The short answer
A standard five page small business website in Wollongong costs $999 to $2,500 one off, plus GST. Hosting and maintenance after that is $60 a month.
That is the honest range for a proper build. Not a template someone dragged together in an afternoon, and not an agency retainer with a project manager attached to it.
If you want the number for your specific business, the calculator further down will give it to you in about thirty seconds.
Why most quotes refuse to give you a number
Ask three Illawarra web designers what a website costs and you will get three versions of "it depends". It is not always evasion. The honest reason is that a five page site for a plasterer and a five page site for a pool builder are genuinely different jobs.
But "it depends" is useless when you are trying to budget. So here is what it actually depends on.
What changes the price
How many pages you need. A trade business usually needs a home page, a services page, an about page, a contact page and a service area page. That is the five page build. Every extra service page or suburb page adds to it.
Whether the copy is written. If you hand over the words, you are paying for design and build. If someone has to write it for you, that is a separate job and it takes longer than people expect.
Whether you have photos. Real photos of your work, your van and your face beat stock images every time, and they are the single biggest difference between a site that converts and one that does not. If you do not have them, you either book a photographer or you settle for less.
What the site has to do. A brochure site just tells people who you are. A lead generation site has quote forms, call tracking, a booking flow and a follow up sequence behind it. The second one costs more because it is doing more.
Whether you need to be found. Building the site and ranking the site are two different jobs. More on that below.
What you should get for $999 to $2,500
At the bottom of that range you should still be getting:
- A site that loads fast on a phone, because that is where nearly all your traffic is
- Your business name, address and phone number set up so Google can read them
- A contact form that actually reaches your inbox, tested
- Page titles and descriptions written for the searches you want to win
- A Google Business Profile that is connected to the site properly
- Your own domain in your name, and your site files handed over if you ever move on, not held hostage by the designer
If a quote in that range is missing any of those, you are not comparing like with like.
The ongoing costs nobody mentions upfront
Hosting and maintenance, $60 a month. That covers the hosting itself, the SSL certificate, software updates, backups and small changes. Websites are not appliances. They need looking after or they break quietly.
Your domain, usually somewhere between $15 and $30 a year depending on where it is registered.
SEO, from $800 a month if you want to actually rank in Wollongong for the searches that bring work in. This is quoted separately from the build, because building a site and ranking a site are two different jobs. More on why that matters below.
The question that actually matters
Most people ask what a website costs. The better question is what it returns.
If your average job is worth $800 and a $2,000 website brings in three extra jobs, it has paid for itself in the first month and everything after that is profit. If your average job is worth $15,000, one extra job pays for the site four times over.
Run that number for your own business before you decide whether $999 or $2,500 feels expensive. The businesses that get the most out of a website are the ones that worked out the maths first.
Warning signs on a cheap quote
A $400 website is not a bargain, it is usually one of these:
- A template with your logo dropped in and nothing written for your market
- Built on a locked platform you cannot export from, so leaving means rebuilding from scratch
- No contact form testing, so enquiries silently go nowhere
- Built once and abandoned, with no one to call when it breaks
The expensive part of a bad website is not what you paid for it. It is the twelve months of enquiries you never got.
Do you need SEO as well?
Short answer, yes, if you want the website to bring in work rather than just sit there looking professional.
Here is the part most people miss. Building a site and ranking a site are two different jobs. To Google, a brand new website is a business with no track record. It will show up when someone searches your business name and not much else. Meanwhile the electrician three suburbs over who has been working on his local search for two years is taking the calls you were hoping for.
In the Illawarra nearly everything is decided in local search. Someone in Figtree types "electrician near me" and Google is choosing between the profiles and sites closest to them, weighted by reviews, how active the profile is, and how well each one matches what was typed. None of that happens by itself.
So the honest position is this. The website is the foundation. The SEO is what puts it in front of people. A business with a long referral network already feeding it can get by on the site alone. If you are relying on Google to fill the calendar, SEO is not the optional extra, it is the part doing the work.
That starts from $800 a month and is quoted separately from the build, so you can start with the site and add it when you are ready.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a website cost in Wollongong?
A standard five page small business website costs $999 to $2,500 one off, plus GST, with hosting and maintenance at $60 a month after that.
How long does a website take to build?
A five page site is usually one to two weeks once the content is ready. The delay is almost always waiting on photos and copy, not the build itself.
Do I own the website?
You should. Your domain should be in your name and your site files should come with you if you ever move on. Ask that question before you pay a deposit. Hosting sits inside the $60 a month, which keeps the hosting, updates, backups and security with one person instead of you chasing three suppliers when something breaks.
Is a cheap website worth it?
Only if it does the job. A cheap site that never brings in an enquiry costs you far more than a good one.
Do I need SEO as well as a website?
Yes, if you want Google to be a source of work rather than just a business card. The site is the foundation, the SEO is what gets it in front of people searching in your area. That starts from $800 a month and is quoted separately from the build.
Work out your own number with the calculator, then if you want to know where your business is losing leads right now, the sixty second audit will tell you.
