A Business Website Should Cost You Less Than One Coffee a Month
A website is one of the very few business expenses you can size against a cup of coffee — and one of the very few where you can check the payback with a single line of arithmetic.
What a small business website actually costs
There are three honest ways to get a website, and they cost wildly different amounts. An agency builds you something custom: it looks the way you want and it costs hundreds or thousands, plus weeks of back-and-forth and a bill every time you change your opening hours. A subscription builder hands you a template and a monthly charge that never stops — cheaper up front, but you are still the one writing every line of copy, and you are renting the result forever.
The third way is to stop paying for the parts you already own. Your Google listing already holds your photos, your hours, your category and — the valuable part — years of customers describing in their own words why they keep coming back. blasa reads that listing and builds the site from it. Publishing is free, permanently, and the paid plan that adds your own domain name and takes the ad off costs less over a whole month than a couple of coffees.
The one-customer test
Here is the only calculation that matters, and it takes ten seconds. Work out what one new customer is worth to you across a year — not one visit, a year of visits. A café regular who comes twice a week. A salon client who books every six weeks. A garage customer who brings the car back for a service and tells their family.
Now compare that single number to what the website costs you for the whole year. For almost every local business, one new customer covers the year several times over. That is the entire investment case, and it does not depend on the site being a hit — it depends on it working once.
The smaller your margins, the more carefully you should run this. But note which way the arithmetic points: a small business needs fewer customers to break even, not more. The case is strongest for exactly the businesses that assume a website is not for them.
What nobody can promise you
No website — ours or anyone else’s — can promise you customers. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something. What a website changes is narrower and more useful than a promise: it decides whether you can be found at all.
Someone hears your name and searches it. Someone asks for a recommendation near them. Someone asks ChatGPT where to eat in your neighbourhood. In every one of those moments, a business with no website is a business with nothing to find, nothing to link to and nothing to quote. You are not competing for attention at that point — you are simply absent, and the shop down the road with a website takes the booking.
What “cheap” still has to include
A low price is only a bargain if the site actually works. Hold any cheap website to this list: it loads fast on a phone, because that is where your customers are; it carries LocalBusiness structured data so Google and AI assistants can read your address, hours and rating as facts rather than guessing; it speaks your customers’ language, not only English; and it keeps publishing something new, because a page that never changes slowly stops being shown.
Every blasa site does all four automatically, and every line of it traces back to a real review or a real photo — nothing is invented. If you want the version of this argument that starts from the payback rather than the price, read does a business website pay for itself.
Questions people actually ask
How much should a small business website cost?
For a local business with a Google Maps listing, a website should cost far less than one customer is worth. A custom agency build runs into the hundreds or thousands and takes weeks; a subscription builder charges every month forever and still leaves you to write the content. blasa publishes a complete multilingual site free — you paste your Google Maps link and it is live in minutes — and the optional paid plan, which adds your own domain name and removes the ad, works out to less than most people spend on coffee in a month. Current prices are always on the blasa pricing page.
Can I get a business website for free?
Yes. blasa generates and hosts a complete business website at no cost and with no credit card: real pages, your own subdomain, mobile layout, SEO and LocalBusiness structured data, and your customers’ language alongside English. The free site carries one small labelled ad and a “Made with blasa” badge, which is what keeps it free. It is free forever, not a trial that expires.
Is a website worth it for a very small business?
Run the one-customer test. Take what one new customer is worth to you over a year, then compare it to what the website costs for that year. For most local businesses — a restaurant, a salon, a garage, a gym — a single new customer covers the whole year and the rest is profit. The smaller your business, the fewer customers it takes to break even, which makes the case stronger for a small business, not weaker.
Why is a cheap website usually a bad website?
Because “cheap” normally means a template you fill in yourself, no mobile testing, no structured data and no ongoing pages — so it never gets found. Cheap is only a bargain when the site is still fast on a phone, carries the LocalBusiness structured data search engines and AI assistants read, works in your customers’ language, and keeps publishing. blasa builds all of that automatically from your Google reviews, which is the part that normally costs money and time.
What is the cheapest way to get a professional business website?
Start from something you already own: your Google reviews. blasa reads your Google Maps listing — reviews, photos, logo, hours and category — and writes the site from what real customers already said about you, so there is nothing to draft, design or maintain. That removes the two biggest costs of a website, the copywriting and the design, and leaves publishing free.