CatalystHub’s $500 website is a custom-designed five-page website, including GST (the 10% goods and services tax), paid once. We write the words for you, and AI-assisted copy is free. Every build has a tap-to-call button and a quote or booking form. You get unlimited revisions, and nothing goes live until you’re 100% happy. Hosting is free on your own account, with no ongoing cost. You own the site, the code, the content and the domain. We set up Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics for free. The site loads in under a second on 4G and scores 95+ on Lighthouse (Google’s speed test) on mobile. Over three years, with the domain, it came to $568.85 in our 3-year cost guide.

Everything in the $500 build

What you get	What it means for you
Five pages, your choice	Typically Home, About, Services, a service detail and Contact. Swap any of them for what fits your business. Privacy and terms pages generally don’t count toward the five.
Custom design	Mobile-first design, built for use on a phone, in sunlight, on patchy 4G.
The words written for you	Copywriting is included. If you have your own words, we help you polish them. If you don’t, we write them. AI-assisted copy is free.
Tap-to-call button	A phone button that rings your business when someone taps it on their mobile.
A quote or booking form	A form with spam protection that sends quote or booking requests straight to your inbox. A live online booking system is part of the Specialist build.
Unlimited revisions	No cap on rounds of changes. Nothing goes live until you’re 100% happy.
Free hosting, no ongoing cost	The site runs on your own Cloudflare account (Cloudflare is the hosting company) on its free tier.
You own everything	Your site, code and content are yours. If we register the domain for you, you’re listed as the owner.
Google and Bing set up	Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics, set up free before launch.
Fast on phones	Loads in under a second on 4G. Lighthouse 95+ on mobile.
Accessibility	Built to WCAG 2.2 AA (explained below).
An editor you can use	Change your words and swap photos yourself, like editing a Word document. No code.
Search basics	SEO (search engine optimisation) for Google and AI search, including schema markup.
Security	Security hardening and vulnerability fixes at launch.
A handover sheet	Every login in plain English: code, domain, hosting, editor and analytics. You get it on Day 7, launch day.

What the jargon means

Tap-to-call and a quote form. A tap-to-call button lets a visitor on a mobile ring you in one tap. The form is for people who’d rather write, and sends their enquiry to your inbox.

Free hosting on your own account. Hosting is the service that keeps your website online. Yours runs on your own Cloudflare account, on Cloudflare’s free plan. Cloudflare says its free plan “provides free SSL, CDN, DDoS protection and more”. SSL is the padlock encryption. A CDN serves copies of your site from data centres near each visitor. DDoS protection guards against floods of fake traffic. Because the account is yours, there’s no hosting bill from us.

Owning your domain. Your domain is your web address, like yourbusiness.com.au. When we register it for you, it’s registered in your name, so you’re listed as the holder. You renew it each year with a domain registrar (a company that sells and renews domain names), not with us. A .com.au costs $22.95 a year at VentraIP’s regular price, read 5 November 2026.

Google Search Console. Google calls it “a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results”. It shows whether Google can find your pages, and it alerts you to problems.

Bing Webmaster Tools. Bing’s free version of the same thing. Bing notes these tools matter more “as search becomes increasingly AI-driven”.

Google Analytics. Google’s free tool that shows how many people visit and what they look at. We use GA4, the current version, set up to respect your visitors’ privacy.

We set all three up before launch. On Day 7 the site goes live and you get the handover sheet with every login. After that, we keep an eye on Search Console, Bing and Analytics, generally for one to two weeks after the site goes live. On a redesign, we also set up redirects, which send your old page addresses to the new ones.

Under a second on 4G, and Lighthouse 95+. 4G is a mobile phone network. Lighthouse is Google’s tool that scores a page’s speed out of 100. Google rates 90 to 100 as “Good”, 50 to 89 as “Needs Improvement” and 0 to 49 as “Poor”, so Lighthouse 95+ on mobile sits in the “Good” band. It’s a lab test on a simulated mid-range phone, so real visitors’ speeds can vary.

WCAG 2.2 AA. WCAG stands for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the international rules for making websites usable by people with disabilities. In practice the site works with a keyboard and with screen readers, and the colours are checked for contrast.

Schema markup. Labels in the page code that help Google and AI search tools understand what you sell, when and where.

