Is a free template enough for a contractor website?

For most small contractors, yes. A free Framer template covers the pages a contractor needs — services, service areas, work proof, and a quote form — and you can publish it yourself. You pay Framer only when you want a custom domain.

What does Framer itself cost?

As of October 2026, Framer's free plan publishes on a framer.website subdomain; the Basic plan is $10/month billed yearly with a custom domain, and Pro is $30/month with redirects, staging, and bigger CMS limits.

What does a freelancer charge to finish a template?

Typically a few hundred to a couple of thousand dollars, depending on how much copy, photography, and layout work you hand over. The template removes the design and build, which is where most of the money goes.

What does an agency build cost?

Commonly $3,000–$10,000+ for a small contractor site, and more when booking systems or unusual functionality are involved. It is worth it when your requirements genuinely do not exist off the shelf.

What ongoing costs should a contractor expect?

A domain (roughly $10–20/year), the Framer plan, and anything you connect — a booking tool, email, or review widget. There are no plugin licenses or security patches to maintain.

What a contractor website costs in 2026

Elliot Li · October 16, 2026 · 5 min read

framer · construction · pricing · guide

Top picks

1
A free contractor template
Drywall, Chimney sweep, and Pressure washing — complete sites, free to remix.
2
Done-for-you finishing
Hand over the copy, photos, and fiddly bits — keep the template economics.
3
Framer pricing
Check the plan table before you budget — the numbers move.

Comparison

Tool	Cost	Speed	Control	Overall
1Free template, published yourselfCheapest	10	9	6	8.3
2Template plus finishing helpBalanced	7	8	8	7.7
3Agency or custom buildHighest control	3	3	10	5.3

A contractor website in 2026 costs anywhere from nothing to about $10,000 — the difference is how much of the work is yours to define. Most contractors land between $0 (a free template, published themselves) and $2,500 (a template plus someone finishing it). An agency build starts around $3,000 and climbs from there.

That is the short answer. The rest of this guide is the part that decides your number: what actually drives the price, what Framer itself costs, and where contractors most often overspend.

What actually drives the price

Four things set the price of any website. Once you can see them, quotes stop being mysterious:

Pages and structure — five pages you can describe, or a structure that has to be designed from scratch?
Service-area coverage — one page for your town, or a page for every town you serve? Each is content, and someone has to write and wire it.
The quote flow — a plain contact form, or a flow that asks the right qualifying questions and lands in your inbox?
Proof — job photos, reviews, before-and-afters. Cheap to display, expensive to produce.

A good template decides the first and fourth for you. The second and third are where your money either works or leaks.

The three routes to a contractor website

1. A free template, published yourself

There are three free contractor templates here — Drywall, Chimney sweep, and Pressure washing. They’re mine, and they’re free to use. They cover the parts a contractor site actually needs: services with from-prices, service areas, work proof, and a quote form on every page. You swap in your branding, services, and job photos, connect your domain, and publish.

Cost: $0 for the template, plus a Framer plan (see below).
Time: a weekend for most contractors — longer if you are writing every word from scratch.

Free template, published yourself

Pros

Nothing to buy — the template is free to remix and use commercially
The hard parts are already solved: pages, quote flow, mobile layout
No one to brief, no project to manage

Cons

You supply the copy and photography
You do the fiddly finishing yourself
The design stays close to the template

2. A template plus finishing help

This is where most small contractors actually land. You keep the template economics and hand over the parts that eat weekends: copy, photo selection, layout polish, and the wiring. A freelancer typically charges a few hundred to a couple of thousand dollars depending on how much you hand over.

You are not paying for a design and a build — those already exist. You are paying for the last 20% that is genuinely yours.

3. An agency or custom build

An agency build for a contractor site commonly runs $3,000–$10,000+, and more when a booking system or unusual functionality is involved. It is the right answer when your requirements genuinely do not exist off the shelf — a bespoke quoting tool, multi-branch logic, or a design that is the product.

For a standard “services, areas, proof, quote” site, it is mostly novelty you are paying for.

Agency or custom build

Pros

Exactly the features you need, nothing extra
No ceiling on design or structure
Someone else does all of it

Cons

Costs an order of magnitude more
Weeks to months before launch
Ongoing cost to maintain bespoke work

What Framer itself costs

Framer bills per site, hosting included. As of October 2026:

Plan	Price (yearly billing)	What it means for a contractor site
Free	$0	Publish on a framer.website subdomain — no custom domain
Basic	$10/month	Custom domain, 2 CMS collections, 50 GB bandwidth
Pro	$30/month	10 CMS collections, 100 GB bandwidth, site redirects, staging

Two details trip people up. A custom domain requires a paid plan — that is the line between “a site” and “a link you can put on a truck”. And redirects are a Pro feature, which matters the moment you replace an existing site and old URLs need to keep working. The migration guide covers that in detail.

For most contractors, Basic is enough: services and projects fit comfortably in two CMS collections, and 50 GB of bandwidth covers normal local traffic. If you are migrating, publishing regularly, or running a blog, Pro pays for itself.

Where contractors overspend

A custom build for a five-page site. If your pages are services, areas, about, and contact, you are buying a bespoke version of something that already exists.
Paying monthly for plugin stacks. Form plugins, SEO plugins, security plugins — each has a subscription and each needs updating. A contractor site needs none of them.
“SEO packages” that never touch Google Business Profile. For local search, your profile and reviews outrank almost anything done to the site itself. Money spent there first goes further.
Ecommerce features you will never use. Contractors take quotes, not carts.
Paying a developer for text edits. Every template here is edited visually — if you are paying someone to change your hours, fix the tool, not the invoice.

What to spend the saved money on

The budget a custom build absorbs is better spent on the things only you can supply:

Photography. Ten good job photos beat any layout choice.
Reviews. Ask every satisfied customer, every time. Reviews are the highest-leverage local SEO asset there is.
Google Business Profile. Complete it, post to it, keep it accurate.
Clear copy. What you do, where you work, how to get a quote — in plain words.

How to decide in five minutes

Write down what the site must do, not how it should look.
If everything on the list is common — services, areas, proof, a quote form — start from a free template.
If one item is genuinely unusual, that item decides the route.
Budget for finishing, not just building: photos and copy move the outcome more than the platform does.

Not sure the template route fits? Read the honest review of Framer for contractors, compare it against the other builders, or ask about a done-for-you finish. For the general version of this guide, see what a website costs in 2026.

Questions, answered

Is a free template enough for a contractor website?: For most small contractors, yes. A free Framer template covers the pages a contractor needs — services, service areas, work proof, and a quote form — and you can publish it yourself. You pay Framer only when you want a custom domain.
What does Framer itself cost?: As of October 2026, Framer's free plan publishes on a framer.website subdomain; the Basic plan is $10/month billed yearly with a custom domain, and Pro is $30/month with redirects, staging, and bigger CMS limits.
What does a freelancer charge to finish a template?: Typically a few hundred to a couple of thousand dollars, depending on how much copy, photography, and layout work you hand over. The template removes the design and build, which is where most of the money goes.
What does an agency build cost?: Commonly $3,000–$10,000+ for a small contractor site, and more when booking systems or unusual functionality are involved. It is worth it when your requirements genuinely do not exist off the shelf.
What ongoing costs should a contractor expect?: A domain (roughly $10–20/year), the Framer plan, and anything you connect — a booking tool, email, or review widget. There are no plugin licenses or security patches to maintain.