We asked AI how much a small business website with all updates made for the business owner should cost in 2026. The results surprised us! Scroll to the end to see how ChiroPage stacks up.

Here is what Google’s Gemini returned:

In 2026, a small business website that includes professional staff to handle all edits typically costs between $200 and $1,000 per month.

The total price depends on whether you hire a freelancer, a dedicated maintenance service, or a full-service agency.

Monthly Cost by Provider Type

The level of service and responsiveness often dictates the monthly fee:

• Freelancers: $95 – $350/month. They provide personal attention but may have limited availability for immediate edits.
• Managed Maintenance Services: $100 – $600/month. These specialized companies offer standardized “care plans” that include security, hosting, and a set amount of monthly edit time.
• Professional Agencies: $300 – $1,000+ per month. Agencies offer the highest reliability and often include strategy, SEO, and dedicated support teams.

What is Usually Included

When paying for a “managed” service, your monthly fee generally covers:

• Content Edits: Adding blog posts, updating product information, and refreshing images.
• Technical Upkeep: Core software, theme, and plugin updates to prevent security vulnerabilities.
• Security & Backups: Daily automated backups, malware scanning, and firewall management.
• Hosting & SSL: Many managed plans bundle the cost of web hosting and security certificates (SSL).

Key Cost Factors for 2026

• Edit Frequency: Plans often limit “edits” to a specific number of hours (e.g., 1–3 hours per month). Exceeding this can result in hourly charges ranging from $75 to $200 per hour.

• Site Complexity: Standard informational sites are on the lower end ($200–$400), while e-commerce sites often start at $500/month due to the added complexity of managing product catalogs and payment gateways.

• Proactive vs. Reactive: Lower-cost plans ($30–$100) often only cover automated updates. To ensure a human actually reviews and makes edits for you, expect to pay at least $100–$300/month.

And ChatGPT offered the following answer:

A small business website where the website provider’s staff handles all content updates at no additional charge typically costs between $150 and $500 per month for most small businesses. At the lower end ($150–$250 per month), this usually covers a basic 5–10 page website, hosting, security, backups, and routine content updates such as text edits, image swaps, and occasional page changes. In the mid-range ($250–$400 per month), businesses can expect a more polished design, faster turnaround on updates, basic SEO management, analytics reporting, and support for blogs, galleries, or multiple forms. At the higher end ($400–$500+ per month), the service often includes advanced features such as ecommerce support, frequent or same-day updates, ongoing SEO work, performance monitoring, and priority support. Overall, this pricing reflects a “done-for-you” model where the monthly fee replaces hourly update charges and allows the business to budget predictably while ensuring the website is always current and professionally managed.

But at ChiroPage, we give you a full templated website and responsive updates and changes below Google Gemini’s quoted freelancer rate, while including security, backups, content updates, technical upkeep, and don’t meter your hours or give you a quota on how many times per month you can contact us. And this is all for just $69/month (or less depending on sales and promotions)! And all of our editing staff are humans who make edits for you… we don’t let our dogs, cats, bots, or even the friendly animals down at the zoo touch any website we are responsible for!

And we do some of the things that ChatGPT says should cost $400-500+ per month, like frequent/same-day updates, priority support, etc. — plus looking back that the “mid-range” of $250-400 we also do blogs, multiple forms, photo galleries, and will work with you to update website text to optimize for key search terms, as well as install any analytics reporting codes you provide for us to install.

Visit our web store to see our designs and sign up for ChiroPage chiropractic website services.