What the money is buying
A detailing customer wants two things before they will book: to see what their car will look like afterwards, and to know what it costs for their car specifically. Not a range. Their car, which is a large estate, on the package they were looking at.
A site that shows the transformation and prices it by vehicle size takes the booking. The Instagram account that says DM for prices does not. The bands below are what the market charges to build the first one.
Band 1: an Instagram account
Cost: nothing, plus your evenings.
You get: an audience, and genuinely good reach for the work you post.
You do not get: anything that can be found on Google, a price anyone can read, a bookable slot, a deposit, or a customer who arrived while you were asleep. You get DMs asking how much, one at a time, forever.
Right for: the first six months, while you work out your packages. Not a business.
Band 2: a template or builder site, $500 to $1,500 (roughly £400 to £1,200)
A theme with your logo, a gallery, a price list and a contact form.
You get: something findable on Google that shows a price.
Usually missing: packages priced by vehicle size in a table a phone can read, add-ons in the booking flow, deposits, before-and-after pairs organised by service, mobile coverage areas, and honest durability claims on coatings. Template galleries are also usually slow, which matters when the photographs are the product.
Right for: a solo detailer with a small package list who is happy to take bookings by phone.
Band 3: a purpose-built detailing site, $2,000 to $5,000 (roughly £1,600 to £4,000)
Built around the table and the photographs. Packages priced by vehicle size — small, medium, large, van — across your levels, from maintenance wash to full correction and coating, editable by you. Before-and-after pairs by service, compressed to load fast. Booking through Booksy, Fresha, Square Appointments, Acuity or Urable with add-ons and a deposit taken. Mobile areas and drop-off facilities explained. Coating and correction pages with honest durability claims. Google reviews.
You get: a site found for the searches drivers actually make, that prices their car without a message, and that takes a deposit so Saturday morning holds.
Not usually included: photography, unless the quote says so. On a detailing site the photographs are the product, so budget for them.
Right for: an established detailer, mobile or with a unit, who wants the diary filled without answering price DMs.
Band 4: larger builds, $6,000 and up
Several vans with separate coverage areas and availability, a configurator where a customer builds a package and sees the price move, membership or maintenance plans with recurring billing, or a unit with multiple bays needing resource-aware scheduling.
After launch
- Hosting: managed WordPress at $20 to $50 a month, or often free on a framework host, in your name.
- Domain: small, annual.
- Booking: Booksy, Fresha, Square Appointments, Acuity or Urable, free to modest per month.
- Maintenance: a care plan at a monthly fee, which is where the price table and the gallery get kept current.
- Photography: a day at the start, then a habit of shooting every job to a fixed standard.
Where the band 3 money goes
- The price table as editable records, by vehicle size and package level, so a price change is one edit rather than four.
- A gallery built as records, filterable by service, with real compression, because a slow gallery undoes the reason it exists.
- Booking with deposits and add-ons configured properly, which is what stops Saturday no-shows.
- Coating and correction pages with durability claims you can actually stand behind.
- Mobile area pages, so a search for a mobile valet in each town you cover has something to land on.
- Speed, local search foundations and tracking, so you know which page produced the booking.
Reading a quote
Ask five things. Is the price table by vehicle size, and can I edit it myself. Is the gallery built so I can add a job from my phone. Are deposits taken at booking. Do mobile areas get their own pages. Whose name is the domain and hosting in. A quote that cannot answer those is a template quote whatever the figure at the bottom.
Where this sits
Our car detailing websites sit in band 3 at a fixed price, with the size-based price table, the records gallery and booking with deposits included. The wider approach across the trade is on the automotive page. Your work is worth more than a DM. Put a price on it in public.