Key takeaways
- $500 buys a template on someone else's platform; $2,500 to $6,000 buys a proper 8-page site you own; $10,000 and up is custom design or heavy content.
- A 1-10 truck shop needs roughly eight pages: home, about, three to five service pages, a service-area page, reviews and contact.
- The site must load in about two seconds on a phone, show a tap-to-call number on every screen, and have a form that emails and texts you.
- You should own the domain, hold the registrar login, and be able to move the site to another host without paying anyone.
- Fair hosting and care is $30 to $150 a month; $300 or more a month is usually a disguised lease.
- Walk away from 12-month web contracts, proprietary builders you cannot export, and any company that registers the domain in its own name.
What each price level actually buys
Website quotes for contractors range from a few hundred dollars to the price of a used truck. The gap is about what is included and who owns the result.
Around $500. A template on a hosted builder (Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy) or a reseller platform, filled in with your logo and a few paragraphs. You usually do not own the design, cannot move it, and the monthly fee continues forever. Fine for a one-truck shop that needs a phone number online this week. Not an asset.
Around $2,500. The realistic floor for a site built for you: WordPress or similar on a standard theme, 6-10 pages with written content, mobile layout, a form, basic on-page SEO (titles, headings, your cities named), Google Business Profile linked. The builder hands over all logins.
Around $10,000. Custom design, 15-30 pages including city pages and a blog, professional photos of your crew, copy written by someone who interviewed you, speed work, call and form tracking. This is where a 5-10 truck shop growing into new cities starts to get value.
Around $25,000. Agency-level work: brand design, video, 50-plus pages, scheduling integrations, ongoing content. Appropriate for a 20-truck company with a marketing manager. For a 1-10 truck shop it is more site than the business can use.
What a 1-10 truck shop actually needs
Most of the money in the $10,000-plus tier goes to things that do not produce calls for a small shop. Here is what does.
About eight pages:
- Home: who you are, where you work, phone number, three main services, a few reviews.
- About: the owner's name and face, CSLB license number, years in business, the trucks.
- Three to five service pages, one per service you want calls for ("Water Heater Installation," "Roof Repair," "Panel Upgrades"), each with a rough price range, the process, and a form.
- Service area: the cities and neighborhoods you cover, written honestly.
- Reviews: pulled from Google, updated automatically or monthly.
- Contact: phone, form, hours, license, address or service-area statement.
Speed. Load in roughly two seconds on a phone on cellular. Compressed images and a decent host handle most of this.
Click-to-call. A tap-to-call number visible without scrolling on every page, with a sticky call button on mobile.
Forms that reach you. A short form (name, phone, what is wrong) that emails and texts whoever answers the phone. Test it on launch day.
Ownership. Domain and hosting in your name, an admin login, and a copy of the files. More on this below.
Optional: online booking, a blog, a chat widget. Add them when the eight pages are done and working.
Hosting, maintenance and care fees
Every website has ongoing costs, and this is where contractors overpay without noticing.
Domain: roughly $15 to $25 a year at a standard registrar like Namecheap, Cloudflare or GoDaddy. Pay it yourself, from your own account.
Hosting: $15 to $50 a month for managed WordPress hosting fast enough for a contractor site. $5 shared hosting is slower and not worth the savings.
Care plan: updates, backups, security scanning, small text changes, and someone to call when the form breaks. A fair rate is $50 to $150 a month, usually including an hour or so of changes.
A total of roughly $30 to $150 a month is normal. What is not normal:
- $300 to $500 a month "website programs" with no clear deliverable beyond hosting. These are leases: you never own the site and it disappears when you stop paying.
- SEO bundled into hosting with no reporting. Keep the two separate so you can cancel one without losing the other.
- Per-change billing at $150 an hour for a phone number update.
If you are quoted a low build price and a high monthly fee, do the math over three years. A $500 site at $299 a month costs about $11,000 and you own nothing. A $4,000 site with a $75 care plan costs about $6,700 and you own all of it.
Red flags that cost contractors their website
These show up again and again when a contractor tries to leave a web company and discovers there is nothing to take along.
