What a law firm website costs, and what keeps costing

The five lines on a law firm quote

Domain, hosting, or the plan that replaces both

The cheapest line, and the easiest one to over-buy. A domain is $12 to $50 a year, or $20 through Squarespace for a .com, .net or .org with specialty extensions at $30 to $70 — and free for the first year on a Squarespace annual plan, with most Wix yearly plans carrying the same domain voucher. Self-managed hosting is $40 to $150 a year. One law firm agency itemises the whole do-it-yourself first year as domain $12 to $50, hosting $40 to $150, an SSL certificate $0 to $70, a template $0 to $150, and apps or integrations $0 to $100, then headlines the total as under $500 — true anywhere near the middle of those ranges, and not at the top, where the same five lines add to $520. A builder plan replaces this line rather than adding to it: Squarespace is $16, $23, $39 and $99 a month billed annually ($25, $36, $56 and $139 month to month) and Wix is $19.77, $29.77, $39.77 and $159.77 on a yearly subscription, which is $192 to $1,917 for the year. One law firm cost guide puts the DIY builder route at $15 to $100 a month; another puts it at $0 upfront for a plain builder or $0 to $500 for an AI one, both $20 to $100 a month. HTTPS should not appear as its own charge.

The build

The widest line here, and the reason two honest quotes can be twenty times apart. A legal web studio publishes four tiers: $3,000 to $5,000 for a modified template, $9,500 to $15,000 semi-custom, $18,000 to $25,000 fully custom, and enterprise work from $40,000 upward, past $100,000. Its own reading of the market is that a good template-designed firm site is $1,000 to $5,000. A second agency prices by who builds it — $1,000 to $5,000 and up for a freelancer, $5,000 to $20,000 and up for a design agency — and then by quality band: $10,000 to $15,000 low-tier, $15,000 to $25,000 mid-tier, $25,000 and up high-tier. A third gives the floors: a freelancer from $1,000, an agency that works only on law firm websites from $2,500, a general agency from $5,000. The number nobody has to interpret is a published package price: $12,938 one time, or $599 a month for 24 months, which is $14,376 — $1,438 more to spread it. And the benchmark to hold all of them against: most solo and small firms pay $1,000 to $10,000 upfront for a templated or semi-custom site. Six things decide where you land: page count and how many are practice-area pages, template or original design, integrated intake and scheduling or merely a link out, who writes the copy, revision rounds, and the monthly fee afterward.

A page for every practice area

The line that separates a firm site from a brochure, and it is priced by the page. Professional legal copywriting is $200 to $400 a page, so eight practice areas is $1,600 to $3,200 of writing before the home page exists. Another law firm agency quotes content creation at $50 to $25,000 a page — less a range than an admission that "a page" covers everything from a paragraph to a researched guide, so ask which one is on the quote. Then the ongoing half: SEO articles for law firms are $200 to $500 each, with at least four a month recommended, which is $800 to $2,000 a month or $9,600 to $24,000 a year. None of it is needed to open. Four pages will carry a firm through its first year: what you practise, who the attorneys are, what a first consultation costs and how long it lasts, and how to reach you. That is what the Law Firm starting point here opens with — four consultation types each carrying a fee and a length, three attorneys with the days they are available, a practice-areas page and a three-question FAQ.

Answering the call the website produced

The legal trade's version of a booking system, and the line most cost guides leave out. A 24/7 intake service that answers the site's calls and chats is $300 a month for 30 calls, $810 for 90 and $2,100 for 300, with overage at $8.50 to $11.50 a call — $10, $9 and $7 a call respectively, so the tier buys the discount and the volume is what you are committing to. Feeding the same phone are the directories: a premium Justia listing is $100 to $300 a month and up, while FindLaw sells bundled attorney marketing packages at $2,000 to $10,000 a month and up. That is a twenty-fold gap between two lines that look alike on an invoice, so make the seller say what the expensive one does that the cheap one does not. If you would rather the consultation requests arrive on your own site, that is a plan question here: Storefront Pro is where bookings and online ordering go live on the published site, and Storefront builds and previews them. The Law Firm starting point states the consultation fee on the page, so a prospective client reads the number before they call. Where a site does take cards, it uses your own live Stripe keys — the money lands in your account rather than passing through ours, and we take no share of it.

