DIY, freelancer, agency, maintenance-only, in-house, and flat monthly website management compared on the same terms.
Updated July 2026about 8 min readreal numbers, plainly compared
website-costs.htmlread only
THE REAL COST
THE PRICES LOOK RANDOM. THEY AREN'T.
If you have started pricing out help for your website, you have probably noticed the numbers do not line up with each other. One quote is $40 a month. Another is $8,000 up front. Another is an hourly rate that could land anywhere.
That is because website help is not one product. It is five or six different products wearing the same name, each covering a different slice of what a website actually needs.
side by side
SIX OPTIONS. THE SAME CHECKLIST.
Scroll sideways on smaller screens to compare every column.
the-real-cost.fig6 options
Fire Island Design
DIY Platform
Freelancer
Agency Build
Maintenance-Only
In-House Hire
Monthly Cost
$397/mo flat
$16-40 tool fee
$50-150/hr, ad hoc
$3k-10k upfront, then none
$50-300/mo
$50k+/yr loaded
Custom Design
Development & Features
CMS Setup & Training
Ongoing Content Edits
SEO
Security & Backups
Uptime Monitoring
Proactive Support
IncludedPartial or sometimesNot included
what each price buys
THE OPTIONS SMALL BUSINESSES ACTUALLY CHOOSE BETWEEN.
01
DIY Platform (Squarespace, Wix, Shopify)
Cost: $16–40/month for the tool itself. You get a template and a hosting account — everything else (design decisions, content, updates, SEO) is on you. Fine if you have the time and don't mind learning it. Most business owners don't have either.
02
Freelancer, Hourly
Cost: $50–150/hour, no retainer. Good for a single fix or a one-off project. There's no one watching the site between jobs — if a plugin breaks or a page goes down on a Tuesday, nothing happens until you notice and book time.
03
Traditional Agency, One-Time Build
Cost: $3,000–$10,000+ up front. You get a real, custom-designed site — but the relationship is usually built around the launch, not what happens after. Maintenance, edits, and SEO are typically a separate conversation, if they are offered at all.
04
Maintenance-Only Plan
Cost: $50–300/month. This covers the technical housekeeping — plugin updates, backups, uptime checks — but not design, content changes, or SEO. You're safe from the site breaking, but the site also isn't going anywhere.
05
In-House Hire
Cost: $50,000+/year loaded. You get someone full-time, but rarely someone who's simultaneously a strong designer, developer, and SEO specialist — most people are one of those three, not all three.
06
Fire Island Design
Cost: $397/month flat. Design, development, CMS management, content edits, and SEO, all under one fee, with no separate invoices for "extra" work.
THE PATTERN WORTH NOTICING
CHEAP IS RARELY ONE LINE ITEM.
Look at any row on its own and several options look included. Look at the whole table and a different picture shows up: almost every option covers two or three things well and leaves the rest for you to solve separately.
That patchwork is not always wrong. But it does mean the cheap option is usually the sum of several invoices, plus the time spent managing all of them.
A flat monthly plan like ours is not a claim that we are the lowest-cost option in every category. It means there is one invoice, one point of contact, and nothing falls through the cracks between vendors.
questions, answered
COMPARE WITHOUT THE CONFUSION.
The practical questions to answer before choosing a plan.
cost-01.frame
selected
Answer
Small businesses may spend anywhere from a low monthly platform fee to thousands upfront or a full-time salary. Fire Island Design keeps website management simple with a flat plan starting at $397/month.
cost-02.frame
selected
Answer
No. Maintenance-only plans usually focus on technical housekeeping like backups, plugin updates, and uptime checks. Website management also includes content updates, SEO upkeep, design improvements, CMS support, and proactive recommendations.
cost-03.frame
selected
Answer
DIY can work when the website is simple, updates are rare, search visibility does not matter much, and the owner has time to manage the site. If the website needs to keep bringing in leads and staying current, DIY usually becomes expensive in hidden time.
ready to simplify it?
ONE WEBSITE. ONE MONTHLY PLAN.
If your website still has work to do, give it one person responsible for the whole thing.
