Online booking is $200, done-for-you copywriting $100 a page. Everything is quoted up front; the full add-on list is public. If a web company won't publish numbers like these, that tells you something too.
How to compare quotes, whoever you talk to
Whatever you're quoted — by us or anyone — ask three questions. One: what's the total over two years? Two: when I stop paying, what do I keep? Three: what does a change cost after launch? Those three answers turn any pricing page into an apples-to-apples comparison. You can see what our answers look like in practice on the sites we've shipped for Houston businesses.