The bills that come after the build, for hosting, a care plan and the domain name, arrive every month or every year. In the typical designer setup below, those bills cost more over three years than the build itself.

So we set out 36 months of costs for three common setups. Every market price was read on the company’s own page in October or November 2026, and every figure is in Australian dollars.

The short version: These three-year totals already include a .com.au domain name, at $22.95 a year or $68.85 over three years. On the prices we read, a website builder you set up yourself (Wix Light, $21 a month billed yearly) came to $824.85. A typical designer build with paid hosting and a $98 a month care plan came to $6,426.85. Of that, the care plan was $3,528 and the hosting $330. The build itself was $2,500. A CatalystHub Standard build came to $568.85: $500 paid to us once, plus the domain. The site is hosted free on your own Cloudflare account and needs no care plan, so there’s no ongoing cost from us.

What to do next: Our packages and care plans are on the pricing page. Ready to go? Start your project, or call (08) 6288 0080.

Three years of costs, side by side

	Website builder (Wix Light)	Typical designer setup	CatalystHub Standard
Build, paid once	Nothing (you build it yourself)	$2,500	$500
Builder plan or hosting	$21 a month x 36 = $756	$330 over 36 months	Free on your own Cloudflare account
Care plan	None (you do the upkeep)	$98 a month for 36 months: $3,528	None needed (optional, from $49 a month)
.com.au domain name	$22.95 a year x 3 = $68.85	$22.95 a year x 3 = $68.85	$22.95 a year x 3 = $68.85
Paid to the website company after launch	$21 a month for the plan	$330 hosting plus $3,528 care plan	Nothing
Over 3 years, domain included	$824.85	$6,426.85	$568.85

A care plan is a monthly fee for someone to look after the site after launch: updates, backups and fixes. Hosting is the rent for the computer (server) that keeps your site online.

Where each number comes from

Website builder: Wix Light

Plan: Wix Australia’s Light plan was A$21 a month, GST included, billed yearly, when we read Wix’s plans page in an Australian browser on 9 October 2026. Wix says its displayed prices are for yearly subscriptions, paid in full at the time of purchase.
Domain: Wix says most yearly plans come with a voucher for one free year of domain registration. The voucher isn’t included when you renew the plan, and it can’t be used to renew a domain you already have. If you use it, your first domain year costs nothing.
Care plan: none. With a builder, the upkeep is yours.

GST is the Goods and Services Tax, a 10% tax on most goods and services sold in Australia.

Typical designer setup

Build, $2,500: the median (middle value) of the lowest one-off prices published by 53 Australian web designers, read on 3 November 2026. The middle half ran from $1,799 to $4,000. Some of those prices included GST, some added it and some didn’t say, so treat $2,500 as a rough guide. Across 33 designers in WA towns, read on 10 October 2026, the median was $1,997, which brings this setup to $5,923.85. More detail: what a small business website costs in Australia and the WA web design price audit.
Hosting, $330: we used VentraIP’s Business Hosting Entry plan, read on 5 November 2026. It was $5.50 a month, down from $11.00, and VentraIP says the discount applies to the first invoice of a new hosting purchase for up to one year. We took the $11.00 “was” price as the price after that: 12 x $5.50 + 24 x $11.00 = $330. VentraIP’s terms say its published prices include government taxes and charges unless noted.
Care plan, $98 a month: we re-read the published entry care plans of four Australian web designers on 5 November 2026. They were $75 a month (GST not stated), $89 a month plus GST ($97.90 with GST), $98 a month including GST, and from $100 a month including GST. We used the $98 a month plan. Over 36 months, a $75 plan comes to $2,700 and a $100 plan to $3,600.
Wider picture: across 18 maintenance providers we read in October 2026, most entry plans sat between $45 and $175 a month. More in our guide to what website maintenance costs in Australia.
Hosting inside the care plan? One of the four designers says hosting is separate from its maintenance plans. The other three don’t say. If your designer’s plan includes hosting, take $330 off this row.

CatalystHub Standard

Build, $500: our Standard build is $500 including GST, one-off, for five pages.
Hosting: free. The site runs on your own Cloudflare account, on Cloudflare’s free tier. There’s no ongoing hosting cost and no care plan needed.
Care plan: optional, from $49 a month.
Domain: a yearly cost, as in every setup. See the domain section below.

You own the code, the domain and the hosting account. At launch, we point your domain at Cloudflare.

What Cloudflare’s free tier covers

Cloudflare’s Free plan page says the Free plan provides free SSL, CDN, DDoS protection and more.

The free tier has limits, and it’s fair to know them. Cloudflare’s Workers pricing docs say requests for static assets (finished files such as pages and images) are free and unlimited. Code that runs on a request gets 100,000 requests a day on the free plan, and a request over that limit gets an error. Cloudflare’s paid Workers plan has a minimum charge of US$5 a month per account.

The domain name: a cost in every setup

Your domain name is your web address, such as yourbusiness.com.au. It’s the one cost every setup shares.

Who you pay: you renew the domain each year with a domain registrar, a company that sells and renews domain names, such as VentraIP. That fee is not paid to us. At launch, we hand you the domain registrar login.
Price: VentraIP’s regular price for a .com.au is $22.95 a year, read on 5 November 2026. New registrations were on special at $9.95 for the first year. With that special, every setup’s domain cost drops by $13.
How long: under the rules of auDA, which runs .au domains, a licence lasts 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 years. You can renew from 90 days before it expires.
Don’t let it lapse: after expiry you get 30 days to renew. After that, anyone can register the name, first come, first served.
Who can hold one: to hold a .com.au, you need an Australian presence and must be a commercial entity, such as a business. Holding an ABN (Australian Business Number) counts.

Our other packages, and what they cost

All of our build prices include GST and are paid once. Add $68.85 for three years of a .com.au domain.

Package	Build, paid once	Hosting	Paid to us after launch
Standard (5 pages)	$500	Free	Nothing
Advanced Design	From $700	Free	Nothing
Specialist (up to 15 pages)	From $1,500	Free	Nothing

Free hosting doesn’t apply to our Custom Shopify Theme (from $700). Shopify hosts online stores on your paid Shopify plan, and Shopify’s Basic plan was $42 a month billed yearly when we read its Australian pricing page on 3 November 2026.

If you want a care plan anyway

You don’t need one, but some owners would rather hand the upkeep over. Our care plans are optional:

Basic: $49 a month
Premium: $99 a month, adding one hour of content updates each month
Specialist: from $79 a month, adding 30 minutes of content updates each month plus compliance or Shopify monitoring

The first month is free on every new build, and you can cancel any month with 14 days’ notice and no exit fees.

Compare every package on the pricing page, or start your project.

Frequently asked questions

What does a small business website cost over 3 years? On the prices we read in October and November 2026, with a .com.au domain already included in each total: $824.85 for a Wix Light builder plan billed yearly, $6,426.85 for a typical designer build with paid hosting and a $98 a month care plan, and $568.85 for a CatalystHub Standard build with free hosting.

Why is the designer setup so much more? Mostly the monthly bills. Over 36 months, the care plan came to $3,528 and the hosting to $330. The build was $2,500.

Is hosting really free with CatalystHub? For every package except the Custom Shopify Theme, yes. The site runs on your own Cloudflare account on Cloudflare’s free tier, so there’s no ongoing hosting cost.

Is business email included in these costs? No. We left business email out of every row.