For painting contractors

What a painting
website costs.

Agencies want you on a call before they will name a price, so here is the price written down instead. The three bands the market divides into, what actually changes between them, the costs that appear afterwards, and what I charge. Then I will build a free working demo of your own site if you want to judge it yourself.

The demo is a real page you can click through, chat with, and book a time on.

The market

Three bands. Every
quote you get is in one.

Quotes look inconsistent because three different products are sold under the same phrase. Work out which one is in front of you and the numbers stop looking arbitrary.

Band one
$0 to $500
Plus a monthly builder fee

A template you build yourself on Wix, Squarespace or GoDaddy. A gallery, a services list, your number. With good photos of your own work it can look genuinely convincing.

What you are really buyingA portfolio you own. In painting that is worth more than in most trades, because the work sells itself visually. What it will not do is chase an estimate that went quiet.
Band two
$1,500 to $5,000
One time, sometimes plus hosting

A custom build. Interior separated from exterior, cabinet and commercial work given their own pages, real project sets, a proper estimate request. Most established painting companies sit here.

What you are really buyingA site that reads as a company rather than a man with a ladder. Whether it fills your schedule depends on what happens after the estimate request, which is rarely on the quote.
Band three
$8,000 and up
Plus a monthly retainer

The full stack. CRM, estimate follow up sequences, call tracking, review automation, seasonal ad landing pages, reporting. Sold with a management retainer alongside it.

What you are really buyingA pipeline system for a company running several crews year round. Overbuilt for a two painter operation, and it will not compensate for a thin portfolio.
What drives it

You are competing
with a guy and a ladder.

Painting has the lowest barrier to entry of any trade on this list, and that shapes everything about the website. Anybody with a van and a roller can call themselves a painter, so the homeowner comparing three quotes is not really comparing prices. They are trying to work out which of you will turn up, protect their furniture, and finish.

That is what your site is for. Not to look pretty, but to make you look like the established option next to two mobile numbers and a Facebook page. Insurance, real project photos, a written process and a proper estimate request do that. A stock photo of a paint tin does not.

The other half is timing. Painting estimates go quiet constantly, because it is a job people delay rather than cancel. The company that is still there in six weeks gets the work.

Looking established, on purpose. Insurance, a real address, named crew, a written process. Against a competitor who is a mobile number on a truck, that is the entire argument and it is cheap to build.
Photographs of your own work. Clean lines, cut in edges, a finished room. Painting is judged visually and stock imagery is spotted instantly. Getting your own projects photographed and onto the page is the real work.
Interior, exterior and cabinets are separate. Different seasons, different budgets, different customers. Cabinet refinishing in particular is searched on its own and carries a much better margin than a general painting page.
The estimate is the bottleneck. Your day gets eaten by driving to quotes. A form that establishes rooms, surfaces and rough scope first saves visits you should never have made.
Follow up over weeks. Painting is the definition of a job people postpone. The build that keeps you present while somebody delays is worth more than anything on the visible page.
The seasonal switch. Exterior in summer, interior and cabinets in winter. A site that leads with the wrong one for half the year is working against you for half the year.
Before you sign

The four questions
that change the price.

Ask these of every quote you are holding, mine included. They move the real cost more than the headline number does.

1
Who photographs and prepares the projects? The gallery is most of the site. If you are shooting and resizing the images yourself, that is your evenings, and it never appears on a quote.
2
What does adding a project cost after launch? You finish work constantly and will want it shown. If every new project is billable, keeping the portfolio current becomes a running cost nobody mentioned.
3
Does anything follow up an estimate, or does it just email me? In a trade where people delay for months, this is the difference between a lead and a booked job. Get a straight answer on what happens in week three.
4
What does the seasonal switch cost? Leading with exterior in June and interior in November is a small change with a real effect. If each switch is a billable job, that is two extra invoices a year.
Free, before anything
See yours built
before you pay.

You cannot judge a website from a document, so I do it the other way round. I build a working painting site with your company name and your kind of work on it, you go through it yourself, and price comes up afterwards.

