What You Actually Get for $130 a Month

When I tell a business owner in Erie that I build custom websites for $130 a month with $0 down, I usually get one of two reactions. Either they think there is a catch hidden in the fine print, or they assume I am just plugging their business name into a cheap template.

Neither one is true. I price my work this way because most small businesses do not want to write a $3,800 check on day one just to get a decent website online. A painter, an auto shop, or a local contractor would rather keep that cash in the bank for materials, equipment, or payroll and pay a flat, predictable monthly bill instead.

If you are looking at the $130 a month plan on my pricing page, this is the exact breakdown of what you get, what you do not get, and how the whole thing works.

First, What You Are Actually Getting Built

You are not getting a WordPress theme or a drag and drop Wix page. Every site I build is written by hand in clean code from the ground up.

For a standard small business build, the $130 a month plan covers up to five pages. For most local businesses, that looks like:

1. Home page: A clear overview of who you are, what you do, where you work, and how to contact you.
2. About page: Your background, your credentials or licenses, and why someone in Erie County should trust you over the next guy.
3. Services page: A breakdown of the main work you do so customers know right away if you can solve their problem.
4. Gallery or Past Work page: Real photos of your jobs, your shop, or your results, sized properly so they do not slow the site down.
5. Contact page: Your phone number, hours, service area, and a contact form that goes straight to your email inbox.

If you do a few distinct jobs that people search for separately, like a plumber who does both emergency drain cleaning and water heater installs, we can use those five pages to give your biggest services their own dedicated pages. You can read more about how I structure builds on my web design page.

Hosting Is Included

A lot of web designers hand you a finished site and then tell you to go set up your own hosting account with a third party company for another $20 to $50 a month. On the $130 plan, hosting is already built into the price. I handle the servers, the security certificates, and the technical setup so you never have to log into a hosting dashboard or figure out why a certificate expired.

Unlimited Edits Are Included

This is the part most people actually use the most. When you build a site yourself or pay someone a one time fee to build it and walk away, the website usually sits untouched for five years because nobody has time to update it.

On the monthly plan, if you change your winter hours, hire a new tech, buy a new truck, change your pricing, or finish a job you want photos of on the site, you just text or email me. I make the changes for you at no extra charge. You do not have to learn how to use a dashboard, and you do not have to worry about accidentally breaking a layout while trying to swap out a picture.

Basic On-Page SEO Is Built In

Some agencies try to charge extra just to set up your page titles and headings properly. I do not do that. Every site I build comes with the technical SEO foundation already in place:

• Clean HTML structure with headings in the right order
• Fast load times on both phones and desktops
• Local business schema markup so Google knows what you do and where you are located
• A proper sitemap and canonical tags

For a lot of trades and small businesses in smaller towns around Erie County, that foundation paired with a solid Google Business Profile is enough to start showing up locally. If you are in a tighter market and want ongoing monthly SEO campaigns or Google Ads management, I offer those separately, but I will tell you upfront if you actually need them.

What Costs Extra

I keep my pricing simple so you never get a surprise invoice, which also means being clear about what sits outside the base five page build:

• Extra pages ($100 per page one time): If your business needs eight pages instead of five so we can build individual pages for every service or town you cover, each page after the first five is a flat $100 one time fee.
• Adding a blog ($250 one time): If you want a blog section set up on your site so you can publish articles or project updates, that is a one time $250 setup.
• Online stores (starting at $8,000): The $130 a month plan is built for service businesses and local companies that need leads, phone calls, and quote requests. Full e-commerce builds with product catalogs, shipping, and checkout systems are a completely different scope and start at $8,000.

How the 12-Month Commitment Works

The $130 a month plan requires a 12-month minimum commitment. Because I charge $0 down and spend weeks writing and designing your site from scratch, I take a loss on the build upfront and earn it back over the first year.

After your first 12 months are up, the agreement goes month to month. You can stay on the plan as long as you want and keep getting hosting, support, and unlimited edits, or you can cancel anytime.

The one important rule to understand upfront is ownership: on the $130 monthly plan, you are leasing the website, so if you cancel, you do not keep the site code. If you could pay $130 a month for a year and walk away with the full codebase for $1,560, nobody would ever pay my $3,800 lump sum price. You do, however, always keep your domain name and your business content.

Should You Do $130 a Month or $3,800 Upfront?

Both plans get you the exact same hand-coded website, the same speed, and the same build quality. The right choice just comes down to how you want to manage your cash and whether you want me handling your updates long term.

• Pick the $130 a month plan if you want to keep your upfront cost at $0, want hosting and unlimited edits bundled into one flat bill, and want someone in your corner keeping the site updated over time.
• Pick the $3,800 single payment plan if you would rather pay once, own the code outright from day one, and just pay $25 a month for hosting (with the option to add unlimited edits for $50 a month whenever you want them).

If you have questions about where your business fits or want to talk through how many pages you actually need, take a look at the full breakdown on my pricing page or give me a call directly.