Pricing Guide
Website design cost in Australia: what you'll actually pay in 2026
A professionally built small business website in Australia usually costs between $1,500 and $20,000. A simple brochure site from a freelancer sits at the bottom of that range, and most agency builds for small to mid-sized businesses land between $5,000 and $20,000, according to Weblumino's 2026 pricing guide.
A Troov build costs $1,500 to $5,000, one-off. It covers the work a good agency build should: custom design, copy written from keyword research, SEO foundations and a careful launch. Below, you'll find the market rates, why my price is lower, what moves the cost, and what you'll pay after launch.
Website design cost at a glance
Who Builds It
DIY Website Builder
Freelancer
Agency
Troov
TYPICAL BUILD COST
$0 upfront, plus your time
$1,500–$3,000 for a simple brochure site
$5,000–$20,000 for most small to mid-sized businesses
$1,500–$5,000, one-off, paid upfront
TYPICAL RUNNING COST
About $200–$800 a year in platform fees
About $300–$1,500 a year for hosting, domain and upkeep
About $1,000–$3,000 a year
Hosting set up in your name and listed in your quote, or included in the SEO package
Market ranges from Weblumino, PSOS and White Peak Digital. Agency prices are usually quoted before GST. Troov isn't registered for GST, so Troov prices are the full amount.
Why your first website quote probably surprised you
In a YouGov Galaxy survey of 425 Australian small business owners for GoDaddy, owners expected a professional web designer to charge about $3,200 for a fully working business website. Millennial owners expected around $4,347, Gen X about $3,208 and Baby Boomers about $2,553.
That survey ran in 2019. It's still the most-quoted benchmark in Australia, but it's seven years old, and quotes have moved since. Most small to mid-sized businesses that go to an agency now pay $5,000 to $20,000, and White Peak Digital puts the average agency build at $10,000 to $30,000. That gap is why so many first quotes feel like a shock.
Owner expectation (2019)
$3,200
What Australian small business owners expected a professional website to cost
WHERE TROOV SITS
Our builds run from $1,500 to $5,000, so most land close to what owners expect to spend, without dropping the parts that make a site bring in work.
Web design pricing by who builds it
DIY website builders
$200–$800/yr
Platforms like Squarespace and Wix charge a monthly fee that covers hosting and templates.
PSOS puts platform fees at roughly $200 to $800 a year. The real costs are your time and the ceiling on what the site can do.
Those fees also move. Web Blend reported that in July 2026 Squarespace raised its annual-billing prices: Basic went from US$16 to US$19 a month, Core from US$23 to US$29 and Plus from US$39 to US$49. They're charged in US dollars, so Australian businesses also carry the exchange rate.
If you're brand new, testing an idea or on a very tight budget, DIY is the right call. Come back to a professional build when the site needs to bring in work on its own.
Freelance web designers
$50–$150/hr
Spark Interact puts Australian freelancers at $50 to $150 an hour, and a simple brochure site usually costs
$1,500 to $3,000. You often get the person doing the work on every call, which is a real plus.
The trade-off is bandwidth: if a solo freelancer is sick, on leave or juggling other clients, your project waits. Check what the quote covers, because copywriting and SEO setup are often left out at the lower end.
Web design agencies
$80–$200/hr
Agencies typically charge
$80 to $200 an hour and most small to mid-sized builds cost $5,000 to $20,000. Part of that price is the team:
Grove Foundry lists a designer, a developer, a project manager and sometimes a copywriter and tester.
For a large or complex build, that team is worth paying for. For a 10-page service business site, a lot of it is coordination you never see.
Troov
$1,500–$5,000
A custom build, written, designed and built by one person, with SEO set up before launch. It's the standard of work you'd expect from a good agency, priced without the team overhead. The next section explains exactly what's included.
Price vs quality
A lower price, not a lower standard
A cheaper quote usually means something's been left out: the copy, the SEO setup, the redirects from your old site. That's not where the difference comes from here.
An agency quote pays for a team and the time it takes to hand work between them, plus the office and the sales process around it. A Troov build doesn't carry that overhead. The person on your first call is the person who researches your keywords, writes your pages, designs the site and launches it. You pay for the work, not the handovers.
What stays the same is the work itself. Every build includes the items on this list, whatever the price.
When an agency is the better call: large online stores, custom web apps, or a project that needs several specialists working at once. If that's you, I'll say so on the first call.
