A portfolio template rents for less per year than one lens, a custom build is a real line item, and the marketing company that emailed you named a monthly figure without saying what it buys. Three prices, three different things, nothing solid to measure them against. The buttons below put an honest range around the website and search work.
Run the free tool ↓Tap three answers: the work you want, how thick the photographer competition is where you want to book, and whether you are one person, a studio with associates, or two studios in two cities. It answers in seconds, with no email wall.
Prefer a full page? Open the What Should You Pay? tool here.
Left alone, it sits at the floor: a new website, small town, solo, $3,500 to $9,000 one time.
Where the bands come from is covered on the generic what should you pay tool. What is different here is how a photographer reads the questions.
Nothing in it looks at your site or your pictures. It cannot know whether your galleries load fast or whether your homepage hands a phone full resolution files. The number is a yardstick, useful only with a quote beside it.
A fair quote lands in or near the band and arrives with scope. Scope for a photographer counts up: how many session pages get written and by whom, whether the venue pages describe rooms you have actually worked, and who is sizing and naming a few hundred images.
Far below the band is seldom a deal. It usually buys a portfolio theme on rented ground, an automated monthly package, or a directory listing dressed up as marketing.
The warning list under your result is the same for everyone, and two entries bite harder here. Ownership counts double because photographers rebrand, from your own name to a studio name, and anything built on someone else's platform stays behind. A promised top ranking usually means a promise to outrank wedding directories that already own the first screen.
If the question is what you already own rather than what to spend, the website report card for photographers and the AI visibility checker for photographers are free as well.
Both invented, to show the shape of the output.
Say a wedding and portrait photographer in a mid-size city is still on the template she started with. She taps a new website, mid-size city, solo, and gets $5,000 to $12,500 one time. Page count and image work separate the ends. The low end is a quick site with a gallery per session type and an inquiry form. The high end adds a page for every kind of session she shoots and every venue she knows, plus the image handling that keeps it fast on a phone.
Imagine a solo photographer in a major metro who wants the build and the ongoing work together. She taps the whole package, major metro, solo, and gets two figures instead of one, a build and a monthly: $6,500 to $17,000 to build, then $4,800 to $11,500 per month. The market answer is the only thing separating that build number from the one above. Same solo shooter, same scope, more established photographers standing between her and the same searches.
Read that second one with your eyes open. The tool cannot see how many dates your calendar holds or what you charge. It prices the work, not your ability to carry it.
Timing is its own line, because the work is seasonal and people search well ahead of the date. Pages have to be ranking before a season opens, not starting the climb after it does, and how long SEO takes is the part worth reading first. The rest of the argument for this trade sits on the photography marketing page.
Custom website builds run $3,500 to $12,000+ one time. Ongoing SEO or local SEO runs $1,500 to $3,500 per month for most businesses, and $3,500 to $7,500 per month in competitive metros or multi-location work. Something a template could never do, a date checker or a walkthrough that prices a session, falls under custom tools: calculators from $600, most workhorse tools $1,500 to $4,000, Tool Care $75 per month per tool. Nothing sits on a contract, and the site, the content, and the accounts stay yours.
Google Ads management carries no published fee here. Agencies typically bill a flat monthly amount or a slice of ad spend, and a slice quietly pays them more for spending more of your money, so we quote flat after a free consult. Longer versions of all of it are in what a website costs and what SEO costs. Orlando based, working with local service businesses nationwide since 2008.
No. Proofing, delivery, contracts, and invoicing are separate subscriptions that most photographers already carry. This band covers the public marketing site and the search work that sends people to it. Track them on different lines, otherwise you end up weighing a gallery subscription against a custom build.
Weigh them apart. A directory placement is rented: inquiries stop the month payment does, and the couple writing to you is usually writing to several photographers off the same list. A site and rankings are something you keep. Which deserves the money depends on figures only you have.
Google sells ads in and around AI answers, so spending does reach that surface. What it does not buy is the organic recommendation itself. Being named there comes from being readable to something working off your words rather than your photographs: plain sentences about what you shoot, where you travel, and how you work.
Possibly not, and it is worth asking before spending. Booked solid at prices you like means traffic is not your constraint, and the honest move is usually raising prices or changing the mix of work you accept. This side pays off when you want different work, or a fuller off season.
Yes. The arithmetic happens in your browser while you tap, nothing is stored, and no email is requested. It sits alongside more than 50 free tools on this site, none of them behind an email wall. Turning a band into an actual number takes a short scope conversation, also free.
What Should You Pay?: full tool page and methodology · Marketing for photographers · AI Visibility Checker for Photographers · Website Report Card for Photographers · All free tools
Forward the proposal sitting in your inbox and we will tell you what it does not cover. Or ask for a free mockup of your own photography site and keep it either way.
Book a free consultation → Or call/text directly: (407) 694-2055Tell us a little about the business and we will come back with an honest read: what we would fix first, what it costs, and whether you need us at all. Prefer to see work before you talk numbers? Get a free homepage mockup, built for your business, yours to keep either way.
Brandon reads every one of these himself. You will hear back shortly with an honest read on what we would do first, what it costs, and whether it is worth it for you.