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What does a contractor website cost in Lake County?
Real numbers for roofers, landscapers, concrete crews and every other trade in Lake and McHenry County: what each way of getting a site costs up front, what it costs every month after, and what pushes the price up.
Updated October 1, 2026 · prices checked on each company’s own pricing page
Same trade. Two very different first screens.
This is what a homeowner sees in the first second on their phone. On the left, a typical template site, recreated by us for a made-up company. On the right, a real site we built for a concrete contractor in Palatine.
- “Welcome to…” tells a homeowner nothing: not what you pour, not where you work.
- A stock photo of somebody else’s slab.
- No phone number on the first screen. It’s behind the menu.
- “100% customer satisfaction”, the line every template ships with.
- The trade and the town up top, then every town it serves: what Google and ChatGPT match a search to.
- One tap calls Dave, and a call bar stays under your thumb the whole way down.
- Family owned since 1976: a reason to trust, not a slogan.
- English and Spanish, one tap.
Lakeside Concrete is made up; we built its page the way these tools usually set one up, with licensed stock photos. Creative Concrete Co. is a real client. Read how we built it.
- 1Search
- 2Tap
- 3Call
Two taps from Google to your phone ringing.
Every site we build is set up to turn a search into a call. That’s the whole job of a contractor website, and it’s where most template and AI sites lose the customer.
- Search
- Tap the result
- Tap Call
- Search
- Tap the result
- Open the menu
- Find Contact
- Fill a form
- Wait for a reply
- Tap to call on every screenA call bar sits under their thumb from the first screen to the last.
- Tap to text a photoPeople with a cracked driveway would rather send a picture than explain it.
- A form that never loses a leadEvery request lands in your inbox and in our back office, spam filtered out.
- Calls you can countEvery tap on Call and Text is counted, so you know what the site brought in.
- Your trade and town up topSo Google, ChatGPT and the homeowner all know you work where they live.
- English and SpanishEvery site, both languages, no extra charge.
Four ways to get a site, and what each one costs.
Every one of these can work. They cost different amounts of money and different amounts of your time, and only some of them are built to bring in calls from Google.
| Option | Up front | Every month | Your time | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Do-it-yourself builder Wix, Squarespace | $0 | $17–$40 billed yearly | Days of evenings to do it well | A new business with more time than money |
| AI website builder Durable, Voolt | $0 | $7–$49 | An hour to start, more to fix what it wrote | A placeholder while you get going |
| Freelancer | Roughly $500–$3,000 | Hosting $10–$50, edits extra | A few calls, then chasing them for changes | Someone who already knows a good one |
| Local web design company like us | $1,000–$4,500 with us; bigger agencies often $5,000 and up | Optional: $49–$149 with us | One call and a look at your mockup | A contractor who wants calls from Google without doing it themselves |
Builder prices are each company’s advertised monthly rate on a yearly plan, checked October 1, 2026: Wix $17.77–$39.77, Squarespace $19–$49, Durable $22–$41, Voolt $7–$14. Freelancer and agency ranges are what contractors tell us they were quoted, not a survey.
When does the site pay for itself?
A website is a one-time cost that works every day. Put in your own numbers: for a lot of trades it only takes one or two jobs from the site to cover it.
“The biggest thing for me is that I’ve actually seen an increase in leads and new business since working with them, which is exactly what you want from a website.”
Midlife On Markdown, 5-star Google review
Six things that push the price up or down.
When two quotes for “a website” are thousands of dollars apart, it is almost always one of these.
How many pages
One page with your services, photos and a call button covers most new crews. A page for each service and each town you work in is what ranks for “roofer in Grayslake”, and it costs more because each page needs its own words.
Who writes the words
Writing is most of the work. A cheap quote often means you send the text. We write it with you from a phone call, so it sounds like you and names what you actually do.
Moving an old site
If your current site already gets calls from Google, every old address has to forward to the new one or you lose your place. That is careful work, and worth paying for. It is our $500 Search & Rescue, free inside Second Alarm.
Selling products online
A store with a cart, shipping and product pages is a different build from a service site. Ours is Task Force, $3,500.
A Spanish version
Elsewhere a second language is usually an add-on. Every site we build is in English and Spanish at no extra cost, because a lot of Round Lake Beach and Waukegan searches in Spanish.
How fast you need it
One to three weeks is normal. If the season starts Monday, a rush launch in 24–72 hours costs extra.
The monthly costs nobody puts in the quote.
A website keeps costing a little after it goes live. These are the real line items, so a low build price can’t hide a high monthly one.
| What | Typical cost | Do you need it? |
|---|---|---|
| Domain name | About $20 a year | Yes. Make sure it is registered in your name. |
| Hosting | $0–$50 a month | Yes, someone has to keep it online. Builders include it in their monthly price. |
| Business email | About $7 per person a month on Google Workspace | Worth it. you@yourcompany.com gets answered; a Gmail address looks like a side job. |
| Edits and updates | $0 if you do it, $49–$149 a month for a care plan | Only if you won’t log in yourself. Most contractors don’t. |
| Google Business Profile | Free | Yes. For local calls it matters as much as the site. |
Salty Web Co, with the numbers on the table.
Flat prices, quoted before we start, never hourly. Every build splits 50/50: half to start, half at launch. And you see a free mockup of your homepage before you pay anything.
| Plan | Price | What you get | Live in |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Attack Line | $1,000 | One page plus privacy and terms pages, Google Business Profile setup | About a week |
| Working Fire | $2,500 | Up to 5 pages, job gallery, service and service-area pages | About two weeks |
| Second Alarm | $4,500 | 8–10 pages, old site moved with every address forwarded, local SEO foundation | About three weeks |
| Task Force | $3,500 | An online store with product pages and print-ready sell sheets | About three weeks |
| Standing Watch | $49 a month | Hosting, backups, security updates, a couple of edits a month | Optional |
| Running Calls | $149 a month | Adds Google profile posts, review requests and a new seasonal page each quarter | Optional |
Every build includes English and Spanish, click-to-call and a lead form. Month-to-month plans, no contract, and you own the site once it’s paid. See every plan in full.
Five red flags in a website quote.
The domain isn’t in your name
If the company registers your address in its own name, leaving means starting over. Ask who owns the domain before anything else.
A contract to keep it online
Twelve or twenty-four months locked in, or the site comes down if you cancel. A good company keeps you because the site works.
Hourly with no cap
“About 40 hours” is a guess you pay for when it runs long. Get a flat number.
A template sold as custom
Ask to see two of their sites side by side. If only the logo and colors change, so will yours.
“Guaranteed #1 on Google”
Nobody controls Google, and Google itself warns against anyone who promises it. What a builder can promise is a fast site with the right pages and your Google profile set up properly.
Asked by contractors, answered straight.
How much should a small contractor pay for a website?
Is Wix or Squarespace good enough for a contractor?
Do I have to pay every month?
Who owns the website when it is done?
Why are website quotes so different?
More straight answers.
Or see finished sites: our work and how we built Creative Concrete’s.
See what $1,000 looks like for your business.
Tell us your trade and town. We design a real homepage, free, and you decide if it’s worth it before you pay a dollar.
Rather talk? Call or text (224) 225-9268.