How Much Does a Small Business Website Cost in Melbourne in 2026?

"How much does a website cost?" is the first question nearly every small business owner asks me, and the honest answer is "it depends". That's frustrating to hear, so this post breaks it down properly: the price ranges you'll actually see in Melbourne in 2026, what drives the price up or down, the ongoing costs people forget, and the questions to ask before you pay anyone (including me).

I'm a web developer based in Frankston, so I'll use my own pricing as a worked example. Wherever you end up building your site, the same checklist applies.

The three ways to get a website

1. Do it yourself with a website builder

Wix, Squarespace, Shopify and similar builders let you drag and drop a site together on a monthly plan. Expect to pay roughly A$20–A$60 per month for a business plan, more for e-commerce, plus your own time.

Good for: very early businesses, tight budgets, and owners who enjoy tinkering. Watch out for: the hours it takes to get right, generic templates, slower mobile performance, and the fact that you never own the site. If you stop paying, it disappears, and moving to another platform usually means starting again.

2. A freelancer or small local studio

A freelance developer or designer builds the site for you, usually for a one-off fee. For a typical 5-page small business site in Melbourne, quotes commonly range from about A$500 to A$5,000, depending on design work, copywriting and features.

Good for: most tradies, cafes, clinics, studios and service businesses. You deal directly with the person building your site, and you can ask for exactly what you need. Watch out for: freelancers who disappear after launch, sites you can't edit yourself, and quotes that don't spell out what's included.

3. A digital agency

Agencies bring a team (strategist, designer, developer, copywriter, project manager). Small business projects typically start in the A$5,000–A$20,000+ range, with ongoing marketing retainers on top.

Good for: larger businesses, complex e-commerce, and brands that need strategy and ongoing campaigns. Watch out for: paying for layers of management on a project that only needed a developer, and long lock-in contracts.

These are typical ranges for Melbourne and the Mornington Peninsula. They're a guide, not a rule. A cheap quote isn't automatically bad, and an expensive one isn't automatically good.

What actually changes the price

When two quotes differ by thousands of dollars, it's usually because of these:

• Number of pages and templates. A 5-page site (Home, About, Services, Gallery, Contact) is very different from a 40-page site with service-area pages and a blog.
• Custom design vs a template. A fully custom design takes far more time than adapting a well-made template.
• Copywriting and photos. If you supply your own text and photos, the price drops. Professional copy and photography add real cost, and real value.
• Features. Online booking, payments, e-commerce, member logins, quote calculators and integrations with your CRM or accounting software all add development time.
• SEO groundwork. Proper titles, descriptions, structured data, a sitemap, fast loading and Google Search Console setup should be standard. Some cheap quotes leave them out.
• Who can edit it. A simple admin panel so you can change prices, hours and photos yourself is worth paying for.

A worked example: my own pricing

To make this concrete, here's how I price websites for businesses in Frankston, the Mornington Peninsula and across Melbourne:

• Starter website: A$500. Up to 5 pages, mobile-friendly, contact form with spam protection, basic SEO setup and Google Analytics.
• Professional websites and web applications: from A$1,500. Larger sites, booking systems, custom features and integrations, with a fixed written quote before any work starts.
• Optional maintenance: from A$150 per month for updates, security patches, backups and small content changes.

I can keep prices at that level because I write the code myself and don't have agency overheads. Full details and FAQs are on my website design Frankston page.

Ongoing costs people forget

The build is a one-off, but every website has running costs. Budget for these from day one:

• Domain name: a .com.au costs roughly A$15–A$40 per year, and you need an ABN or another Australian presence to register one. Always register it in your own name and account, not your developer's.
• Hosting: roughly A$10–A$50 per month for a typical small business site. Cheap shared hosting is fine for a simple site, while booking systems and online shops need something better.
• Email: Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 for professional email on your own domain, billed per user per month.
• SSL certificate: should be free with Let's Encrypt on any modern host. Don't pay extra for a basic certificate.
• Maintenance and updates: software, plugins and security patches need attention. Either learn to do it, or pay someone. An unmaintained WordPress site is one of the most common ways small businesses get hacked.
• Your time: keeping prices, photos and opening hours current.

Questions to ask before you pay anyone

1. Who owns the domain, the hosting account and the code? The answer should be "you".
2. What exactly is included? Number of pages, revisions, forms, SEO setup, analytics, and help with your Google Business Profile.
3. Can I update it myself? Ask to see the admin panel or editor before you sign.
4. How fast will it load on a phone? Ask for a link to a live site they built and test it with Google's PageSpeed Insights.
5. What happens after launch? Support period, maintenance options, and what it costs to make changes later.
6. Is GST included? Get the total in writing.
7. What's the timeline, and what do you need from me? Most delays are waiting on content from the client, so have your text, logo and photos ready.

Getting found on Google locally

A new website won't bring in customers on its own. For local service businesses, the biggest free wins are:

• A complete Google Business Profile with your service area, hours, photos and real reviews. This is what puts you in the map results for searches like "plumber Frankston".
• Clear location wording on your site. Say which suburbs you serve in plain language, on your home page and service pages.
• Consistent business details (name, phone, website) everywhere you're listed.
• Fast, mobile-friendly pages. Most local searches happen on a phone.

I write about the technical side of running websites on this blog too. If you're curious how this site itself is hosted on a small home server, have a look at Synology reverse proxy with Let's Encrypt and Docker on Synology with Container Manager.

The bottom line

For most small businesses in Melbourne and Frankston, a professionally built 5-page website costs somewhere between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars, plus roughly A$150–A$1,000 a year in running costs. Spend the money on a fast site you own and can update, with the SEO basics done properly. That matters far more than flashy animations.

If you'd like a fixed quote for your business, you can contact me through my portfolio. I'm happy to give honest advice even if the answer is "a website builder is fine for you right now".