There's a certain logic to getting the cheapest possible website. You're a small business. Money is tight. A website is just a website, right?
This logic costs small businesses billions of dollars in aggregate every year. Here's why.
The Fiverr Website
$100-$500 gets you a WordPress template with your text and logo pasted in. Same template the freelancer uses for every client. Slow because it's on shared hosting with a dozen unoptimized plugins. Abandoned the moment it's "delivered."
Six months later: a plugin has a security vulnerability. A year later: the theme stops getting updates. Two years later: it looks dated and the contact form has been broken for months.
Every visitor forms an instant judgment. A slow, generic, slightly broken website says: unprofessional and possibly struggling. That costs you customers you never even know about.
The Free Wix/Squarespace Site
"Free" means a subdomain (yourbusiness.wixsite.com), their branding on your site, limited storage, and SEO limitations.
Even paid plans have performance issues. Page builders load their entire framework on every page. Your customer doesn't care about drag-and-drop — they care that the page loads in under 3 seconds.
The Nephew Who Knows HTML
Enthusiastic. Cheap. Builds something that works... until it doesn't. When something breaks at 10 PM Friday and a customer can't reach you, the nephew isn't answering. No SLA. No maintenance plan. No accountability.
What Does Quality Actually Cost?
A properly built small business website should cost $500-$2,000. Not $10,000 (agency tax). Not $100 (you-get-what-you-pay-for zone).
SitesByTed delivers professional quality at $500 — reflecting AI efficiency, not cut corners.
The Revenue Test
Will a better website generate at least one additional customer per month? If your average customer value is $200+, a $500 investment pays for itself in month one.
For most businesses, the answer isn't one additional customer — it's 5-15 more per month when you go from slow and outdated to fast and professional. The ROI isn't a question. It's a certainty.