DIY Template
$200–$500/yr
Best for
Pre-revenue, testing an idea, or need something online this week.
What you get
A live template site — the design and development work is on you.
The catch
Your own hours, and a ceiling on speed and search rankings.
Guide
How much does a website cost in Oregon?
For an Oregon small business in 2026: a DIY template site runs $200–$500 a year in subscriptions plus your own time; a freelancer typically charges $800–$5,000; a professional custom build from a small firm runs $3,500–$20,000; and larger agencies quote $10,000–$50,000+. In Bend specifically, agency quotes commonly start around $10,000; in Portland the range is wider. The honest driver isn't page count — it's who's doing the work and how much of it is genuinely built for your business versus assembled from a template. Here's the full breakdown, including when the cheap option is the right call.
Price bands
What you get at each price level
Every option below is a legitimate choice for the right business. Here's what each one actually gets you — band by band, no spin.
Freelancer
$800–$5,000
Best for
A tight budget and a portfolio you've actually vetted.
What you get
Wide quality range — could be excellent, could be a resold template at a markup.
The catch
Quality depends entirely on who you hire, and disappearing at maintenance time is a known risk.
Small Firm — Us
$3,500–$20,000+
Best for
A business that wants a site actually built for them — not assembled from a template.
What you get
Fixed-fee, custom-coded, accountable to a written scope. This is what we sell, from $3,500 — and we're saying so plainly rather than pretending to be neutral.
The catch
Costs more upfront than DIY or a bargain freelancer.
Big Agency
$10,000–$50,000+
Best for
Needing a 15-person team and the budget for one.
What you get
Full-service teams and big scopes, built for larger budgets.
The catch
Overhead — account managers, project leads, office space — is baked into the price; recycled playbooks are the risk at the low end of the range.
What drives the cost
What actually drives the price up
Page count is the wrong thing to fixate on. These are the factors that actually move a quote:
- Pages and content volume. A five-page brochure site costs less to build than a twenty-page site with a unique layout for every service.
- Custom design vs. a theme. A designer building your layout from scratch costs more than a template with your logo swapped in — and it shows.
- CMS, booking, or commerce. Letting you edit your own content, take bookings, or sell products adds real engineering time on top of the base site.
- Copywriting. Professional copywriting is a different skill than design or development, and it's priced separately.
- Photography. Original photos of your team, product, or location cost more than stock images — and read as more credible to a visitor.
- Migrations. Moving years of content off an old platform without losing your search rankings takes careful, unglamorous work.
The honest option
When DIY is genuinely the right answer
If you're pre-revenue, still testing whether the business idea works, or your competitors in town don't have a real website either, a $200 template site is genuinely the right call this year. Put the money into inventory, into your first hires, into whatever actually proves the business out — not into a website nobody's searching for yet. When the business starts depending on the site to bring in customers, it's worth revisiting. Until then: keep your money.
FAQ
Questions Oregon owners ask about website costs
Is $500 enough for a website?
Sometimes — honestly. $500 gets you a DIY template site or a very junior freelancer, and if you're pre-revenue and need something online this week, that can be the right call. What it won't buy is speed, custom design, or a site built to rank; you're trading money for your own hours and accepting a ceiling on results. When the business starts depending on the website, the math changes.
Why do Bend web design quotes start at $10,000?
Partly local market norms, partly overhead. Bend agency pricing reflects agency payroll — account managers, project leads, office space — and quotes often arrive before anyone has scoped what your business actually needs, with the margin built in. A custom five-page site doesn't inherently cost that; our fixed-fee builds start at $3,500, scoped in writing before a dollar moves. The $10,000 floor says more about the shop's overhead than about your website.
What's a fair price for a 5-page business site?
From a professional who's actually designing and coding it: $4,000–$6,000 is a fair 2026 range in Oregon for a simple five-page site, and $6,000–$10,000 once real complexity enters. Our own five-page builds start at $3,500, fixed fee — under that range on purpose: no account managers or office space in the price, and the scope is in writing before a dollar moves. A quote far below market with no written scope usually means a resold template or someone learning on your dime. Well above $6,000, you should be getting more than five pages' worth: a CMS, integrations, copywriting, or real strategy work.
How much should I pay per month for a website?
Ideally nothing but hosting — $0–$20 a month for a modern, well-built site. Beware rental pricing: "$149/month, no upfront cost" means you're leasing a site you'll never own, and three years in you've paid $5,000+ for an asset you can't take with you. An optional care plan on a site you own is a different thing entirely. The question to ask any shop: if I stop paying, do I keep the site?
- Do expensive websites rank better?
- No — Google doesn't know what you paid. But fast, well-structured, accessible sites rank better, and cheap template builds usually aren't any of those things, because they ship code bloat that slows every page. That's the real correlation between price and rankings: not the invoice, but whether the build gives Google — and now AI assistants — something clean to read. An expensive site built slow loses to a modest site built right.
- What does Wargo & Wolford charge?
- Fixed fees, published plainly: custom five-page websites from $3,500, sites with a CMS and integrations from $8,500, larger custom projects from $20,000. AI consulting starts with a Discovery Sprint from $2,500. Our Modern Discoverability audit — where you stand on Google and in AI answers — starts at $1,500. Every project gets an exact number in writing before work starts, and the first call is free. (Full pricing → /services/web-design#pricing)
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