Most comparable CDS projects are planned around a $12,500 build and $1,500 a month to operate. Focused work can start lower; a genuine enterprise replacement can run much higher. These are planning anchors, not firm prices. Every job is quoted after I review the real scope.
This is not a fixed package menu. The middle number is the planning point for the complete system most comparable businesses need. The other two show what has to be removed or added to move the price.
For an organization-wide, multi-location replacement with a deep migration, a large service-by-market library, custom software or integrations, and an ongoing search and content operation.
Not the standard CDS engagement. This range only applies when the work is genuinely enterprise in scope.
The complete lead system: production website, market-sized search matrix, working forms, analytics, indexing, ongoing content, Google Business Profile operations, and reporting.
The planning point for the complete scope most comparable local-service and clinical-practice projects require.
For a smaller business or narrower market when the search matrix, publishing cadence, number of locations, integrations, and operating load are deliberately reduced.
Same production standard. Less surface area and a smaller recurring workload.
Every project must be quoted. Your written number can be lower or higher because location count, competition, migration risk, content, integrations, design complexity, operating cadence, and timeline all change the work.
Directional scope calculator
Seven choices. No email gate. The result uses Campbell Digital Studio's published pricing anchors; it is a starting point, not a quote.
A focused site starts at $6,000. Most comparable CDS scopes are planned around $12,500 because they need more than a homepage and a contact form: more services, more markets, real proof, migration work, or a tool that helps someone make a decision.
The recurring care plan starts at $1,500 a month. That is the operating work after launch: content, indexing, Google Business Profile operations, monitoring, and a monthly report. A build can stand alone; the care plan exists for businesses that want the site actively operated.
There is no page-count package. Page count comes after the search demand, service area, proof library, and buyer path are understood. A useful page earns its place.
The focused scope is not the standard engagement discounted. It removes work. Here is which work, line by line, so the three numbers above can be compared against something concrete instead of against each other.
| Focused | Core CDS system | Enterprise replacement | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Production website | Full build, same standard | Full build, same standard | Organization-wide replacement |
| Search page matrix | Deliberately small | Sized to the real market | Large service-by-market library |
| Locations covered | One, typically | One to a few | Multi-location |
| Lead forms + delivery | Included | Included | Included |
| Analytics + indexing | Included | Included | Included |
| Migration from an existing site | Light | Scoped to the risk | Deep migration |
| Custom software + integrations | Minimal | As the work requires | Custom software or integrations |
| Ongoing content | Reduced cadence | Ongoing | Ongoing search + content operation |
| Google Business Profile operations | Reduced load | Operated | Operated at scale |
| Reporting | Included | Included | Included |
| Planning anchor | From $6,000 build · from $800/mo | $12,500 build · $1,500/mo | $65K–$95K+ build · operation quoted |
The enterprise range describes what a genuine enterprise replacement costs. It is never presented as a crossed-out value or a savings claim against the standard scope.
A medical practice, HVAC company, and professional firm need different proof, compliance, and conversion paths.
One location serving one town is a different build from several offices or a service area crossing dozens of cities.
A thin local results page needs less depth than a market full of capable competitors with established domains.
The number and quality of pages required comes from the searches worth winning, not an arbitrary page package.
Preserving rankings, mapping redirects, cleaning old URLs, and moving content safely all add real migration work.
Service pages, location pages, case studies, clinical education, and original research each require a different level of source work.
A restrained editorial system and a custom interactive interface do not carry the same design and testing load.
Scheduling, intake, CRM, email delivery, payments, analytics, and outside data sources have to work after launch, not merely appear connected.
A fixed launch date compresses research, review, QA, migration, and deployment into a smaller window.
People budget for how a site looks and are surprised by what it costs to make it say something. On a matrix build, authoring the pages against real per-market data is most of the work — and skipping it is exactly what produces a large site that ranks for nothing.
Building new pages is predictable. Moving an existing site without dropping its rankings is where things go wrong: unmapped URLs, redirect chains, content silently left behind. A site with ten years of accumulated equity costs more to move safely than a new domain costs to start.
The recurring number covers content, indexing, Google Business Profile operations, monitoring, and reporting. Hosting is a rounding error inside it. Anyone comparing a $1,500 operating plan against a $20 hosting bill is comparing two unrelated things.
There is no per-page price here because page count falls out of the search demand and the service area once those are known. A proposal that leads with a page count was written before anyone looked at the market.
Production waits on decisions — approved copy, brand assets, service lists, form recipients, one decision-maker who can sign off. The build rarely runs late for technical reasons. It runs late waiting for a logo file.
The domain, the analytics property, the Google Business Profile, and the code should be in the client's name. Some previous vendors hold all four. Finding that out during a cutover is a bad afternoon; finding it out during intake is a five-minute fix.
This is the part a pricing page usually skips, because the studio writing it is the one selling the expensive option. So here is the honest version, including the case where the cheap option is right.
The most common path to a real build is a cheap one that ran out of room in eighteen months. Everything spent on the first attempt is gone, and the rebuild now carries a migration that the first build made harder than it needed to be.
