How Much Should a Tradie Website Cost in Australia?

Ask five people what a tradie website should cost and you will get five numbers and no explanation. That is the actual problem. Not the price, the fact that nobody will tell you what sits behind it.

So here is how I would work it out if I were you, plus exactly what I charge and why, so you have at least one real number to compare against.

What you are actually paying for

A website is not one thing. It is five, and different quotes include wildly different amounts of each. When you compare two prices without breaking them down, you are usually comparing a quote that includes all five against a quote that includes one.

1. The words. Somebody has to write what the site says. Your services, your suburbs, the answers to the questions you get asked on the phone every week. This is the part that decides whether Google can match you to a search, and it is the part most cheap builds skip entirely by writing three sentences of nothing.

2. The photos. Your job photos, picked, cropped, straightened, sized so they load fast on mobile data. Most tradies have hundreds of usable photos on a phone and none of them on a website.

3. The structure. How many pages, what each one is about, how they link together. A site with a real page for the job you want more of behaves completely differently to a one-pager with a services list.

4. The setup. Domain, hosting, SSL certificate, Google Business Profile connected, the site submitted to Google so it gets found at all.

5. Someone to ring. When something breaks, when your number changes, when you want a new job added. This is the one that never appears on a quote and always matters within six months.

The five ways you will get quoted

Do it yourself on a subscription builder

You pay a monthly fee to a big platform and you build it. The money cost is on their own website, go and read it. The real cost is your weekends, and the fact that these sites are quick to look alright and slow to get found, because the getting-found part is the writing and the structure, and that part is still on you.

Worth it if you have time and no money. Expensive if your time is worth what you charge per hour.

A mate, or a mate's kid

Cheap or free. The build often turns out fine. What goes wrong is later: the domain is registered in his name, nobody knows the hosting login, he has a full time job now, and a change that should take ten minutes takes six weeks. Get the ownership sorted at the start and this option is not a bad one.

A freelancer

One person, fixed scope, direct contact. That is what I am. The price should be a number, in writing, before anything starts. If a freelancer will not put a fixed number on a standard trade website, ask why.

An agency

More people, more process, more capability, and a bigger number. Sometimes exactly what a business needs. For a one truck operation who wants the phone to ring, it is usually more machine than the job requires, and you generally are not talking to the person building it.

The "free website" deal

Free build, then a monthly fee for as long as you exist. Read that contract properly, and read it twice. The two things to look for are how long you are locked in, and whose name the domain is in. If the answer is their name, you are renting your own business address and you will find out how much that matters the day you try to leave.

The questions that actually protect you

Ask these of any quote, including mine. The answers tell you more than the price does.

1. Whose name is the domain registered in? It should be yours. Not the builder's, not the agency's.
2. What happens if I want to leave in a year? Do I keep the site, the domain, the content, the photos?
3. Is the price fixed or an estimate? Get the word fixed in writing, or expect the number to move.
4. Who writes the words? If the answer is you, that is fine, but that is now your job on top of your job.
5. What is the ongoing cost, and what do I get for it? Hosting and a domain renewal are real costs and every site has them. Ask what they are, ask what is included, ask for it in writing.
6. Will it work properly on a phone? Nearly everyone who finds you is on one. Ask them to show you an existing build on your own phone, right there.
7. Can I see something you have already built, live? Not a screenshot. A URL you can open and click around.

If a builder gets shifty on any of those, that is the answer to your question about price.

Is it worth it at all?

Here is the sum, and it uses your numbers, not mine.

If your average job is worth $500 and the site brings you one extra job a month, that is $6,000 a year.

Put your real average job value in. For a lot of trades it is well north of $500, and a single kitchen, deck, reroof or switchboard upgrade can cover the whole build on its own.

That is not a promise that you will get an extra job a month. Nobody can promise you that, and I will not. It is the arithmetic you should do before you decide a website is expensive, because the number it needs to beat is usually smaller than people assume.

What I charge, and why it is printed

I build fixed-price websites for tradies. The numbers are on the front page of this site because I got sick of "book a call to find out".

• $990 for the build. Was $1,490, held at $990 for the first three clients. Live in seven days from your photos landing.
• $490 for a tune-up if your site is decent and just is not getting found.
• $149 a month if you want it looked after, with two keywords tracked and an SEO update every month. No lock-in.

The domain and hosting go in your name, you own the lot, and you see the site built before you pay a cent. If you do not like it, you walk.

Why that low? Launch pricing while the portfolio grows, and because there is no office and no account managers built into the price. That is the whole reason, there is no catch in the fine print.

The short version

The price is not the question. What you get, and who owns it when the relationship ends, is the question. Get the scope written down, get the domain in your name, get the number fixed, and then compare.

If you want to see what I have actually produced for a client rather than what I say about it, the numbers are on the proof sheet, with dates on them.

Or just ring me and ask. I will give you a straight answer about whether you need a new site at all, because sometimes you do not.