How long does it take to build a website?
·First published October 13, 2017
The short answer: about a week for a simple small-business website, two to three weeks for a WordPress site you can edit yourself, and six to twelve weeks at many freelancers and agencies. The long answer depends more on what happens on your side of the project than on ours.
When we first wrote this post in 2017, our honest answer was three to four months. That is no longer true, and the reasons it changed are worth knowing whoever you end up hiring.
Typical website timelines in 2026
- A simple HTML site — a handful of pages that we edit for you: about a week. Ours start at $999.
- A WordPress site with editable content blocks: about two weeks. The extra time goes into the WordPress build and your training session. From $1,750.
- A Beaver Builder site, where you can rearrange whole layouts yourself: about three weeks, because the templates have to be built properly and the training is longer. From $2,500.
- An online store or custom features — bookings, member logins, integrations: these add time and are quoted per project.
Every one of those clocks starts on the day you approve the design and get us your content. That detail matters more than anything else in this post.
Why websites used to take months
A small-business site used to take 30 to 60 hours of hands-on work, spread over three or four months. The hours were never the real bottleneck — the calendar was. Projects queued behind each other, and every stage (design, content, styling, programming, quality checks, launch) waited for an approval before the next one could start. A lot of those months were spent waiting for photos, logins and sign-off.
What changed
AI now does the repetitive part of a build: page structure, markup, schema, first-draft copy — the slog that used to take two weeks. A person still designs the site and checks every page before it goes live. Taking the slog out is what makes a one-week build possible, and it is why a website can start at $999 instead of five thousand.
What AI did not change is the waiting. Which brings us to the four things that still slow a website down.
What slows a website down
Content that isn’t ready
Words and photos are the most common hold-up by far. If you are writing the copy yourself, a page that is “nearly done” can sit for weeks. Either gather it before the build starts, or decide up front to let us interview you and write it.
Too many people who have to say yes
When every draft has to travel round a committee, a one-week build quietly becomes a five-week one. Name one person who can approve the design and the copy, and let them gather everyone else’s opinions first.
Logins nobody can find
Launch day needs access to your domain registrar and, if you are moving an old site, your current hosting. Hunting for a password set up by a former employee in 2014 can cost a week on its own. Find them early — and if you are still choosing a domain, read our tips on buying domain names.
Changing direction halfway
A new idea after the design is approved usually means redoing work that was already finished. Spend an hour before the project starts deciding what the site is for and what you want visitors to do.
How to get your website live faster
- Decide what the site is for. Which pages you need, the one thing you want visitors to do (call, book, buy, ask for a quote), and whether you need anything special like a store, menu or listings.
- Put your logo and photos in one shared folder before the project starts — team, products, premises, work you are proud of.
- Name one decision-maker.
- Reply within a day while the build is running. Every slow reply adds at least that much to the timeline.
- Have your domain login ready before launch week.
Do those five things and the timelines above are realistic. Skip them, and any build — ours included — quietly turns into a month.
Want a website that gets this right?
Websites from $999, live in about a week — designed and checked by a Goober, with someone to call when you need a change.