How Much Does a Website Cost in Cairns?
Prices published for Cairns businesses run from $995 for a single page to $20,000 and more for an online store or custom features, and a national cost guide puts a tour operator's booking site as high as $40,000. Here's what Far North Queensland businesses are quoted, what pushes the price up, and what we charge.
- From $399, no GST added
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What Cairns web designers publish
Few of the Cairns providers we looked at put prices on their websites. The table brings together what three of them were showing in October 2026 (one in an article first published in March 2025), plus the Cairns figures from a national cost-guide site. None of the three providers says whether its figures include GST, and the cost guide doesn't either, so ask before you compare.
| Option | Published price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Provider pitching to Cairns businesses, starter | From $995 | One long-scroll page with contact details and a standard layout; domain and hosting extra |
| The same provider, mid package | From $2,495 | Five pages, custom design, contact form and a content management system |
| The same provider, larger package | From $5,995 | Ten pages with e-commerce |
| Sheridan Street studio's rough guide, template | Under $1,500 | A template with your logo added |
| The same studio, small business site | $3,000–$8,000 | Bespoke design, built for mobile first, basic search groundwork |
| The same studio, larger sites | $8,000–$20,000+ | Bigger sites, online stores and custom functionality |
| Studio in Bungalow, its guide to a typical FNQ small business site | Typically from $2,500–$5,000 | Strategy, design, build, mobile layout, basic search set-up and training; 4–8 weeks |
| Small business site (national cost guide) | $2,000–$6,000 | 5–10 pages on a proven platform |
| Integrated site (national cost guide) | $15,000–$40,000 | Bookings, memberships or CRM connections |
| WebCraft Studio | $399, $899 or $1,499 | One page, up to 3 or up to 8 pages, hand-coded, no GST added |
The first provider calls its list an indicative guide and says a formal quote follows once a design brief is settled. That's normal for the industry: package prices are a starting point, and the brief decides the final figure.
A regional city with capital-city price bands
It's easy to assume a website costs less in a regional city. The published figures don't bear that out. The national cost guide lists the same five price bands for Cairns as it does for Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Newcastle. The Sheridan Street studio, which says it has built Cairns websites since 2007, bases its rough guide on what it sees quoted around town, and its $3,000–$8,000 for a professionally designed small business site overlaps the guide's $2,000–$6,000 band and runs into the custom tier above it.
Our reading is that distance from the capitals doesn't do much to the price. Cairns is about 1,695 km north-north-west of Brisbane, but a website can be bought from anywhere, and the published figures move with scope rather than postcode: how many pages, which features, and how much of the content the provider has to create.
Why tour and accommodation sites cost more
Tourism is a big part of the Cairns economy. Tourism Tropical North Queensland's chief executive put international visitor spending in the region at a record $1.3 billion in the year to March 2026, up 27.6% on the year before, as TTNQ released its 2025–26 annual report. Tour and accommodation operators chasing that spending tend to need sites that land in the cost guide's upper bands.
The cost guide's Cairns page puts a tour operator's booking site in its $15,000–$40,000 integrated band, and says several tour types, pages in other languages and links to agent or channel systems push it towards the upper end. Each of those takes design and testing, and the booking engine usually carries its own subscription on top.
Not every operator needs all of that on day one. Cape Fishing Charters, one of our clients at Cape Jervis in South Australia, takes booking requests and gift voucher requests through a one-page site that also has a catch photo gallery, an FAQ, reviews and a map. A request form like that can suit a smaller operator. If you need customers to pick a date and pay on the spot, we build online booking and payment systems into the site and quote them per job, or we link a booking tool you already run, such as Rezdy or Calendly.
The wet season and the price of changes
Cairns has a wet season from about November to May and a drier season from June to October. For many businesses that can mean regular website edits: wet-season hours, tours that stop running, a road closure notice, a new price list for the dry-season peak. On a site where changes are billed by the hour, those edits add up. One agency's 2026 price guide puts agency rates for content updates at $150–$200 an hour.
For sites we build, hosting is $30 a month and covers unlimited text and image changes on your existing pages, so a changed timetable or a seasonal notice is an email to us rather than an invoice. New pages or new features are quoted before we start them. We reply within 24 hours, which matters when plans change at short notice.
Running costs in Far North Queensland
The studio in Bungalow puts hosting at typically $200–$600 a year and a domain at $20–$50 a year. The cost guide adds booking engine subscriptions, payment provider fees, paid plugins and product photography to the list of costs that sit outside the build. Here is the first year with us for each size of site:
| Item | One page | Up to 3 pages | Up to 8 pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build | $399 | $899 | $1,499 |
| Hosting, 12 months at $30 | $360 | $360 | $360 |
| Domain, about $20 a year | $20 | $20 | $20 |
| First year | About $779 | About $1,279 | About $1,879 |
From the second year, it's $360 for hosting plus the domain. No GST is added to any of it. When you put another quote beside these figures, add its hosting, any yearly licences and what it charges for changes. Our article on what hosting should include has a checklist.
A local studio or a team down south?
