Website design small businesses can afford to keep

A website shouldn’t be a $5,000 gamble or a rented page you lose when you stop paying. We build, host, and maintain small business websites for a monthly price posted right on this site, and everything stays in your name.

Here’s the trap most owners walk into: a designer quotes $3,000 to $8,000 for a site, delivers something handsome, and disappears. Two years later the phone number is wrong, the plugin stack is broken, and Google has quietly stopped sending anyone. Or the opposite trap, the $20-a-month site builder, where the result loads slowly, says nothing specific, and belongs to the platform rather than to you.

We price it differently: $100 a month, everything included, cancel whenever you like. That single number covers the design, the writing, the hosting, and the maintenance, and the whole thing is owned by you. The math works because we build lean sites that don’t need rescuing every quarter, and because a client who can leave anytime keeps us honest for years instead of enthusiastic for six weeks.

What the monthly price buys

The build

A fast, plain-language site around the questions your customers actually search. No page-builder bloat; built to load in about a second on a phone.

Hosting and upkeep

We host it, keep it secure, and fix what breaks. You never get an email about a plugin update or an expiring certificate.

Writing included

About one new article a month, drafted with AI and finished by a person, aimed at searches people in St. Louis actually make.

Readable to Google and AI

Built from day one so search engines and assistants like ChatGPT can read and repeat what you do, where you work, and how to reach you. That’s the difference explained in AI search optimization for small business.

Your name on everything

Domain, site, content, Google accounts: registered to you, not to us. Leave anytime and take all of it.

Room to grow

The $300 tier adds AI that answers leads, chats with visitors, and manages your Google reviews; the $500 tier also books your appointments. Upgrade when the phone calls justify it, not before.

Why speed and plain words, specifically

Two beliefs shape every site we ship. First: most small business sites fail on the basics, not the decoration. They load slowly on phones, bury the phone number, and never say the one sentence a visitor came for, which is what you do and where. Fixing exactly that is unglamorous and it works.

Second: your website’s biggest readers aren’t people anymore. Google’s systems and AI assistants read it far more often than any human, and they decide who gets recommended. When someone asks ChatGPT for a recommendation, even the big multi-location brands SOCi tracked saw only about 1.2% of their locations get named, mostly the ones whose sites and listings assistants can actually parse. A site built for that reality, the kind we describe in why AI assistants skip most local businesses, is what you’re buying here.

How the first month goes

  1. Week 1

    One conversation about your business, then we draft the structure: which pages, answering which searches, in what order. You approve it before anything gets built.

  2. Weeks 2 and 3

    We build and write. You see the site on a private link and mark up anything that reads wrong; plain corrections, not design committee meetings.

  3. Week 4

    The site goes live on your domain, your Google Business Profile points at it, and the monthly rhythm starts: hosting, upkeep, and the first article.

After week 4 the engagement settles into its rhythm: we keep the site fast and current, an article lands each month, and you see a plain-language note about what changed. This is the arrangement we offer businesses across the metro, from Kirkwood to St. Charles.

What this isn’t

No templates resold under new logos, no traffic guarantees, no surprise invoices, and no hostage-taking if you leave. Our example builds show the style of work; our about page explains who’s actually doing it. When a project needs more than a website, the honest next step is usually the full local SEO program, and we’ll say so rather than let a $100 plan underdeliver on a $1,000 expectation.

Common questions

What does a small business website cost?
With us, $100 a month, which includes the build, hosting, upkeep, and about one article a month. One all-in monthly price, no separate build invoice; the full tier comparison is public.
Why monthly instead of a one-time price?
A site that nobody updates or maintains stops earning its keep within a year. The monthly price keeps us responsible for the site’s speed, security, and freshness for as long as you keep it, and you can leave whenever that stops being worth $100.
Do I own the website?
Yes: the domain, the site, the content, and the Google accounts are registered to you from day one. If you leave, everything goes with you.
How long does it take?
About four weeks from first call to live site for most local businesses. The timeline above shows what happens in each week.
Will it show up on Google?
The site is built so Google can read every page, and that’s the foundation. How high it climbs depends on competition and time; for the searches with real money behind them, that’s the steady work our local SEO program exists for.
I already have a website. Do I have to start over?
Not necessarily. Sometimes the fix is smaller than a rebuild, and the free audit is where we tell you honestly which one you need.
What about ChatGPT and AI search?
Every site we build is readable to AI assistants, not just Google, because 45% of consumers now use AI tools when picking local businesses. It’s included, not an upsell.
What if I want changes after launch?
Small fixes are part of upkeep. The $300 tier adds two new pages a month; bigger one-off projects are quoted plainly at $125 an hour.

Start with the free audit

Bring nothing but a description of your business. We run a free audit of how you show up next to your competitors, then walk you through the plan: a new site, a fixed listing, or nothing at all yet if that’s the honest answer.