Cheap rebuilds skip the URL inventory because it is unglamorous and takes hours. The old addresses stop resolving, the rankings that took years to earn go with them, and the drop shows up six weeks later when nobody is connecting it to the launch.
A frequent template failure is a lastmod date that resets to the build date on every deploy, telling Google that every page changed every time anything shipped. Google learns the field is noise and stops using it to prioritize recrawls, so the pages that genuinely changed lose the faster recrawl they had earned. It takes thirty seconds to check on any site, free.
A site with no per-service or per-city structure, no way to publish without a developer, and a slow mobile load gives an SEO budget nothing to work with. The monthly invoice keeps arriving; the rankings do not move. The platform, not the effort, is the constraint.
Forms that route through a plugin to a shared inbox fail without telling anyone. The failure mode is silence, which reads exactly like a slow month. This is the single most expensive defect on a cheap build and the least likely to be noticed.
Sometimes cheap is correct. A brand-new business testing whether an offer works at all should not spend $12,500 finding out. The mistake is not starting cheap. The mistake is staying there after the business has proven it deserves better, and treating the rebuild as an unexpected expense rather than a scheduled one.
One of those checks is free and takes half a minute. Paste any sitemap URL into the sitemap truth checker and it will tell you whether the dates are a real edit history or a build-time timestamp. No account, no email, and it works on a competitor's site as readily as your own.
It is also worth knowing what the local baseline actually is before deciding how much to spend against it. In August 2026 I measured every HVAC contractor I could enumerate in Mobile and Baldwin County — 119 firms — and published the frame and the results. 21.8% have no website at all, 29.4% have no working web presence, and among those that do the median mobile PageSpeed score is 66. Those figures are specific to HVAC and specific to those two counties — they are not a national statistic and they do not describe any other trade. What they establish is that the bar in this market is lower than most owners assume, which is an argument for spending deliberately rather than maximally.
Divide the build cost by the value of one booked job. That is the number of additional jobs the site has to produce across its useful life to pay for itself. Use contribution margin if you know it; use revenue if that is the only honest number you have.
Then discount it twice. Website visits become inquiries at one rate. Inquiries become booked work at another. Use your real close rate, not a flattering guess. That simple math tells you whether the $6,000 floor is rational for this business before a proposal exists.
The useful question is how many additional jobs the site must earn, once.
A form submission became an $8,500 HVAC install in week seven on a domain that did not exist two months earlier.
Source: Resend lead log · owner-confirmed value · 2026
A city-by-service architecture, native content engine, diagnostic tools, and weather-aware conversion paths.
Source: Live sitemap · captured 2026-07-13
A two-location WordPress migration with legacy URLs preserved, project organization, and an on-device color visualizer.
Source: Live sitemap · captured 2026-07-10
Two free artifacts and the industry pages that show what a scope becomes in a specific trade.
Focused builds start at $6,000. Most comparable projects are planned around a $12,500 build and $1,500 per month to operate. Genuine enterprise replacements can carry a $65,000 to $95,000-plus planning range. Every engagement is quoted after the real scope is reviewed.
The floor is for a focused production website with strategy, architecture, copy, design, development, launch, analytics, and working lead delivery. Exact page depth follows the business and market.
Each real location adds search intent, content, proof, schema, conversion paths, and quality checks. The price tracks useful depth and technical responsibility, not decoration.
No. It places a project against published CDS planning anchors. Every job is quoted after the current site, market, content, integrations, operating load, and timeline are reviewed.
The standard operating scope is planned at $1,500 per month. A deliberately smaller cadence and service load can start at $800. Larger multi-location or custom operations are quoted separately.
Because most of the difference is not visible on the screen. The gap is in architecture that can rank, content written against real market data, a migration that preserves existing search equity, lead delivery that actually reaches you, and analytics wired so the result is measurable. A $600 site can look perfectly acceptable and still have none of that. The visible layer converges long before the underlying work does.
Usually the price of the rebuild plus whatever the first site failed to earn while it was live. The recurring pattern: search equity dropped at a migration that skipped the URL inventory, an SEO retainer spent fighting a platform that could not publish or structure content, and lead forms that broke silently and read as a slow quarter. None of that is inevitable at a low price point — but it is common, and it is worth pricing in rather than discovering.
Three checks cost nothing. Load it on a phone on cellular data and time it. Search your business name plus a service you offer and see whether a page dedicated to that service exists. Then run the sitemap through a lastmod check — if every URL claims it changed today, the sitemap is reporting a build timestamp rather than an edit history, which Google eventually learns to disregard. That third one is a reliable proxy for how much care went into everything else.
A build can stand alone, and for some businesses it should. The care plan exists for businesses that want the site actively operated after launch — content published, indexing monitored, the Google Business Profile run on cadence, and a monthly report that says what changed. If nobody internally is going to do that work, a site left alone after launch tends to plateau. If someone will, buy the build and keep the operating budget.
Send the current site, markets, services, integrations, approximate budget, and timeline. I read every inquiry personally. If the scope is a fit, the number is fixed in writing before work starts.
