Hiring Someone to Build Your Website: Prices, Contracts, Red Flags

You can build a website yourself on a builder, hire someone to build one you own, or rent one by the month. Website Builders for Contractors covers the first. This one is about the other two: what the work is worth, how to compare a one-time price with a monthly one, what the contract has to say, and the pitches to hang up on.

What the work is worth

There is no official price list for a contractor website, but there is official pay data for the people who build them. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median annual wage for web and digital interface designers at $104,000 in May 2025, with the lowest 10% under $53,750 and the highest 10% over $201,550. For web developers the median was $92,650. About 13% of designers and 18% of developers are self-employed, so the person quoting your site may well be a one-person shop.

At 2,080 hours a year, $104,000 is $50 an hour. A freelancer’s rate has to cover more than a wage: their own taxes, software, insurance and the hours spent selling and invoicing that no client pays for directly. You know this arithmetic from your own trade, and Your Real Hourly Cost walks through it for a crew.

So judge a quote the way a homeowner should judge yours: ask what is in it and roughly how many hours it represents. Say one designer quotes $3,000 and another $6,000 for “a website.” If the first is a template with your logo and the words you supply, and the second includes writing every service page, photographing three jobs and setting up your Google Business Profile, the two numbers are not for the same thing. A quote you can divide into pages, hours and tasks is a quote you can compare.

One-time build or monthly plan

The two models trade a lower start for a longer bill.

• One-time build. You pay for the design and build, then pay hosting and the domain yourself. You should own the files and be able to move them. Ask how changes after launch are billed: by the hour, or under a maintenance plan.
• Monthly plan. Little or nothing up front, then a monthly fee that covers hosting, updates and a set amount of changes. The question that decides it: what do you keep the day you stop paying? Ask, in writing, whether that includes the design, the words, the photos and the domain, or only some of them.

Compare them over the years you expect to keep the site. Say the build is $4,000 plus $25 a month of hosting, and the plan is $200 a month. Over three years the build costs $4,900 and the plan $7,200. The plan may still be right for someone who wants every change handled, but decide that with the three-year totals side by side, and with the exit terms read.

What the contract has to say

A weak design can be redone. A domain, files and logins held in someone else’s name are much harder to get back once the relationship ends. Who Owns Your Website? covers recovering them; the cheaper path is to write them into the contract before the work starts.

• The domain in your name, with your email. ICANN puts duties on the registrant: provide accurate information and update it, “respond to inquiries from your Registrar within fifteen (15) days,” and, with automatic renewal, keep payment information current. If the builder’s email is on the record, those inquiries and renewal notices go to the builder.
• Your own logins. Owner-level access to the registrar, the hosting, the site’s admin panel and your Google Business Profile. The builder gets their own user, not your password.
• The words, photos and design. A written statement that the finished site’s content and design are yours to keep and move, and where each photo came from. The Stock Photo Letter explains why an unlicensed image can cost you later.
• The deliverables. The list of pages, who writes the words, how many rounds of changes, the launch date, and that the site works on a phone (the thumb test is a quick way to check).
• Payment by milestone. A deposit, a payment when you approve the design, and the balance at launch, the same way you would bill a customer.
• The exit. On request, a full copy of the site’s files and database, and the transfer of any account set up in your business’s name.

Red flags

A promise of first place on Google

Google’s own page on hiring help is direct: “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a ‘special relationship’ with Google, or advertise a ‘priority submit’ to Google.” It adds that “Google never accepts money to include or rank sites in our search results, and it costs nothing to appear in our organic search results.” If someone offers an audit, Google’s advice is to grant read access to Search Console only, and “if they guarantee you that their changes will give you first place in search results, find someone else.”

The email out of the blue

Google says to be wary of firms that email you unprompted, and quotes one it received itself: “Dear google.com, I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories.” Its advice: “Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for ‘burn fat at night’ diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.”

The invoice, the listing and the URL threat

The FTC’s guide to scams aimed at small businesses lists three that land on website owners:

• Fake invoices. “Scammers create phony invoices that look like you ordered products or services for your business.” For a website owner it can look like a domain or listing “renewal” from a company you never used. The FTC’s advice: “Don’t pay.”
• Listing scams. “Scammers try to fool you into paying for nonexistent advertising or a listing in a phony business directory.” The FTC says the caller may ask for your details for a “free” listing or say the call is only to confirm information, and then a large bill arrives.
• The URL threat. Callers posing as a tech company say “your business will lose its website URL if you don’t pay immediately.”

The FTC also names the payment tell: scammers “often demand payment through wire transfers, cryptocurrency, or gift cards. Don’t pay anyone who demands payment this way. It’s a scam.”

The “Google” call about your profile

Google says its automated calls may ask about things like your opening hours, but “we’ll never ask you for payment information over the phone or guarantee you a special spot in our products.” And: “If someone calls you pretending to be from Google, hang up.” Your Business Profile is managed from your own Google account, so anything a caller offers to fix, you can check yourself by signing in.

Questions to ask before you sign

Google’s list of questions for anyone you hire to improve your search presence works for a web designer too. Adapted for a contractor:

1. Can you show me sites you built for other local service businesses, and can I contact those owners?
2. Do you follow Google Search Essentials?
3. What results do you expect, in what timeframe, and how will we measure them?
4. What is your experience in my trade and my area?
5. Will you tell me every change you make to the site, and why?
6. Whose name and email go on the domain, and who holds the hosting account?
7. What do I get, in files and logins, if I leave?

Whoever builds it, one question the site should answer is what a job roughly costs. NapkinPrice™ puts an instant price range from your own pricing rules on the site, so you can add it to a new site or the one you have now.

General information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change and vary by state; check with the agency named above or a professional for your situation.