- The domain is registered in the vendor's name. The biggest one. If you do not control the domain, you do not control your rankings, your email, or the address on 10,000 business cards. Check a WHOIS lookup: the registrant should be you. If the vendor insists on holding it, walk away.
- A proprietary builder with no export. Some platforms marketed to contractors keep the site on their system; when you leave, you leave with your logo. Ask: "If I cancel, can I get the full site files and host them elsewhere?" Anything but yes means the real price is higher.
- 12-month or longer contracts with auto-renewal. Month-to-month hosting is standard. Long contracts exist to lock in the lease model.
- No admin login for you. You should have one from day one, even if you never use it.
- Stock photos of a technician you have never met. A sign of a template operation.
- Guaranteed rankings. Nobody can guarantee a Map Pack position. A vendor who does is lying or planning methods that get profiles suspended.
- A low build price with long fine print. Setup fees, mandatory add-ons and cancellation fees live there.
None of these are illegal. They are business models that favor the vendor, and you should know which you are buying.
Questions to ask before you sign
Ask these in writing and keep the answers. A good vendor answers all of them in one email.
- Who will the domain be registered to, and will I have the registrar login?
- What platform is the site built on, and can I move it to another host if I leave?
- Will I have an administrator login from launch?
- What is included in the build price: how many pages, who writes the content, who provides photos?
- What is the monthly cost after launch, what does it cover, and is it month-to-month?
- Will you show me a mobile speed test before launch?
- How will form submissions and calls reach me, and will call tracking be set up?
- Will the name, address and phone on the site match my Google Business Profile exactly?
- Can I see three contractor sites you built that are still live, and call one of those owners?
- What happens to the site if your company closes?
Also ask about timeline. A standard eight-page site should launch in four to eight weeks if you provide photos and answer questions promptly. Builds that drag past three months are usually waiting on content, so spend a few hours early giving the builder your story, license number, service list and real job photos. Agencies that focus on contractors, Rung Media among them, will tell you up front what they need.
Putting a number on it
For a Los Angeles County contractor with one to ten trucks, a sensible budget:
- Build: $2,500 to $6,000 for eight to twelve pages, your own photos, content written from an interview with you, mobile-first layout, click-to-call, forms, basic SEO setup, and full ownership.
- Ongoing: $30 to $150 a month for domain, hosting and a care plan, month-to-month.
- Later, if growth justifies it: $500 to $1,500 per batch of additional city or service pages when you expand into new neighborhoods.
Pay less and check what you are giving up, usually ownership. Pay more and be able to name what the extra buys.
Remember the website's job. For a local contractor, most first calls come from the Google Map Pack, not the website. The site confirms you are real, licensed and nearby when a homeowner taps through from your profile, and gives Google the service and location signals that support your pack ranking. An eight-page site that loads fast with a working phone number does that; a $25,000 site does not do it $19,000 better. Spend the difference on reviews, photos and a complete profile, and read how the Map Pack works to see why.
Questions contractors ask
How much should a plumber or roofer pay for a website?
For a 1-10 truck shop, roughly $2,500 to $6,000 for a built-for-you site of eight to twelve pages that you own, plus $30 to $150 a month for hosting and care. Under $1,000 usually means a template on a platform you cannot leave. Over $10,000 buys custom design and large content volume, which most small shops do not need yet.
Should I pay monthly for a website or buy it outright?
Buy it outright and pay a small monthly fee for hosting and care. Monthly website programs at $200 to $500 a month are usually leases where you never own the site, the domain or sometimes even the content. Over three years a lease often costs more than a purchased site and leaves you with nothing when you cancel.
What does owning my website actually mean?
The domain is registered in your name at a registrar you can log into, the hosting account is yours or can be transferred, you have an administrator login, and you can get a full copy of the site files and database to host anywhere. If any of those is missing, you are renting, no matter what the invoice says.
Do I need a website if I already have a Google Business Profile?
You can get calls from the Map Pack without one, but a basic site helps in two ways: homeowners who tap through from your profile see your license, your crew and your reviews and feel safer calling, and Google uses your service and city pages as evidence of relevance for ranking. An eight-page site is enough; it does not need to be expensive.
