The agency quotes $8,000. Wix costs $16/month. Ted costs $500. Simple comparison, right?
Not even close. The sticker price is a fraction of the true cost. Here's the honest breakdown.
Option 1: Web Design Agency
Sticker price: $5,000-$15,000 (GruffyGoat 2026, Mark Brinker survey).
Hidden costs: - Your time: 20-40 hours over 6-12 weeks. At $100-$150/hour opportunity cost: $2,000-$6,000. - Ongoing maintenance: $100-$500/month for hosting, security, WordPress updates. - Content updates: $75-$150/hour for every text change. 2-4 requests/month = $1,800-$7,200/year. - Redesign every 3-4 years: Another $5,000-$15,000.
True Year 1 cost: $10,000-$30,000 True 3-year cost: $20,000-$55,000
Makes sense for: Genuinely custom functionality — complex e-commerce, membership portals, large multi-location orgs. For a local business with 5-15 pages? You're paying for overhead you don't need.
Option 2: DIY (Wix, Squarespace, WordPress)
Sticker price: $17-$45/month.
Hidden costs: - Your time (build): 40-80 hours learning the platform. At $100/hour: $4,000-$8,000. - Premium features: Custom domain, email, booking integrations, removing branding. Realistic total: $60-$150/month. - Ongoing time: 5-15 hours/month maintaining it. $500-$1,500/month in opportunity cost. - Performance penalty: Wix achieves 61.82% good Core Web Vitals. WordPress with page builders adds 0.8-2.2 seconds. Your slow site silently bleeds thousands in lost customers.
True Year 1 cost: $6,000-$20,000 (mostly your time) True 3-year cost: $18,000-$55,000
Makes sense for: Business owners with web design experience who enjoy the process.
Option 3: Freelancer (Fiverr, Upwork)
Sticker price: $500-$3,000.
Hidden costs: - Quality roulette. Ranges from excellent to catastrophic. - No ongoing support. When something breaks at 10 PM Friday, nobody's answering. - Redesign trap. Same aging cycle as agency sites.
True Year 1 cost: $2,000-$6,000 True 3-year cost: $5,000-$15,000
Option 4: SitesByTed
Sticker price: $500 one-time, or $500 + $300/month for Grow.
Hidden costs: - Your time: 30 minutes. - Maintenance: included. - Content updates: included on Grow. - Performance: 90-98 PageSpeed from day one. - Redesign: not needed.
True Year 1 cost (Launch): $500 True Year 1 cost (Grow): $4,100 True 3-year cost (Grow): $11,300
The Complete Comparison
| | Agency | DIY | Freelancer | Ted (Grow) | |---|---|---|---|---| | 3-year cost | $20K-$55K | $18K-$55K | $5K-$15K | $11,300 | | Delivery | 6-12 weeks | 2-4 weeks | 2-6 weeks | Overnight | | Your time | 20-40 hrs | 40-80+ hrs | 10-20 hrs | 30 min | | PageSpeed | 70-90 | 35-60 | 40-70 | 90-98 |
The Opportunity Cost Nobody Calculates
Every day your website underperforms, you lose potential customers. An agency takes 6-12 weeks. If a better site would generate 5 extra leads/month at $500 each, the build delay alone costs $5,000-$7,500.
Ted delivers overnight. Your opportunity cost is measured in hours, not months.
The cheapest option isn't the lowest sticker price. It's the one that gets a high-performing website live fastest with the least ongoing cost. By every measure, that's Ted.