What a tradie website actually costs in Australia

Every quote you get will be a different number with no explanation attached. Here is what the range actually is, what changes the price, and how to tell which end of it you need.

Ring three website people and you will get $900, $4,000 and $12,000 for what sounds like the same job. None of them will explain the gap, which is why most tradies either overpay or give up.

The range, in plain numbers

Across Australian studios that publish their prices in 2026, a trade website falls into four bands. These are market figures, not ours — you can check them against any three quotes you get.

• DIY builders (Wix, Squarespace): roughly $19–$38 a month, plus 20 to 40 hours of your own time.
• Template shops: about $800–$1,500 for a site built from a stock layout with your logo dropped in.
• Trade-specialist studios: roughly $990–$5,000 for a build, which is where most decent work sits.
• Full agencies: $5,000 and up, usually with a monthly retainer of $500–$1,500 attached.

Most trades get the best return between $1,500 and $3,500. Below that you are buying a template; above it you are usually paying for account management rather than the site.

What each of those actually buys you

The bands are not four sizes of the same thing. They are four different deals, and the difference is mostly about who owns what once the money has changed hands.

A DIY builder (Wix, Squarespace and the like) rents you a template on their platform. The monthly fee is small and the work is yours: the words, the photos, a page for each suburb, the evenings. It looks cheap because your time is not on the invoice. The site lives on their system, so if you ever want to leave, you start again somewhere else.

A lead platform (HiPages is the one most tradies know) is not a website at all. You pay for enquiries one at a time, the same enquiry is offered to other tradies as well, so you are quoting against them before the customer has decided anything, and the number the customer rings belongs to the platform. So does the customer. We did the sums in HiPages versus your own website.

A template shop sells you a stock layout with your logo on it. It is quick, and it is fine as a card in the wallet. It is rarely written for your suburbs or your services, and that writing is the part that gets you found.

A trade-specialist studio writes the thing for your trade: a page per service, a page per suburb, licence details where a customer looks for them. This is where the return usually is, and it is where we sit.

A full agency adds account management, strategy meetings and a retainer. Some businesses need that. A two-van plumbing outfit does not.

What actually moves the price

Not design hours. Four things, and you can work out your own number from them:

1. How many services you sell. Each one that people search separately — hot water, switchboards, rekeys — needs its own page or it never gets found.
2. How many suburbs you want work in. Each real suburb page is a page somebody has to write. Four is normal, ten is a lot.
3. Whether you need to take bookings or quotes online, which is real work behind the screen.
4. Who owns it at the end. This one costs nothing and is worth the most — see what "you own it" means.

Count yours. One service and one suburb is a single strong page. Four services and four suburbs is eight pages that each have to say something true. Add online booking and somebody has to build the thing that takes the booking. That count is your band, whoever you ask.

What we charge, and why it is on the website

Ours are published: $1,490 for a single strong page, $2,590 for five to seven pages with suburb coverage, $3,590 for the full thing with booking. No GST is charged on any of them. The care plan afterwards is $99 a month and stops when you say stop.

We publish them because the alternative is a discovery call, and a discovery call is fifteen minutes of your evening spent finding out whether you can afford to keep talking. See the pricing page for what is in each one, and the four things we do for the work around the website that matters as much.

Three promises come with the price, each with a number and a consequence: live in 21 days from a start date agreed in writing, or you pay half; a Google Lighthouse score of 95 or better on handover, or we keep working on it for free until it is; and if you ever want to leave, everything is handed over within five business days. They are on the pricing page in the same words.

How to read the quote you are holding

Whoever you ask, the quote should answer five questions in a sentence each. If it does not, ask them before you sign anything.

• Is the price fixed, or is it "from"? A "from" price is the start of a negotiation you have not been invited to. Fixed price versus "from" explains the difference.
• Whose name is the domain in? Yours, or it is not your website.
• Who writes the words? If the answer is "you send us the content", the quote is for a layout and the hard part is still on your desk.
• How many days, counted from when? Twenty-one days from a start date in writing is a promise. "About a month" is a hope.
• What switches off if I stop paying? The honest answer is "the monthly extras". The wrong answer is "the site".

The costs that are not on any quote

Three things cost you something whoever builds the site, and it is better to know now than in week two.

• Your time gathering the material. Licence number, insurance details, a dozen photos of real jobs, the suburbs you actually cover. An afternoon, done once, and the studio should tell you exactly what it needs on day one.
• The domain renewal. A yearly fee to the registrar, in your name, on your card. Small, and yours to pay, because that is what keeps the name yours.
• Keeping it alive. Hosting, backups, the phone number change when you get a new mobile. That is what a care plan is for, and it should be month to month with nothing switching off if you stop it.

When you should not buy a website at all

If your Google Business Profile is empty, fix that first — it is free and it is where the map results come from. If you are turning work away already, a website will make that worse rather than better. And if you are three months from retiring, do not let anyone sell you a three-year investment.

The cheapest site is the one you have to pay for twice.