The range
A salon or barbershop website costs between a few hundred and several thousand, and most of the spread is not about looks. It is about whether the site books appointments itself, loads fast on the phone every client uses, shows current prices, and belongs to you. Here are the bands and what each actually buys.
Band 1: the free booking-platform page, or DIY
Fresha, Booksy and Vagaro give you a public profile page with your services, prices and booking. Squarespace and Wix give you a template you fill in yourself.
Cost: nothing to low hundreds, plus any subscription.
You get: a presentable page, your prices, a booking button. On the platform page, you sit beside competitors and the platform owns the client relationship.
You do not get: your own domain ranking for "hair salon [town]", a gallery that loads fast, stylist pages that book, or anyone to call when it breaks.
Right for: a new chair-renter or a one-person studio in the first year.
Band 2: a template site from a local designer, $1,000 to $3,000
A WordPress theme or builder template with your branding and photos, and a link to your booking platform.
You get: a site that looks like yours, basic SEO fields, a training session.
Usually missing: speed (salon templates are image-heavy and slow on phones), a price list you can edit yourself rather than an image of a card, stylist profiles with their own Book buttons, booking embedded rather than linked, and clarity about who owns the hosting.
Right for: a salon whose clients mostly come by referral and Instagram, and that wants a competent presence.
Band 3: a purpose-built salon site, $3,000 to $8,000
Built around how a salon books: services with prices and durations as records you edit; stylist profiles with Book-with buttons; booking from Fresha, Booksy, Vagaro, Timely or Phorest embedded and deep-linked; a gallery that is fast; a build that passes Google's mobile speed thresholds; structured data for a salon; tracking; everything in your name.
You get: a site that books from every page, ranks for "[service] [town]", and shows the price list clients actually want. Measured by bookings, not visits.
Not usually included: photography, copy unless specified, social media management.
Right for: established salons and barbershops with two or more chairs who want the website to fill them.
Band 4: multi-site groups, $10,000 and up
Salon groups with several locations, franchise brands, membership programmes, e-commerce for products.
After launch
- Hosting: managed WordPress at $20 to $50 a month, or often free for a framework build, in your name.
- Domain: small, annual.
- Booking platform: whatever you pay now; the website does not add to it.
- Maintenance: a care plan at a modest monthly fee, or hourly when something breaks.
- Photography: a half day for the space, the team and the work. Real photos of your salon beat every stock image.
Where the band 3 money goes
- Structured services and prices. A price list as records, so a change is thirty seconds and shows everywhere.
- Stylist profiles that book. Each stylist's page links to their diary.
- Booking done properly. Embedded or deep-linked per service and stylist, tested in Instagram's browser.
- Speed. Gallery images sized and lazy-loaded; the hero prioritised; the site under two seconds on a phone.
- Search foundation and structured data, so you rank for services in your area.
- Tracking. Booking clicks by page and source.
- Ownership. Domain and hosting in your name; a recorded walkthrough.
Band 2 rarely includes more than one of these. They are the parts that fill chairs.
Judging a quote
Compare on scope: which pages, whether prices are editable records, whether stylists have their own booking, which booking platform and whether it is embedded and tested, the speed target, tracking, and who owns the hosting. Then ask to see a salon site they built, on your phone.
What we charge
Our salon sites are band 3 at a fixed price; the scope is on the salon page. If you are in band 1 or 2 and the chairs are not filling from the website, the cost that matters is the client who booked at the salon whose site loaded faster and showed the price.