The quote turns on how much of the workshop gets priced
A garage owner asking what a website costs is usually asking something narrower without realising it: how much of the ramp list has to appear as a number on a page. Six published jobs and a booking button is a different build from a menu split by engine size that you reprice yourself whenever parts move. That gap moves the figure far more than page count, and much more than how the thing looks.
Most garages want Essentials, at $500
An independent garage needs three things working: booking that beats the phone, a price menu, and pages that prove you are not the garage people fear. Essentials covers exactly that. Up to eight pages, live in about two weeks, two rounds of changes.
Eight pages is more than it sounds, because a workshop needs fewer than its owner expects:
- A first screen naming what you fix and the town you fix it in, booking button on it
- One page of published prices, for the jobs you are willing to publish
- A page on how you quote and how you get authorisation before touching anything extra
- Servicing, plus a page each for the two or three repairs you want found
- The bays, and the people standing in them
- Contact, hours, and where a driver actually leaves the car
That is the whole job for a workshop whose customers live within a few miles. Money that would go into pages nobody opens is better spent shooting your own bays.
When it is worth stepping up to Complete, at $1,500
Complete is up to twenty pages, live in about four weeks, four rounds of changes, and the booking is wired into your diary rather than landing in an inbox. For a garage the extra scope earns its keep in three places and nowhere else:
- Price tables you edit yourself, by engine size, without asking anyone — which matters the week a supplier moves and your published numbers go stale
- A page per job instead of one shared repairs page, when cambelts and clutches are searches you want separately
- A second workshop, with its own address, hours, diary and directions
If none of those three describe you, Complete is scope you would pay to leave empty.
Where the booking sits in the price
On a new Complete site the booking setup is part of it: the system chosen around how the ramps actually fill, connected to your diary, reminders on, and the confirmation emails tested so they arrive rather than sit in a spam folder. Adding booking to a site you already have is quoted in a day and normally takes about a week.
Your garage software is a separate bill you pay directly, whichever one you run. We do not resell it and we add nothing on top.
If there is already a site
The honest first step on an inherited garage site is finding out whether it is worth keeping. A Diagnosis is $299 with the report in three days: what is broken in plain words, what each repair costs, and whether to fix or start again. Diagnosis and fix is $799 and usually two weeks. A rebuild gets quoted after that report, never before it.
The monthly bill after launch
- Your domain, renewed yearly and registered in your own name
- Your garage software subscription, paid direct to whoever supplies it
- Hosting
- A care plan, if updates, backups and price changes should be someone else's job: Basic at $99/mo, Growth at $249/mo which includes four hours of changes and price-list updates, Scale at $499/mo
A garage price list is not a document you write once. A stale published price is worse than no published price, which is the argument for a care plan here rather than anywhere else.
Five things that actually move the number
- How many jobs go on the price page, and whether each splits by engine size
- Whether you need to edit those numbers yourself or send them over
- Whether registration lookup already exists in the software you run, or has to be added
- How much real workshop and team photography exists, or whether a shoot happens first
- Whether courtesy cars, collection and delivery need explaining, and how many accreditations have to be shown and linked
Nothing about visual complexity is on that list. A quote that prices it heavily is pricing the wrong half of the job.
Where this sits
Our independent garage websites are built to that shape at a fixed price. To judge the site you have now, run the garage website checklist, or read why your garage site gets no bookings.