What a Website Actually Costs in the Turks and Caicos

Here’s the short answer, before anything else. Doing it yourself runs roughly $15 to $40 a month plus your own evenings. A custom professional build for a small business runs roughly $1,500 to $5,000, plus a monthly amount for the keeping. Mine are published and exact: $1,800 to build and $95 a month to care for.

That answer is rarer than it should be. Ask what a website costs here and you’ll mostly hear the same two words: contact us. Nobody in this market publishes prices, so there is no true Turks and Caicos average. The ranges above come from comparable markets, and the exact numbers are mine. I build websites for a living, and I’d rather you know all of this before we ever talk.

The price bands, honestly

Do it yourself. The online builders run roughly $15 to $40 a month, worth checking current pricing. The real cost is your evenings and weekends, and the result depends entirely on your time and your eye.

A template site from a freelancer. Roughly a few hundred dollars up to $1,500 in most markets. Quick, affordable, and what happens after launch depends on the freelancer.

A custom build for a small business. Roughly $1,500 to $5,000. This is where much of the serious small-business work sits. Mine sits here too.

A larger agency. Roughly $5,000 to $15,000 and up, often built for bigger organizations with bigger needs. A resort group belongs in that lane. A one-boat charter does not.

The costs no quote mentions

Whichever door you pick, a website carries running costs someone must pay. Each one is small on its own. Each one is also forever, so check that any quote you compare includes them.

The domain. Roughly $10 to $20 a year for a .com. Watch the cheap-first-year trick: the renewal price is the real price. And whose account the domain sits in matters more than what it costs. I wrote a whole guide on that.

The hosting. From a few dollars to $30 or more a month, depending on where the site lives. Somebody pays it, or the site goes dark.

The email. An address on your own domain runs a few dollars a month per person, and it quietly says real business in a way a free address doesn’t.

The builder subscription. If you go the do-it-yourself route, the $15 to $40 a month never ends. That’s roughly $180 to $480 a year, every year, which is worth knowing before you call it the cheap option.

The payment costs. If the site takes bookings or deposits, the payment company takes its small cut of each transaction. I’ve laid out what taking payments here actually costs in its own guide.

A test you can run at your kitchen table

Three questions. No pitch in the room. Write your answers down, because they decide the budget for you.

1. What must the site actually do for your business?

“Look professional” is not a job. Real jobs sound like this. A visitor searches for a fishing charter tonight and finds you instead of nothing. A guest checks that your villa is real before wiring a deposit. A new resident wants a cleaner and needs your prices and your WhatsApp in two taps. A patient checks the clinic’s hours before driving over.

If your honest answer is “it just needs to exist, because people keep asking if I have one”, write that down too. It’s a real answer, and a cheaper one.

2. Who will keep it current after launch?

A website is not a purchase. It is a thing you keep. Hours change. Prices change. The certificate behind the padlock expires. The contact form breaks quietly and nobody notices until a customer mentions it at the counter. Somebody has to tend all of that.

If the answer is you, be honest about whether you’ll still be doing it in month eight, in high season, when the real work is heavy. If the answer is nobody, the site will slowly start telling lies about your business, and that costs more than it saves.

3. What does one lost customer a month cost you?

Run your own numbers. One lost charter. One empty villa week. One salon chair that sat open on a Saturday. One family that chose another restaurant because your listed hours were wrong. Multiply by twelve. That figure is what a bad or abandoned website quietly costs in a year, and it doesn’t show up on an invoice.

Map your answers to a price

The site just needs to exist, you’ll genuinely tend it yourself, and a lost customer costs you little. Use a do-it-yourself builder. I mean that plainly. Roughly $15 to $40 a month and some patient weekends will get you a page that proves you’re real. That’s the right answer if your work already comes through referrals and repeat customers, if you’re a one-person operation still proving the idea, or if you’re near capacity and couldn’t serve more customers anyway. A $300 template that’s kept current beats a $3,000 site that was never needed, and nobody in my trade should talk you out of it.

The site must win a stranger’s trust, and you won’t be the one tending it. This is the custom band, roughly $1,500 to $5,000, plus a monthly amount for the keeping. The build gets you found on Google and worth trusting once found. The monthly part keeps it healthy: hosted, secure, and current.

The site must take bookings or payments while you sleep. Stay in the custom band and budget a little more for those pieces, or look toward the higher band if the whole business runs through the site.

You are a large organization with many moving parts. The agency band exists for you, and it’s honest money at that scale. If that’s not you, there’s no reason to pay as if it were.

You could stop reading here

If the test pointed you at a builder, go and build. Take your best photos, write the way you talk, and put your hours and your WhatsApp number where nobody can miss them. That advice is free, and it carries you a long way. This guide was written to be useful either way. And if you’re still weighing whether you need a website at all, that question has its own honest answer.

What paying more actually buys

When the higher price is honest, it buys two things. A site shaped around your business instead of a template’s guess about it. And a person who keeps it after launch: updates made, the certificate renewed, hours corrected before the holiday weekend, and someone who answers the same business day if it breaks. A site that was built well and then abandoned still fails, just more slowly. Doing it twice costs more than doing it once and having it looked after.

What I charge

I’ve asked you to be exact, so here’s exact.

Presence is $1,800 to build and $95 a month to care for. It’s for being found and trusted: your pages, your Google Maps and local search setup, the essentials done right.

Growth is $2,800 to build and $150 a month. It’s for putting the site to work once being found isn’t enough.

Platform starts from $4,500 to build and $250 a month. That’s the full toolkit, for the business whose day actually runs through its site.

Online booking is an add-on at $300 plus $35 a month. Online payments, $300 plus $40 a month.

Care at each level covers the hosting, the security, the padlock in the browser bar, up to two content updates a month done within two business days, and a same-business-day response if the site breaks.

The terms are plain too. Half to start, half on approval. Care has a three-month minimum. Two rounds of revisions in a build. And on a standard Setup + Care build, if we reach the first design review and you’re not happy, your deposit is refunded. The domain is registered in your own name and stays yours. And the price to buy the code outright is written into the agreement before you sign, not negotiated after.

Run the test, then take your time

You now know the bands, and you know your own three answers. That’s enough to walk into any conversation, including one with me, with your own numbers already in hand. Everything I build is published openly on this site: the packages, the prices, what each one includes and what happens if you ever want to leave. Read it in your own time, run your own numbers, and when you’re ready, message me on WhatsApp and tell me about your business. No pressure, and no call required just to learn a price.

ConchShell Designs builds and looks after websites for small businesses across the Turks and Caicos and the wider Caribbean. Built with purpose. Kept with care.