What our $999 website build includes, and what it leaves out

The number is the easy part. $999, one time, printed on the page where anyone can read it before they ever call us.

The harder question is the one people are too polite to ask on a first call. What does that actually cover, and what shows up on a bill later.

So here is the list, taken straight off our own pricing section, with what each line means for your business instead of what it means to a web developer. Then the parts it does not cover, because that half is what costs people money when nobody says it out loud.

The seven lines, and what each one does for you

• Your domain connected and site launched. We point the web address at the new site, so anyone who reaches that address lands there. The list says connected. It does not say bought, so if you do not own an address yet, ask who is paying for it before you sign anything.
• Design refined with you until it's right. The preview you saw is a first draft. Layout, colors, photos, the wording on the services page — you tell us what is wrong and we change it before it goes live.
• Working contact forms with instant lead alerts. Someone fills in your form and you hear about it right away, rather than finding it two weeks later when they have already hired somebody else.
• Click-to-call and call tracking. On a phone your number is a tap, not something a customer has to copy down. And the calls that come through the site get counted, so you can tell whether the site is producing any.
• Local SEO and Google Business Profile setup. Local SEO is the work of turning up when somebody nearby searches for what you sell. Your Google Business Profile is the box with your hours, map pin and reviews that appears beside the map.
• Built to be found by Google and AI assistants. The site is written and built so that Google, and the assistants people now ask for a recommendation, can tell what you do and where you do it.
• One year of hosting included. Hosting is the ongoing cost of keeping the site online. For the first year it is covered.

If I were buying this, the sixth line is the one I would push back on. It describes how the site is built, not a result you can take to the bank. Nobody can promise you a ranking, and nobody can promise that ChatGPT names your business when a customer asks. What that line buys is the groundwork. It does not buy the outcome, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling.

Four things $999 does not cover

None of these are hidden. They sit on other parts of the same page, which is not the same thing as being said.

• Hosting after the first year. The line says one year. Once that year is up, keeping the site online is a cost again. Our own page does not publish what that costs on its own, and that is a gap on our side. Ask us for the number in writing before you launch.
• Monthly content, automatic review requests, and the monthly report. Those are on the monthly plan, not the build. Worth being precise here: the build counts your calls, but the monthly report that tells you about those calls is not part of the build.
• A from-scratch design process. We list that separately as a custom website — a designer and real revisions, starting from a blank page — and it is quoted, not $999.
• Anything that is not a website. An online store, booking software, a customer portal, an internal tool for your office. None of that appears anywhere on the list. Our page says larger projects get quoted after a scoping call, and that is the honest answer rather than a dodge.

The monthly plan, said plainly instead of sold

The Growth System is $400 to $900 a month. It covers hosting, security and updates, monthly content, review requests sent to your customers automatically, work on getting you recommended by AI assistants, and a monthly report of calls, visits and visibility.

Our own FAQ says most businesses add it after the build. I would rather be straight about what that sentence means than let you find out later: the one-time build is not the whole relationship we are hoping for. That is the business model, and you should price us knowing it.

You can also pay the $999, launch, and never buy the monthly plan. The word most in the sentence above is doing real work: it is not all. Choosing that does mean the content on your site stops changing the day nobody is writing it, and that part is yours to handle. Hosting is the other half of it. The build covers the first year. After that, the monthly plan is the only place on our page where hosting carries a price at all, so year two is not a question our price list answers for you.

Who should not buy this

• Your phone is slow for a reason that has nothing to do with your website. If every job you have ever gotten came by word of mouth and you are already booked out, a new site is a nice-to-have. Spend the $999 on whatever is actually holding you back. We would rather tell you that than take it.
• You want to sit with a designer and build it from nothing. Buy the custom build instead. The $999 path starts from a draft we made before we met you, and shaping somebody else's draft is a genuinely different experience from starting at a blank page. Some people want the blank page, and they are not wrong.
• You need the website to do a job, not just describe one. Get the whole job priced first, because in a project like that the website is the small number.

Why the price is on the page at all

Our own home page says most studios send you a proposal. We put one number where anyone can read it because a flat price is checkable. You can hold the seven lines above against what actually lands in your hands and see whether we delivered them.

Our FAQ promises no surprise fees. The way to keep a promise like that is to publish the list, and then be the one who points out what is missing from it.

If you want to see what the $999 would actually produce for your business, we build the preview first and it costs nothing. Or start with a conversation, and ask us about the year-two number.