Updated November 8, 2026 · 5 min read
It depends less on the website and more on who runs it after it goes live. Here are the three common ways contractors get a site, and what to ask before you pay anyone.
1. Build it yourself
Website builders and newer AI builders let you make a site yourself for a monthly subscription, often somewhere around $15 to $50 a month for the tool. You pay with your time: writing the pages, choosing photos, setting up the forms, and fixing things when they break.
This can work if you enjoy it and have the time. The usual gap is what happens after someone fills out the form: making sure every lead reaches you and gets a reply.
2. Hire a freelancer for a one-time build
A freelancer builds the site once for a project fee. Prices vary a lot with experience and size. Ask who hosts it afterward, who makes changes, and what each change costs, because a site that nobody updates gets stale fast.
3. A monthly service
Some agencies, including us, charge a setup fee and then a monthly price that covers hosting, updates and the lead system. Our price is on our site: $197 setup, then $97 or $197 a month, month to month.
The monthly price only makes sense if the service does real work after launch: alerts, reminders, follow-ups and reporting, not just hosting.
Questions to ask anyone before you sign
- Who owns my domain name? (It should be registered in your business’s name.)
- Can I cancel, and what happens to my site and my leads if I do?
- How do leads reach me, and how fast?
- Will my site work well on phones? Most of your visitors are on one.
- Are any reviews, ratings, licenses or claims made up? (They shouldn’t be.)
- Do you promise rankings or a number of leads? (Be careful if they do: nobody can honestly guarantee that.)
The real cost to watch
The cheapest website can be expensive if leads get missed. When you compare options, compare what happens after a homeowner taps “call” or “send”, not just the price of the pages.