Upkeep, and the retainer underneath it

Maintenance is quoted three ways and they do not agree. One law firm agency sells hosting and maintenance together as a $25 to $100 a month add-on, and notes that maintenance alone runs $100 to $200 at some competitors. A second puts it at $200 to $5,000 a month with an agency, $20 to $75 an hour with a freelancer, and $50 to $5,000 as the whole spread. Ask what one change costs before you sign rather than after — a fee page nobody wants to pay to edit is a fee page that goes stale. Then the retainer that dwarfs the website itself: law firm SEO is $500 to $1,500 a month for a boutique of one to three attorneys, $2,000 to $5,000 for a mid-sized firm, $5,000 to $15,000 and up for a large or regional one, and $5,000 to $20,000 in a competitive big-metro practice area. Twelve months at the boutique rate is $6,000 to $18,000, against a $3,000 to $5,000 template build. The site is the smaller purchase, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling you the site. Two exits worth knowing about if you would rather stop paying and keep what you have: Storefront Pro includes the site source download, and the desktop LocalSite Studio is a one time payment with no monthly fee that exports the project as often as you like. Either way the test is the same — can you change a consultation fee yourself, from a phone, between hearings?

Three routes to the same firm website

A builder subscription

One plan, one bill, hosting and the certificate included. Squarespace publishes $16, $23, $39 and $99 a month on annual billing — $25, $36, $56 and $139 month to month — and Wix publishes $19.77 through $159.77 on a yearly subscription, both giving the first year of a custom domain on most annual plans. Naratake is this shape too: 40 industry starting points, of which the Law Firm one opens with four priced consultation types, three attorneys and their weekly availability, a practice-areas page and a three-question FAQ across four pages, plus 15 design styles, 111 components and 66 color sets to make it yours. Every cloud plan connects one custom domain, and published sites are served over HTTPS with nothing for you to install. What no website generator solves on its own is the other two lines on this page — no template writes your practice-area pages, and no plan answers the phone at eleven at night. The other trade is that the platform sets the ceiling, so read what your plan covers before you commit; ours is on the pricing page.

Hiring a designer or a legal marketing agency

You are buying judgment as well as hours, and the distance between $1,000 and $100,000 is mostly which of the two you are getting. An agency that builds only law firm websites starts at $2,500 where a general one starts at $5,000, and the premium is real: it already knows what a practice-area page has to say and which claims your bar association will not allow. A generalist will build you a handsome site and then ask you those questions. Get two numbers, never one — the build fee, and what changing a consultation fee or adding an attorney costs afterward, where routine work is billed at $20 to $75 an hour by a freelancer and $200 to $5,000 a month by an agency. Then three questions before the deposit: whose name the domain is registered in, who holds the hosting login, and whether the site files and content come with you if you leave. The answers should be yours, yours, and yes.

Paying monthly for a site somebody else owns

A large part of this market is sold as a subscription: they build it, host it, update it, and the meter never stops. One legal marketing agency publishes both halves of the same purchase — $12,938 once, or $599 a month for 24 months, which is $14,376. That is $1,438 to spread the cost, which is a defensible thing to buy; what is not defensible is not knowing you bought it. Elsewhere the same shape is $1,000 to $5,000 upfront plus $400 to $1,500 a month for a templated site, and $15,000 to $50,000 and up plus $1,500 to $5,000 a month at the premium end. Two questions decide it: what happens to the site, the domain and the enquiry history on the day you stop paying, and whether the design is yours or shared with forty other firms in the same state.

What you can strike off the quote

• The directory bundle, bought before anything has been measured. A premium Justia listing is $100 to $300 a month and up; a bundled FindLaw attorney marketing package is $2,000 to $10,000 a month and up. Both put your firm in a directory. Start at the bottom of that range, count for two quarters where the calls actually came from, and buy the expensive one with evidence rather than with the urgency that came free with the pitch.
• The enterprise tier, at a firm that is not an enterprise. A legal web studio starts its enterprise projects at $40,000 and the published market runs past $100,000; those numbers are priced for a multi-office firm with a marketing department. The same studio's modified-template tier is $3,000 to $5,000, and its own read on the market is that a good template-designed firm site is $1,000 to $5,000. Start there, and buy the redesign when a real constraint appears rather than when a proposal describes one.
• A page for every practice area before anyone has read one. Legal copy is $200 to $400 a page, so a twenty-area list is $4,000 to $8,000 of writing commissioned on a guess. Publish the four your intake line already answers questions about, watch which get read, and buy the fifth when a client asks for it. The blog is the same decision: four articles a month at $200 to $500 each is $9,600 to $24,000 a year, and that is a call to make once the site is earning, not before it exists.
• Charges that should not be on the quote at all. An SSL certificate as its own line — one law firm agency still itemises it at $0 to $70, and $0 has been the going rate for a decade. A guaranteed search ranking: nobody controls the results, so nobody can promise a position, and a firm has more to lose than most from a claim it cannot substantiate. And a custom-built consultation form, when a standard one with the same fields already ships inside an industry template.

Questions people ask about the price