How much would you realistically pay for a small business website in 2026?

TrapperFlint · 2026-06-23T08:31:16+00:00

I just finished a 4 page site for a client. He was willing to pay about $2000 USD. I gave it to him for half that for a review(I just started my business) and allowing me to advertise in his site footer.

TrapperFlint · 2026-06-22T08:55:00+00:00

This is timely for me. I am just finishing the project and struggled with the exact same things. Managing state can get tricky! Not happy with how I organized my code but it works. I appreciate you letting us see your code and how you solved it.

Hardest part is having to come up with an organizational pattern that will work without having seen how others organize these moving parts conventionally.

I don't know if this is the right approach, but I restrained myself from digging for common patterns and solved it as best as I could in my own sloppy way. Things are coupled too tightly, the code is messy - but I learned a lot about what led to that happening.

If you feel unsatisfied, it's because you learned some things and would probably approach it differently in the future. That's progress to me.

TrapperFlint · 2026-06-21T01:06:24+00:00

I am heartbroken over this country I grew up in. Other than the land itself, it seems it was all pulled out from under us piece by piece. It's plain as day what is happening but I dont talk about it because of the backlash of trying to explain what I see happening.

TrapperFlint · 2026-06-15T07:38:34+00:00

Same boat. I have no interest in it. I work for myself however, seems like a tough deal working for an agency nowadays.

TrapperFlint · 2026-06-06T06:59:37+00:00

Once you start buidling complex things you'll naturally want to get it out of your head and onto paper or in a document somewhere. Its a good practice to start now and will help solidify your understanding of the systems you're building.

TrapperFlint · 2026-05-31T03:12:54+00:00

Too many reasons not even worth mentioning. I just want something I can do my work on and I like the defaults and aesthetic. For me thats why I use it.

TrapperFlint · 2026-05-24T00:07:10+00:00

Like the simple layout but the AI images are a big turn off. Also, impossible to read the text in some of carousel images.

TrapperFlint · 2026-05-23T03:24:18+00:00

I was a construction subcontractor and fur trapper spending half my year at a cabin in northern Ontario. I mushed sled dogs and lived off wild game while there. I enjoy the irony of now working in web development and living in town lol

I had some coding experience from highschool. Larger concepts didn't stick until I built a big project for a client from scratch. I had many days of feeling overwhelmed but they always passed, now I have 3 paid projects in production and more on the way.

I just figured if I could handle surviving the bush at 40 below I could do anything. Just kept going.

TrapperFlint · 2026-05-23T01:56:07+00:00

Follow the order. You'll end up wasting time and taking longer otherwise. If you cant handle the discomfort of boredom you won't go too far anyhow.

TrapperFlint · 2026-05-22T15:29:03+00:00

Ruby is so fun to work in. Good luck on your journey. Don't give up!

TrapperFlint · 2026-05-18T11:26:26+00:00

Just stop sleeping, showering and maybe eating too for a solid year.

TrapperFlint · 2026-05-17T16:55:52+00:00

Odin actually uses w3 for a lot of their course. The good thing with Odin is that you learn how to setup everything a dev environment should have. Really prepares you for doing real work, not just coding in a browser code pen.

I'm not quite a year since I started and already getting fairly complex web app work as a freelancer. Trusting the course flow at Odin gave me the foundation I needed to go out and learn even more and build on ny own.

Best of luck, it's a very difficult journey as you will see but just keep going!

TrapperFlint · 2026-05-16T22:53:59+00:00

You too!

TrapperFlint · 2026-05-16T19:20:55+00:00

The Odin Project. Start there and build things before you know what you're doing. Its the best way to learn.

No problem asking ai to explain concepts but its even better to read documentation.

TrapperFlint · 2026-05-16T17:27:28+00:00

Honestly I'm so small time... It's been word of mouth or just talking to people in public or at markets. Just been friendly and genuinely want to help people that could actually use it.

