What a contractor website should cost in 2026
The market has split into $500 AI templates and $5,000–$20,000 custom builds. Here is what each buys, what the numbers look like for a $3M contractor, and the one question that decides which you need.
If you have asked for website quotes this year you have seen numbers from $500 to $25,000 for what sounds like the same thing. It is not the same thing. The market has split, and knowing which half you are shopping in saves you from paying custom prices for a template, or template prices for something that will cost you bids.
The two markets
AI-generated and template sites, $500–$3,000. A tool or a freelancer takes your logo, a few paragraphs, and stock photos, and produces five to eight pages on a template. It is a legitimate product. For a one-truck operation that needs a phone number on Google, it is the right product.
Custom sites, $5,000–$20,000. Someone interviews you, writes every page for your trade and your buyer, produces imagery of your actual company, builds a page for each service and market, does the technical SEO properly, and hands you a written plan. Survey data from web firms in 2026 puts most basic sites at $1,000–$3,000 and most mid-sized business sites at $5,000–$20,000, which matches what we see.
What the custom tier actually buys
Three things the template tier cannot:
- Copy that wins a prequalification. A GC’s project manager, a facility director, a property manager, reads your service page and decides whether to call. Template copy (“we are committed to quality”) loses that read every time. Copy written from an hour of you describing how you run a job wins it.
- A page per service and market. “Commercial re-roofing” and “TPO installation” are different searches with different buyers. A template gives you one services page. A custom build gives you fifteen, each able to rank and each written for its reader.
- Technical SEO done, not promised. Pre-rendered HTML, structured data, image sizing, Core Web Vitals, Search Console verified, Google Business Profile corrected. The template tier sets none of this up because it cannot be done generically.
The math for a $3M contractor
| Template site | Custom site (Growth tier) | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $1,500 | $12,500 |
| Share of annual revenue | 0.05% | 0.42% |
| Pages able to rank for a specific search | 1–2 | 15–20 |
| Additional jobs needed to pay for it | Less than one | One, in most commercial trades |
| Typical life before replacement | 2–3 years | 4–6 years |
One additional commercial job pays for the custom site in almost every trade on this site. The question is not whether you can afford $12,500. It is whether your current site is losing you one job a year without you knowing. For most contractors over $2M in revenue, it is losing more than that.
The one question
Does anyone look you up before they call you? If your work comes entirely from referrals and repeat customers who have already decided, a template is fine. If GCs prequalify you, if property managers compare you, if owners google you after a bid meeting, you are in the custom market whether you have paid for it yet or not.
What to ask any quote
- Who writes the copy, and from what? (“You send us the content” is the template answer.)
- Where do the photos come from?
- How many pages, and is there one per service?
- What technical SEO is done before launch, specifically?
- What do I get in writing at the end?
- Who owns it when we are done?
Our prices are published. If the quote you are holding does not answer those six questions, it is probably not the tier you think it is.
Fifteen minutes. No pitch deck.
Tell me what you build and where the leads come from today. I will tell you what I would change, and what it would cost. If it is not a fit, I will say so on the call.