How Much Does a Website Cost for a New Business in Australia?

The website is one of several costs that land in a new business's first few weeks. Here's how it sits next to the registrations, using government fees in force from 1 July 2026 and our own prices:

A sole trader with a registered business name and a one-page site would spend about $826 in the first year: $47 for the name, $399 for the site, about $20 for the domain and $360 for twelve months of hosting. Swap in the three-page site and it's about $1,326. Setting up as a company adds the registration and review fees on top. If you're starting as a sole trader, our guide to a website for a new ABN covers which of these to sort first, and in what order.

Plenty of businesses are in the same position as yours. The ABS counted 460,461 business entries in 2025–26, against 375,331 exits. Of the 2,814,778 businesses actively trading at 30 June 2026, 996,203 employed staff, which means nearly two in three had no employees at all. Many new businesses start as one person, or a couple of people, working out what customers will pay for.

That's the argument for a small first site. In the first months, prices move, one service turns out to be popular and another gets dropped, and the photos improve as the work piles up. A one-page site is cheap to get wrong and quick to correct; with our hosting, editing words and photos on it is included, however often your offer changes. Once you can see which services people actually ask about, those can become pages of their own, each quoted before we start.

The opposite approach, spending several thousand dollars on an eight-page site before the first invoice goes out, often means paying to describe services you'll later rename or drop.

You must register for GST once your GST turnover reaches $75,000, and below that you can choose whether to register. Business.gov.au points out the catch for businesses that don't: you also can't claim GST credits on your business purchases. (Taxi and rideshare drivers are the exception, since they have to register whatever their turnover.)

So if you're not registered, a quote of $2,000 plus GST costs you $2,200, with no credit to claim back later. Registered businesses can compare quotes on their pre-GST figures; unregistered ones should compare the full amount. We aren't registered for GST, so our prices carry none, and $399 is what you pay whichever side of the threshold you're on.

If you're launching with products, an online store changes the budget more than the page count does. Ours cost $799 for up to 25 products with one payment gateway and basic order management, or $1,999 for unlimited products, several payment options, customer accounts and advanced shipping. Against the guide's $5,000 starting point for stores, the smaller one suits a business testing a short range before committing to stock.

Service businesses that run on appointments have two routes. If you already use a booking tool such as Calendly, Fresha or Cliniko, we link it from the site, so customers book in the system you manage your day from. If you want booking and payment built into the website itself, we build that too, quoted per job once we know how your appointments work.

The ATO's ruling on commercial websites, TR 2016/3, treats the cost of acquiring or developing a website, for a new or existing business, as capital expenditure, which may be deductible over time under the capital allowance rules rather than in one go. Web hosting and other periodic fees are revenue expenses, deductible over the period they relate to, and so is the cost of maintaining a site. The ruling also covers the small business entity rules, which can change how and when a claim is made.

How that applies to your business is a question for your accountant or registered tax agent, not for us. On our side, the build is a single payment once you approve the draft and hosting is a separate monthly charge, so the two are easy to keep apart in your records.