TJ Slade
Web designer · Kansas City
If you have started pricing out a website for your Kansas City business, you have probably noticed the answers are all over the map. One person quotes a few hundred dollars, the next quotes twenty grand, and neither really explains why. I am TJ Slade, a Kansas City web designer, and I want to give you the straight version: what a website actually costs, what moves that number, and how to spend your budget where it counts.
The short answer
Most small business websites in Kansas City land somewhere between $2,000 and $10,000. A simple, hand-built site sits at the low end. A site you can log into and manage yourself, or an online store, sits higher. There are cheaper options and much pricier ones, and I will get into both, but that range covers the majority of the businesses I talk to. Whatever the number turns out to be, I quote it as one fixed price before we start, so you never get surprised by an hourly bill.
Honest ranges for a Kansas City small business
Here is how it tends to break down. Treat these as starting points rather than a menu, since every project is a little different:
- Simple landing page: around $500 to $1,500. One page, built to get you online and taking calls.
- Static small business site: around $2,000 for up to five pages. Fast, clean, and the right fit for most local businesses.
- CMS site you manage yourself: from around $4,000. For when you want to edit content, blog, or add products without calling anyone.
- Online store: around $5,000 to $10,000, depending on how many products and how much custom work.
- Large custom builds: $20,000 and up, for complex features, integrations, or bigger companies.
What actually drives the price
The range is wide because a website is not one thing. A handful of factors move the number more than anything else:
- Number of pages. Five pages is a very different job from fifty.
- Custom design versus a template. Custom takes longer and looks like you, not like everyone else.
- Whether you need to edit it yourself. A content management system costs more up front but hands you the keys.
- Selling online. Payments, products, shipping, and taxes all add work.
- Special features. Logins, bookings, calculators, and integrations each add to the build.
- Content. If you need copywriting and photography, that is real work too.
What you actually get for the money
It helps to know what a real quote includes, because most of the value hides in the parts you do not see. A professional build is not just a stack of pages. It is a custom design that fits your brand, clean code that loads fast and works on every phone, the on-page SEO basics that help people find you, forms and click-to-call that actually reach you, and a launch handled properly so nothing breaks on day one.
- A custom design, not a template a hundred other businesses are using.
- A fast site that works on phones, where most of your visitors already are.
- On-page SEO set up from the start, so search engines can read your site.
- Forms, maps, and click-to-call that turn visitors into phone calls.
- A clean launch: domain, security, and testing all handled for you.
Cheaper builds usually skip half of that list. The site looks fine in a screenshot, then falls apart on a phone, loads slowly, or quietly fails to send you the leads it collects. You do not notice what was left out until it costs you a customer.
Why the quotes you are getting are so different
When one quote is $800 and another is $8,000, it usually comes down to who is building it and how. A big agency carries overhead, account managers, and a markup, so you pay more for the same site. A cheap template or a DIY builder looks inexpensive until you count the hours you spend fighting it, the add-ons that were not included, and the rebuild when it does not convert. Offshore shops can be cheap, but you often trade away communication and quality to get there.
I run Solo Digital as one person, so you are not paying for a layer of managers, and you work directly with the person building your site. You get one fixed quote, no hourly surprises, and someone local who actually answers the phone.
Is a cheap website ever worth it?
Sometimes, honestly, yes. If you are just getting started and you need something online this week to point people to, a simple template or a one-page builder can be a fine first step, and I will tell you when that is the smart call instead of trying to sell you more. The trouble starts when a cheap site quietly becomes your real storefront. Templates are built to look good in a demo, not to convert your specific customers, and the hours you spend fighting one add up fast. Most of the rebuilds I do started as a five-dollar template or a DIY builder that the owner outgrew within a year. Paying twice is the most expensive way to save money, so it is worth being honest up front about how long you actually need the site to last.
How to spend your budget well
If money is tight, and for most small businesses it is, here is where I would focus it:
- Do not pay for a CMS you will not use. If you will rarely touch the site, a static build saves you thousands. If you are not sure which you need, I wrote a whole post on static sites versus a CMS.
- Spend on the pages that convert. A sharp homepage and a clear contact page do more than ten extra pages nobody reads.
- Set aside a little for SEO and content. Google weighs page experience and speed in how it ranks sites, so a great looking site nobody can find does not pay for itself. If you are on the fence about content, here is whether a blog is worth it.
- Get a fixed quote in writing. Hourly billing is where budgets quietly blow up.
What about the ongoing costs?
Building the site is mostly a one-time cost, but a website is not quite set and forget. Plan for a domain name, usually fifteen to twenty dollars a year, and hosting, which is often modest and sometimes included depending on how the site is built. Beyond that, updates are optional. A simple static site can run for a long time with almost no upkeep. If you would rather have security updates, backups, and small edits handled for you, I offer website maintenance plans, but they are a choice, not a trap. The main thing is there are no surprise fees hiding in the walls. You know the ongoing number before you commit.
How I keep the price predictable
The scariest part of hiring anyone for a website is not the number, it is the worry that the number will move. So I quote every project as one fixed price before we start, based on what we agree the site needs to do. No hourly meter, no surprise invoices, no scope creep that doubles the bill halfway through. For bigger projects we can split the work into clear phases, so you spread the cost and see real progress at each step before the next one begins. And because you work with me and not a rotating team, the person who quoted your project is the person building it, and the person you call if something needs fixing a year from now. That is a lot easier to trust than a number from a stranger you will never speak to again.
Get a real quote for your website
The honest truth is that the only accurate number is the one for your specific project. If you tell me what your business does and what you need the site to do, I will give you a straight, fixed quote, with no pressure and no jargon. You can see ballpark ranges anytime on my pricing page, or just reach out and we will figure out what actually fits, one Kansas City business owner to another.