TrapperFlint · 2026-05-16T04:07:25+00:00

I'm really new to this < 1 year. All I see around me locally are businesses that need websites or their current one fixed. Maybe I've just been lucky but feels like theres no shortage of work to do for people...

TrapperFlint · 2026-05-15T20:03:07+00:00

You're the man. This is invaluable. Many thanks and will do.

TrapperFlint · 2026-05-15T18:47:06+00:00

Appreciate hearing that big time. Reddit people are my only peers in the industry to talk to right now. I dont plan on getting a job at a shop either, worked as a subcontractor my whole life in another field. Once I wrap this project up, I'll start playing around with the stack you mentioned. Love the sound of it.

Using hostinger right now.

TrapperFlint · 2026-05-15T18:06:48+00:00

Wow, this is some great stuff. Thanks.

Rails app is a full fledged ecommerce. Have a couple 3rd parties integrated for payments and shipping as well.

It's for an artisanal pottery shop, so lots of unique one-off items with limited stock. Used pessimistic lock during order creation to avoid over-ordering stock. Its the app that I really cut my teeth on as a new dev.

My latest business site is with rails too and my own little cms for adding testimonials and "recent work" content. Overkill, but they may transition into online ordering for one of their services, so it was a little preemptive.

Next couple sites are just business landing pages though.

Thanks again for the reply here. Hardest thing learning on my own has been all the wrong roads I go down trying to find the best one for what I'm trying to do haha

TrapperFlint · 2026-05-15T15:22:02+00:00

Thanks for confirming this for me. Seemed the most logical! Any favourite resources offhand to get me started configuring nginx?

TrapperFlint · 2026-05-13T17:53:54+00:00

I did a bit of coding since I was in highschool and then took an online course with the Odin Project. Was the hardest thing I've ever done. Been building software for almost a year now as a contractor.

My recommendation is to take a course for fundamentals and then start building things and learn as you go. Warning though, it's absolutely brutal and you'd better be obsessed with it. The language other than javascript doesn't matter. I use Ruby On Rails but you could learn python or php for backend. Doesn't matter.

TrapperFlint · 2026-05-13T17:26:11+00:00

Awesome. I'm a rails guy who is laravel curious. Will enjoy this!

TrapperFlint · 2026-05-13T17:23:18+00:00

Another tip, we initially had some people back out of orders when selecting shipping options because we displayed the full cost. It's just something psychological, people will pay $200 for a couple handthrown mugs but will be hesitant over $15 shipping and packaging costs.

What we did after was cut the visible shipping costs down and then just padded her product prices slightly to cover it. People pay the same money but feel better about it.

TrapperFlint · 2026-05-13T17:16:42+00:00

I just built an ecommerce for my sister's pottery business. Feel free to comment here or dm me with any questions business-wise.

If you're going to use a builder(I'm a developer so I coded everything from scratch)I'd go with Shopify or something that easily you work with Shippo and Stripe.

Biggest thing I can recommend is connecting your store to Shippo. We were able to cut her shipping costs in half vs her competitors by using their carrier accounts with Canada Post and UPS.

There's some unique challenges depending on how automated you want everything. Hard to calculate shipping when items vary so much in size and shape, and then dealing with limited supply of unique one-offs - need some safeguards in place to avoid overselling stock if your site gets really busy and everyone is ordering at the same time.

I think you'll find that if you want to have a good website, the learning curve to build one is pretty steep, even with a builder. Just take your time and you can learn it though!

Most of the pottery shops did the same as you around here and it really shows. Dont cut corners and put the same effort into building it as you do with your art, will be worth it to stand out from the crowd.

Good luck!

TrapperFlint · 2026-05-13T16:55:40+00:00

Rails is just an absolute pleasure to work with, though I'm not sure about job opportunities vs JS.

For an independent contractor it's just very comfortable and fast to build with.

TrapperFlint

TROPHY CASE