What every Troov build includes
Custom design around your customers, not a template with your logo dropped in
Copy written from keyword research, in your brand's tone of voice
Mobile-first build, tested on real phones and browsers
SEO foundations: page titles, site structure, page speed and schema
Accessibility basics: readable contrast, alt text, labelled forms and keyboard navigation
Domain, analytics and Search Console set up in your name
A fixed quote before any work starts
What pushes website cost up or down
Number of pages
Each extra page typically adds $150 to $500 to a build. A service business with a page per service and per area it covers will cost more than a five-page brochure site.
Custom design or adapted template
A design built around your customers takes longer than dropping your logo into a theme. It also looks less like everyone else's site.
Who writes the words
Copywriting is one of the most common things left out of cheaper quotes. If you're writing it yourself, count your own hours in the price.
Features and integrations
Custom forms, member areas, connections to your CRM or booking software and custom animation all push the price up.
Moving from an old site
If your current site has pages that rank, each one needs a redirect to its new home. A bigger old site means more mapping and testing.
Selling online
Digital Nomads HQ puts e-commerce builds at $8,000 to $20,000 or more.
Mobile-friendly design isn't an extra any more. It's part of the base build, because a site that doesn't work on a phone isn't finished.
What moves a Troov build between $1,500 and $5,000
Closer to $1,500: a focused site with a handful of pages, a standard enquiry or quote form, and no old site to move across.
Closer to $5,000: more service or location pages, booking or quote tools, connections to your other software, or a larger old site with a lot of pages to redirect.
The checklist in the section above is included at every price point. Large online stores and custom web apps sit outside this range.
GST and tax: two things that change the real price
Compare quotes on the same GST basis
Agency website quotes in Australia are usually written before GST, so you add 10% to get the real cost. If your business is registered for GST, you can usually claim that 10% back, so compare quotes ex-GST. If it isn't registered, the GST is a real cost and you should compare the full amounts.
Troov isn't registered for GST (the
ATO only requires registration once turnover reaches $75,000), so there's no GST on Troov invoices. For a GST-registered business, that makes no difference. For a business that isn't registered, it's 10% less than an equivalent quote with GST added.
A new website may be tax deductible
The ATO
treats the software behind a business website as a depreciating asset. Small businesses with turnover under $10 million can immediately deduct eligible assets costing less than $20,000, and that
instant asset write-off became permanent from 1 July 2026.
Ongoing costs like hosting and domain renewals are generally claimed as everyday running expenses. How this applies depends on your business, so check with your accountant before you count on it.
How to compare website quotes
Line every quote up against the same questions. Two quotes that look $5,000 apart are often quoting for different things.
Is it a fixed price or an hourly estimate?
A fixed quote tells you the final number before you start.
Who writes the words?
If it's you, add your time to the price.
How many pages are included, and what does another one cost?
What happens to your old pages?
Ask for a redirect plan if your current site gets any traffic.
Whose name are the domain, hosting and analytics in?
Can you take the site with you if you leave?
If it's built on a platform you're renting through the provider, the answer may be no.
What will it cost to run after launch?
Hosting, domain, maintenance and any platform subscription.
Is the price inc or ex GST?
If it's you, add your time to the price.
Who will actually do the work?
The person quoting isn't always the person building.
After launch: Troov's ongoing SEO package
A new site is where most businesses start. If you want someone to keep it ranking and running, that's the SEO package. You don't need it to get a website built.
How the SEO package works →
$1,000–$2,000+ /month
Month to month, no lock-in contract
What's in it: keyword strategy, technical and on-page SEO, content, link building, local SEO and your Google Business Profile, plus website updates, fixes and hosting.
Above $2,000 a month is quoted case by case, usually for multiple locations or more competitive industries.
Local-only work is scoped after I've looked at your site and Google profile, and usually sits at the lower end of the range.
Why do quotes for the same website vary so much?
Mostly because they aren't quoting for the same thing. One includes copywriting, SEO setup and redirects, and another leaves them out. Hourly rates also differ a lot: Spark Interact puts Australian freelancers at $50 to $150 an hour and agencies at $80 to $200. Put each quote against the checklist above and the gap usually explains itself.
Are your prices inc GST?
Troov isn't registered for GST, so the price in your quote is the full amount. If your business is GST-registered and you're comparing against agency quotes, compare everything ex-GST.
Why don't you have fixed website packages?
Because packages either overcharge a small site or strip things out of a bigger one. Every build is quoted after a first conversation about what the site needs to do, and that quote is fixed, so the number doesn't move once work starts.
Is local SEO priced separately?
No. Local SEO is part of the SEO package. If you only need local work, I'll review your site and Google Business Profile first and price the scope from there. That usually lands at the lower end of the package range.
Get in touch
Want a real number for your website?
Book a free 20-minute call. Tell me what the site needs to do, and you'll get a fixed quote, not a range.
