Real ranges for what website, local SEO, ads, and social media management actually cost right now, so you know if a quote is fair before you sign anything.
The honest answer: it depends on what's bundled in
Most local business owners asking this question have gotten wildly different numbers from different vendors, and it's not because one of them is lying. It's because "website" means different things to different companies. A $30/mo DIY builder and a $500/mo full local-SEO retainer are both technically "a website," and comparing their prices directly is like comparing a bicycle to a truck because they both have wheels.
Here's what the actual market looks like right now, broken down by what you're really paying for.
Website and hosting alone
DIY builders (Wix, Squarespace, and similar) run $16 to $139 a month, but you're doing the design, copywriting, and SEO structure yourself, or paying someone hourly to do it for you later.
Hands-on subscription models, where a real person builds the site, hosts it, and handles updates, typically run $225 to $499 a month. That's the site itself: no SEO campaign, no ad management, no social posting included.
Local SEO, on its own
This is where a lot of business owners get sticker shock. Standalone local SEO retainers for a single-location business in a low-competition market typically run $500 to $1,200 a month. Competitive trades (legal, medical, and increasingly home services in busy metros) can run $2,000 to $10,000+ a month at bigger agencies.
That's not a typo: a lot of businesses are paying more for SEO alone than most people expect to pay for their entire website. If your current site has no dedicated local SEO structure (no Google Business Profile optimization, no local-area pages, no schema markup), you're not saving money by skipping it, you're just not competing for the searches that actually bring calls.
Social media and ads management
Lean, small-business social media packages run $300 to $1,500 a month depending on scope. Basic posting and light community management sits at the bottom of that range; content strategy, copywriting, and analytics push it higher.
Ad management (Google or Meta) is usually a separate fee from your ad spend itself. Typical local-business ad management fees run $500 to $1,500 a month for basic campaign management, with the ad budget on top of that. Be wary of anyone charging less than $500/mo to manage real ad spend well; it's genuinely time-intensive work if it's being done right.
So what should you actually budget?
A reasonable rule of thumb from the home-service marketing world: budget 5 to 10 percent of revenue for marketing, across everything. A business grossing $20,000 a month has a realistic $1,000 to $2,000 monthly marketing budget, total, not just for the website.
If a bundled offer (site plus hosting plus local SEO) is priced meaningfully below $200 to $250 a month, ask specifically what's included in the SEO piece. If it's above $600 to $700 a month for a website-only bundle without ads or social, ask why, since that's above where a genuinely bundled, efficient offer should land.
Common Questions
Is a cheaper website always a worse deal?
Not necessarily, but it usually means less is included. A $50/mo DIY site and a $250/mo managed site with local SEO built in are solving different problems. Compare what's actually included, not just the sticker price.
Should local SEO ever be an optional add-on?
For most local service businesses, no. A site without local SEO structure rarely ranks for the searches that bring calls, so treating it as optional usually just means the core offer doesn't do its job.