This article skips that game. Here is what a professionally built small business website actually costs in Massachusetts, what drives the price up or down, and what you should expect to get at each level.
The short answer
A professionally designed small business website in Massachusetts costs between $3,900 and $14,000, depending on the size of your site, the complexity of your needs, and whether you are building something new or replacing what you have.
That range sounds wide. It is. Here is what sits inside it.
What determines the price
Three things drive the cost of a website more than anything else: how many pages you need, how complex the functionality is, and whether you are starting from scratch or working from an existing foundation.
Page count is the biggest factor. A five-page site for a local contractor (home, about, services, contact, and a service area page) is a fundamentally different project than a fifteen-page site for a medical practice with individual pages for each physician, insurance, patient resources, and appointment scheduling. More pages mean more design work, more content, more testing, and more time.
Functionality drives cost more than design. A site that displays information is less expensive than a site that does things. Online booking, e-commerce, appointment scheduling, patient portals, and quote calculators all add to the project cost because they require additional development work. The design might look simple, but the underlying system is not.
Redesigns cost less than new builds. If your business has good photos, solid brand assets, and a content library you have built over the years, a redesign can work from that foundation. The discovery and content work is lighter, and the design decisions are partially constrained by what you are starting with. A new build starts from nothing: every page, every photo, every word.
The actual numbers
New website
A new website built from scratch, custom designed, and built on a modern platform with a content editor costs:
- Small (up to 5 pages): $4,500 to $4,900
- Medium (up to 15 pages): $9,000 to $9,500
- Large (16 to 30 pages): $14,000 to $14,500
Service businesses (HVAC, plumbing, accounting, law) sit at the lower end of each range. Retail, food, and e-commerce-adjacent businesses typically land at the higher end because of the additional content and structural requirements.
Redesign
If you already have a website and need it rebuilt. Same business, better design, better performance, modern platform:
- Small: $3,900 to $4,300
- Medium: $7,500 to $8,000
- Large: $11,500 to $12,000
Audit only
Before any design work starts, a current state audit reviews your website, your search presence, your Google Business Profile, and how your business currently appears across the internet. The audit produces a written report with specific findings and a prioritized action plan. This is also available as a standalone service for businesses that want a clear picture before committing to a full project.
- Lite (single-location brochure site under 10 pages): $950
- Standard (multiple services or existing content library): $1,500
- Deep (multi-location, e-commerce, or complex lead flows): $2,500
If you decide to move forward with a project within 15 days, the full audit fee is credited toward the project cost.
What is included
At MUSHIN, every website project includes things that other agencies charge extra for or leave out entirely.
The project starts with a full audit and on-site discovery session. Most designers skip the site visit. That conversation at your business, watching how things run, how you talk to your customers, what makes your work different, is where the actual design material comes from. That is included.
Custom design and all page copy are included. There are no templates and no stock photos. Every page is designed around your specific business and your customers. The writing is done for you, in your voice, based on what you said during discovery.
SEO foundations are built in from the start: meta titles and descriptions for every page, structured data markup, Google Business Profile setup and optimization, and local citation cleanup across the top directories. This is not a checklist item at the end of the project. It is part of how the site is built.
Every site includes a content editor with documentation so you can update your own site after launch without touching code. Google Analytics and Search Console are configured with a baseline report so you have actual data from day one.
At handover, you receive all source design files, written documentation, and 30 days of post-launch support. Everything belongs to you. No licensing, no lock-in, no dependency on a single vendor to keep your site running.
Add-ons that affect the final number
Photography is the most common add-on. Professional photos of your space, team, and work cost $800 per category. If you need two categories, the total is $1,400. Three categories is $1,800. Every photography project on a web design engagement includes a $300 credit.
Branding runs $900 for a brand refresh and $4,000 for a full brand identity system: logo, color palette, typography, and guidelines.
Online booking integration (Calendly, Acuity, Square, or similar) adds $500. A custom scheduling system built into the site is $1,500.
E-commerce adds $1,500 for up to 10 products, $3,000 for up to 50, and $5,000 for larger catalogs.
Video production adds $1,200 for a short social clip and $3,000 for a business profile video.
Ongoing maintenance starts at $150 per month (hosting, backups, monitoring, and two changes per month) or $300 per month for the growth plan, which adds content updates and a monthly report. Annual billing saves one month of fees.
What you are actually paying for
When a local contractor hires a web designer for $500 off Craigslist, they usually get a WordPress template with their business name swapped in, stock photos of generic tradespeople, and copy that could describe any business in their category. Three months later, the designer is unreachable and the site is broken because nobody is maintaining the plugins.
When a local business pays $12,000 to a large agency in Boston, they usually get an account manager who passes instructions to a junior designer, a project manager who schedules weekly check-in calls, and a finished site that nobody explained how to use. The source files live on the agency's server. If you leave, you start over.
The work MUSHIN does sits between those two things. Custom design, real discovery, content that actually sounds like your business, SEO built in from the start, and everything handed over to you when it is done. The people doing the work are the same people you talked to on the phone.
What this does not cover
A few things are outside the project cost regardless of scope.
Hosting and domain registration are the client's responsibility. Recommendations are provided, but the accounts belong to you from the beginning. Annual domain costs run $15 to $20 per year. Hosting for a small business site runs $10 to $30 per month depending on the platform.
Third-party service subscriptions (booking software, email marketing platforms, review management tools) are billed directly to you. If the project includes integrating one of these, the integration cost is in the estimate, but the ongoing subscription is yours.
Translation and multilingual content are not included in base pricing. If you serve customers who speak languages other than English, bilingual or multilingual pages can be quoted as an add-on.
How to figure out what you need
The pricing calculator on the pricing page walks through each decision: new build or redesign, business type, page count, photography, and any add-ons. It gives a real number, not a range, and includes a line-item breakdown of everything.
If you are not sure where to start, the audit is designed for exactly that situation. One conversation, one site review, one clear picture of what to fix and in what order. If you decide to move forward within 15 days, the fee comes off the project.
The simplest starting point is a free conversation. No sales pitch. You talk about your business, what is working, and what is not. That conversation takes 30 to 60 minutes and produces something useful whether you hire MUSHIN or not.
