Frequently asked questions about it & digital

A template-based site on WordPress, Squarespace or Webflow runs $2,000–6,000. A custom build from an agency costs $8,000–30,000. Budget separately for hosting at $15–60 a month and maintenance at $150–700 a month, and ask whether copywriting and photography are included — they're the usual reason a quote goes over.

Hourly break-fix support runs $90–$175/hr. Most small businesses do better on a managed plan at $75–150 per user per month, which covers monitoring, patching, endpoint protection, backup and a written response-time guarantee. Read the SLA for what counts as an emergency and what after-hours work costs.

A technical audit, keyword research, on-page work on titles, structure and internal links, content planning, digital PR or link acquisition, and monthly reporting. Retainers run $1,000–5,000 a month, and local businesses should insist Google Business Profile work is in scope. Expect four to six months before results compound.

A focused MVP costs $25,000–70,000. A complex app with a backend, payments and an admin portal runs $80,000–300,000 or more. Cross-platform frameworks such as React Native or Flutter typically save about 30% against separate native builds. Add App Store and Play Store fees plus ongoing maintenance at 15–20% of build cost a year.

State laws drive this. California's CCPA/CPRA gives residents rights to access, delete and opt out of the sale or sharing of their data, and Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Texas and a growing list have their own statutes with different thresholds. You also need an accessible site under the ADA and a privacy notice that matches what your tracking actually does. A basic compliance review costs $1,500–5,000.

WordPress is fast, cheap and easy to edit, but it gets fragile once you bolt on complex workflows. A custom build offers better performance, security and flexibility but needs a developer for changes. A middle path is a headless CMS such as Sanity or Contentful paired with a modern front end.

Apply security patches monthly and critical ones immediately. Publish or refresh content at least once or twice a month so search engines keep crawling the site, and plan a redesign every three or four years. Always take a backup before updating.

Most small firms only need SaaS: Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace from about $6–20 per user per month covers email, documents, video calls and basic backup. Infrastructure platforms such as AWS or Azure make sense once you host your own application or handle large data volumes.

Turn on multi-factor authentication everywhere, keep systems patched, run endpoint protection, hold tested offline backups, and train staff on phishing. Plans that bundle ransomware protection and monitoring cost $10–40 per user per month. Following the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and carrying cyber liability insurance is increasingly what larger clients ask to see.

Designers shape the look, structure and user experience, usually in Figma. Developers build the working site in code or a CMS and handle performance, accessibility and integrations. A full-service agency has both, and small projects often use a designer plus a freelance developer.