What it costs over three years

The build price is only the start. Hosting, a care plan (paid ongoing maintenance) and the domain keep billing you. Our 3-year cost guide added up three common setups, each with a .com.au domain at $22.95 a year ($68.85 over three years). These are the totals published in that guide, read on 8 November 2026:

Setup	Total over 3 years
A website builder you set up yourself (Wix Light, $21 a month billed yearly)	$824.85
A typical designer build ($2,500) with paid hosting and a $98 a month care plan	$6,426.85
A CatalystHub Standard build: $500 paid once, plus the domain	$568.85

In the designer setup, the care plan was $3,528 and the hosting $330. Together they cost more than the build itself.

A website builder is a yearly bill that keeps coming. Wix plans renew automatically. A promotional discount is “valid for the first year/month ONLY”, and renewals are “charged at the original price of the plan”. The free domain voucher covers one year and “is not included when renewing a plan”.

On 5 November 2026 we re-read the entry care plans of four Australian designers: $75 a month (GST not stated), $89 a month plus GST ($97.90), $98 a month including GST, and from $100 a month including GST. One of them says hosting is separate from its maintenance plans.

With us, a care plan is optional. It’s from $49 a month, and you can cancel any month with 14 days’ notice. Without one, you look after updates yourself. If you get stuck, email or call us and we help at our hourly rate.

How it compares with other five-page packages

On 3 November 2026, four Perth budget designers published prices of $300 (5 pages, hosting extra), $499 (5 pages), $699.99 (6 to 7 pages, domain included) and $797 (5 pages, plus $250 a year for hosting). None said whether GST was included. Ours includes GST.

So compare what’s included, not only the price. Here’s what some about-five-page packages we read on 5 November 2026 said:

One allowed “up to 2 rounds of changes”. Ours has no cap.
Two said about two weeks to go live. Ours is live in 7 business days.
One listed “basic on-page SEO”.
Who writes the words varied. One starter package uploads the words you supply. Another writes every page for you.

Our pricing card says this package is “normally $1,500+ elsewhere”. That’s Vish’s view from the market. The checked, dated figures are the ones above. For more published prices by page count, see website cost by number of pages.

Is a $500 website worth it?

If you need a professional site of about five pages that brings in calls and enquiries, it’s worth comparing three things before you pick anyone:

What’s included. Are the words written for you? How many rounds of changes? Is a quote or booking form part of it?
What it costs each year after. Hosting, a care plan and the domain add up, as the three-year table shows.
What you own. Can you take the site, code and domain with you if you leave?

The price is fixed in a one-page summary, in writing, before you pay a cent. Everything else, like timing and the order of the work, we work out with you on the call.

Want to know how we can do it for $500 without sending the work overseas? That’s explained in how we build a $500 website without outsourcing.

What the Standard build doesn’t cover

More than five pages. Extra pages and development are quoted up front, before any work starts.
Booking engines and industry rules. An online booking system, and design built around your industry’s rules, come with the Specialist build.
The domain renewal. You pay this each year to your domain registrar.
Changes after launch. These go through a care plan, or get quoted as a small variation.
Growing your traffic. Every build has the search basics. More visitors over time come from our SEO packages.

Need a bigger site?

The Specialist build is from $1,500 for up to 15 pages. It includes everything in Standard, plus a more advanced custom design made for your industry, industry compliance (such as AHPRA, ACCC and GST display rules), and integrations such as booking engines. AHPRA is the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, the regulator for registered health practitioners. The ACCC is the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the consumer watchdog. Hosting is free and there’s no ongoing cost.

For other sizes, these are guide prices for adding pages. Adding newly designed pages costs roughly $100 a page up to 15 pages, with a lower price per page above 15. Rough guide prices are about $1,000 for 10 pages, about $1,900 for 20 pages and about $2,500 for 30 pages. The exact price is fixed in writing on the 30-minute call before you pay. For something outside these packages, ask for a custom quote.

Every package is on our pricing page. Ready to go? Start your $500 build.

Frequently asked questions

Does a $500 website include hosting? Yes, with us. Your site runs on your own Cloudflare account on its free tier, so there’s no ongoing hosting cost and no care plan is needed.

Who owns a $500 website? You do. The site, code and content are yours, and if we register the domain for you, you’re listed as the owner. You get every login on a handover sheet.

Do I have to write the words myself? No. Copywriting is included in the $500 build, and AI-assisted copy is free. If you have your own words, we help you polish them.

Can I pay off a $500 website? Yes. You can split the payment through Klarna, or pay by card or bank transfer. The price is fixed in writing before we start.

What if I need more than five pages? Extra pages are quoted up front. A bigger site without the Specialist extras is about $1,000 for 10 pages, with the exact price fixed in writing on the call. If you’re in a regulated industry, the Specialist build is from $1,500 for up to 15 pages. See our pricing page or website cost by number of pages.