Straight answers/What a website costs
How much does a website cost for a small business in Nashville?
The short answer.
At Etch, a small business website is $500: up to five custom pages, written for you, built for phones and for AI search, with a booking or quote form, on a preview link within 48 hours. Once it is live on your domain, hosting and care are $50 a month.
The domain is yours, in your name, usually about $15 a year from a registrar such as GoDaddy or Namecheap. Bigger sites, such as online stores or sites with dozens of pages, are quoted.
What it costs.
Optional add-ons: speed to lead, which texts every new enquiry back in under a minute, at $99 a month, and your own Etch dashboard at $149 a month.
What the $500 includes.
- Up to five custom pages, written for you: typically home, services, about, answers and contact
- Mobile-first design with tap-to-call and tap-to-text
- A booking or quote form, with every enquiry emailed to you as it arrives
- AI-ready pages: plain answers, structured data, an llms.txt guide and AI crawlers allowed in
- Titles, a sitemap and Google Search Console set up
- Visit and enquiry counts from day one
- One round of changes before launch
- Your domain connected, or help choosing one
What “AI-ready” means.
More customers now ask ChatGPT or read Google’s AI answers before they click a website. Those tools recommend the businesses whose sites they can read.
An AI-ready site says plainly what you do, who you help, where you work and how to book, in real text rather than pictures of text. It names your business, services and area in structured data, answers the questions customers actually ask, and loads fast for every crawler. No one can promise you a place in an AI answer, but a site built this way gives you your best chance.
When a website costs more.
Five pages covers most local service businesses. A bigger budget makes sense for:
- An online store with products, payments and shipping
- Dozens of pages, such as one for every service in every town
- Custom features like customer logins, calculators or integrations
- A new name and logo, which starts at $1,500 as a brand project
Those projects are quoted after a short conversation, with the price in writing before work starts.
What to ask any web designer.
- Who owns the domain and the site if we part ways?
- What does it cost each month after launch, and what does that cover?
- Will calls and form enquiries be tracked from day one?
- How fast does it load on a phone?
- Can search engines and AI assistants read it, and is Search Console set up?
- How many rounds of changes are included?
Questions we get.
I already have a website. Do I start over?
No. Most of our builds start from an existing site. We bring your words, services, photos and logo over, rebuild what needs it for phones and AI search, and move your domain when you approve the new site.
How long does it take?
Your site is on a private preview link within 48 hours of your payment and business details. Orders placed after noon on Friday start Monday morning.
Do I need a call or a meeting?
No. You tell us about your business at checkout, we bring over what is on your current site, and we build. If we have a question, we text you.
Can I make changes after it launches?
Yes. Small updates are part of hosting and care. Bigger additions, such as new pages, are quoted first.
Will a $500 website help with SEO?
It is built for it: titles, descriptions, a sitemap, structured data and Search Console on every site. Rankings also depend on your Google Business Profile, your reviews and the rest of the web, so we tell you plainly what to expect for your trade and town.
Want a straight answer about yours.
The free checkup looks at your Google profile, your website, any ads you run and what AI assistants say about you, and sends one page back in two business days.