How much does an architect website cost? The honest answer is anywhere from zero to well over $30,000, which helps no one. This article makes sense of that gap: what you actually get at each price point, what you give up, and how to choose without regretting it.
I won't pitch you a price here. I'll give you market benchmarks and, more importantly, the questions to ask before you sign anything.
Note: the ranges below are typical market figures in Canadian dollars. Rates vary from one city or country to another, but the logic holds everywhere.
Why prices vary so much
Two websites can look almost identical in a screenshot and have nothing in common. The difference doesn't show on day one. It shows six months later, when one is bringing in project inquiries and the other is quietly gathering dust.
You're not paying for a number of pages. You're paying for things nobody sees but that do all the heavy lifting:
- Strategy: who the site is for, which projects you want to attract, what story it tells
- Design: a site built around your practice, or a theme shared with thousands of others
- Visibility: the work that helps Google (and now AI assistants like ChatGPT) understand who you are and surface you
- Technical quality: load speed, how it looks on a phone, accessibility
- Compliance: legal notice, cookie consent, privacy (GDPR in Europe, privacy laws such as Quebec's Law 25 in Canada)
- Ongoing care: who looks after the site once it's live
A $700 site and a $7,000 site are not the same product at two prices. They are two different products.
The 4 main options and what they really cost
1. Doing it yourself on Wix or Squarespace: $0 to $500 a year
It's a very common setup: out of more than 500 practice websites I've audited, about 1 in 5 runs on Wix, some still on a free address like myfirm.wixsite.com.
What you get: a site online fast, for a small monthly subscription.
What you don't get: your time back. Building a good site takes dozens of hours you're not spending on actual projects. And the result often looks like what I see in audits: no main heading Google can read, portfolio images Google can't describe, and a few lines of text in total.
Best for: a new practice with more time than budget, happy for the site to be a business card rather than a sales tool.
2. A freelancer using a template: $1,500 to $3,500
Someone takes an off-the-shelf theme, drops in your text and photos, and publishes it.
What you get: a clean site, faster and cheaper than custom work.
What you don't get: a site that feels like you. The same theme is used by other firms, sometimes in your own city. Search visibility work is usually kept to the bare minimum.
Best for: simple needs, a tight budget, and wanting something decent quickly.
3. A freelancer building custom: $4,000 to $13,000
A site designed from scratch for your practice: structure, design, polished copy, and search visibility built in from day one. This is the typical range for a well-made architecture firm website, from a handful of pages to around ten with a full project portfolio.
What you get: a one-of-a-kind site built for the clients you want, with a single point of contact from start to finish.
What you don't get: an agency's bench. If you also need a photographer, a copywriter and a videographer, someone has to coordinate them.
Best for: most practices that want a site worthy of their work, without an agency budget.
4. An agency: $15,000 to $40,000 and up
A full team: project manager, designer, developer, sometimes a copywriter and photographer.
What you get: production muscle and room for complex projects (multilingual sites, large project archives, custom integrations).
What you don't always get: a single point of contact. And part of the budget pays for the agency's overhead, not your site.
Best for: larger firms with several partners and specific requirements.
The hidden cost: what you pay after launch
The build price is only part of the bill. A website is like a building: it needs upkeep. Budget for:
- Hosting and domain name: roughly $75 to $500 a year depending on the platform
- Maintenance: updates, backups, fixes, adding new projects. Usually $75 to $250 a month with a provider
- Visibility monitoring: tracking where you rank on Google and whether AI assistants mention you, then adjusting content
A neglected site decays. On the architecture websites I audit, I regularly find a copyright notice that's years out of date (2011, 2015, 2018…) and broken links. To a visitor, the message is clear: this firm doesn't look after its shop window.
What really costs you: a website that does nothing
People think about the price of a website. They rarely think about the price of not having a good one.
Run the numbers backwards. If your site brings in just one extra renovation project a year, what is that project worth to your practice? In most cases, far more than the total cost of the site.
On the flip side, a site that doesn't show up when someone searches "architect" in your city may cost you nothing each month, yet it loses you clients you'll never even know about. That's the hardest cost to see, and often the biggest. I break down the most common mistakes in my article on why architecture firm websites don't show up on Google.
5 questions to ask before you sign
Whoever you hire, ask these. The answers will tell you what you're really buying.
- Is the site custom-built or based on an existing theme? Neither is wrong, but you should know.
- What exactly will you do so Google can find me? A vague answer usually means vague work.
- Will AI assistants like ChatGPT be able to understand and cite my site? This is the 2026 question. More and more clients ask an AI for a recommendation before they ever search Google. I cover this in my article on AEO for architects.
- Are the legal notice, privacy policy and cookie consent included? In most markets, that's a legal requirement, not an extra.
- Who owns the website and the domain name? It should be you. Always.
The bottom line
There's no universal "right price" for an architect website. There's a price that matches what you expect the site to do. A basic online presence can be done on a shoestring. A site that attracts projects, strengthens your credibility and makes you visible on Google and AI assistants takes real work, and real work has a cost.
The right question isn't "how much does it cost?" It's "how much will it bring in?"
What would it take for your practice?
A 15-minute call, no strings attached. I'll tell you honestly what you need, and what you don't.
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