The cost guide's Cairns page makes a useful point about remote providers: video workshops can sit inside the fee, but a visit to your premises for a photo shoot or staff training may be billed as travel. That's worth asking about whoever you choose.
We don't travel to Cairns. Everything runs by phone and email from our office in Adelaide, and we don't take photos, so the pictures on your site come from you. Phone photos of your boat, shopfront, team or finished jobs work well, and having them ready means nobody has to be paid to take them. If you'd rather have someone walk through your premises, photograph your tours and train your staff in person, a Cairns studio that offers those services is the better fit, and the higher price pays for them.
Low-cost digital advice in Queensland
The federal Digital Solutions program offers small businesses and sole traders free workshops and webinars on topics such as social media and selling online, business software and cyber security, plus up to five hours of one-on-one advice for a small fee. It's for sole traders and businesses with fewer than 20 full-time-equivalent staff, and business.gov.au names BUSY Business as the Queensland provider. Separately, business.gov.au lists Cairns Regional Council as a free contact for information on business support and advice, in person at Spence Street or by phone. Check with either for current sessions and any fees. Both are a sensible first stop if you're not yet sure what your website should do.
Working with us from Cairns
To be upfront, we don't have clients in Cairns or Far North Queensland yet. Our Queensland clients include Queensland Dance & Performing Arts on Brisbane's Bayside, whose site carries a class timetable and an online enrolment form, and M.J. Debney Plumbing & Gas, whose single-page site has a 13-photo gallery that swipes on a phone. A Cairns project runs the way our other projects outside Adelaide do: words and photos by email, a draft link to check, and changes by phone or email until you're happy.
Tony Bleijswijk described that part of the process in a Google review: “He listened to my feedback and made no hesitations to revise and adjust my website until we were completely happy with it.” You pay nothing until you approve the draft, and if you decide not to go ahead, you owe nothing.
What we charge Cairns businesses
Compare with a long-scroll starter
One page
$399
One scrolling page with what you do, the suburbs or reef trips you cover, photos, reviews, an enquiry form and tap-to-call. Domain and business email set up.
Up to 3 pages
$899
A home page plus pages for your services or tours and your story or contact details, with a photo gallery. Suits a cafe, salon, clinic or trade.
Up to 8 pages
$1,499
Room for a page per tour, service or area, from the northern beaches to Gordonvale, plus custom forms and visitor stats.
- Payment. No deposit. We build your draft first, you ask for as many changes as you like, and you pay once you approve it. If you don't go ahead, you owe nothing.
- GST. WebCraft Studio isn't registered for GST, so no GST is added.
- Timing. Most sites are live within 5–10 days of us getting your words and photos; bigger sites (up to 8 pages) take 2–3 weeks.
- Hosting. After launch, hosting is $30 a month: hosting, security monitoring, backups, email support and unlimited text and image changes on your existing pages. New pages or features are quoted first. No contract, cancel anytime.
- Domain and email. We register your domain in your name (about $20 a year), connect it to your site and set up your business email.
Cairns website cost questions
What does a small business website cost in Cairns?
Published Cairns prices start at $995 for a single long-scroll page from one provider, with fuller small business sites at $2,495 to $8,000 depending on the studio. Bigger sites, online stores and custom features run from $8,000 to $20,000 and more, and a national cost guide puts tour booking sites at up to $40,000. Ours are $399, $899 or $1,499 by page count, with no GST added.
Are Cairns web designers cheaper than Brisbane ones?
Not noticeably, going by what's published. A national cost guide lists the same price bands for Cairns as for Brisbane, and a long-standing Cairns studio says small business sites around town are quoted at $3,000–$8,000, which overlaps those bands. Our prices are the same in Cairns as in Brisbane or Adelaide.
Can tourists book and pay for tours on our website?
Yes. We build online booking and payment systems into a site and quote them per job once we know how your tours and departures work. If you already use a booking tool such as Rezdy or Calendly, we can link it from your pages instead.
Who updates the site when our hours change for the wet season?
We do. Text and image changes on your existing pages are included in the $30 monthly hosting, so you email us the new hours or notice and we make the change. New pages or features are quoted first.
Do you have clients in Cairns?
Not yet. Our current clients are in South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, but none are in Cairns or Far North Queensland. Everyone outside Adelaide works with us by phone and email, which is how a Cairns project would run.
Do we have to supply our own words and photos?
Yes. You send the words and photos and we arrange them into the pages; we don't write copy or take photos. If you don't have a logo, we'll help with one at no charge.
More for Cairns and Far North Queensland
- Website designer for Cairns
- Pricing and what each package includes
- Websites for tradies in Cairns
- Website design for plumbers in Cairns
- What a small business website costs in Australia
- Does website cost depend on your city?
- What a $30 hosting fee should include
- A website with its own booking page
- Websites for regional and small-town businesses
- Website costs in Brisbane
- Website costs on the Gold Coast
Get a fixed quote for your Cairns website
Tell us what you do, where around Cairns you work and whether customers need to book, enquire or call. We'll send a fixed price, build the draft, and you pay only once you're happy with it.
We reply within 24 hours. Prefer email? info@webcraftstudio.com.au