Build my free painting demo
  • A real page you can scroll and tap, not a screenshot.
  • The chat assistant handles an interior estimate request the way it would handle yours.
  • It offers estimate times and takes the booking, so you can see where a lead lands.
  • No card, no discovery call, no contract to read first.
  • If it is not what you want, nothing happens. It cost you a click.
The arithmetic

Work it out with
your own numbers.

Every agency page tells you a website is an investment and not an expense. That is a comfortable thing to say about money that is not theirs, so run the sum with your own figures.

Take the profit you keep on one average interior job, not the invoice. Divide the price of the website by that. That is how many extra jobs a year it has to bring you before it has paid for itself. Then run it again on a cabinet refinishing job, because the margin there is better and the number gets smaller.

Then the half almost nobody runs. Go back through last year and count the estimates that simply went quiet. Not the ones who said no, the ones who said they would think about it and then nothing. Most of those rooms got painted eventually, by somebody. Staying politely in front of them for six weeks is the cheapest work in this trade, and it is exactly what a website quote leaves out.

If both numbers come out small, do not buy anything yet. That is a real answer, and it is why the demo is free.

Compare it against your other lead costs. A home services platform taking a cut of every job, ads, flyers, the evenings you spend quoting. The website competes with those, not with zero.
Count the estimates that went quiet. That list is the honest measure of what follow up is worth to you, and it is almost always longer than people expect.
Nobody can promise you a number. Anyone quoting an exact return on a site they have not built yet is guessing, and that tells you how to read the rest of their proposal.
Fewer wasted estimate visits counts too. A form that filters out the jobs you would have declined at the door gives you a day back a month, which is money you never see on an invoice.
What I charge

No quote needed.
Here it is.

Start at the bottom and move up only when the website is genuinely the thing holding you back. Most painting companies do not need band three.

Review Machine
$99/mo
Keep your site, fix the reviews
  • Review request after every job
  • Sent by text and email, with a follow up
  • One tap through to your Google page
  • Works with the website you already have
See how it works
Most painters start here
Starter
$297/mo
Site and follow up, built for you
  • A painting website built and hosted
  • Missed call text back
  • Automated review requests
  • Online booking
  • Monthly report
Start with a free demo
Custom System
$3,000+
One time, plus $297/mo hosting
  • Everything in Starter
  • Fully custom design, and the site is yours
  • Longer follow up sequences
  • Ready for Google Ads traffic
Talk it through

There is a larger managed package as well. It is on the main page, and most painting companies reading this do not need it yet.

Questions

Straight answers.

How much should a painting company spend on a website?
Enough that it makes you look like the established choice next to two mobile numbers, and enough that it chases the estimates that go quiet. A single painter working off referrals does not need an eight thousand dollar build. A company running crews year round is losing more than that to quotes nobody followed up. Start at the bottom and move up only when the site is the bottleneck.
Does a website really matter when most of my work is referrals?
It matters because referrals check you anyway. Somebody handed your number by a neighbour will still look you up before they call, and what they find decides whether they call at all. Against a competitor with no site or an abandoned Facebook page, a real one with your own project photos on it is doing quiet work every week.
Do I need separate pages for interior, exterior and cabinets?
Yes, and cabinet refinishing especially. It is searched on its own, carries a better margin than general painting, and attracts a customer who is ready to spend. Interior and exterior also run on opposite seasons, so separating them lets the site lead with the right one at the right time of year.
What should happen after somebody asks for an estimate?
More than an email landing in your inbox. Painting is a job people postpone rather than cancel, so a request that goes quiet in week one is often ready in week six. A build that keeps you politely present across that period is worth more than any change to the design, and it is the part most quotes omit.
Will a new website get me to the top of Google for painters near me?
Not on its own, and anybody promising it is guessing. That search is dominated by the map results, which run on your Google Business Profile, your review count and how recent the reviews are. A good website supports that and converts the visitors once they arrive. It does not replace it.
Can I see it before I pay anything?
Yes, that is what the free demo is for. You get a working painting site with your company name on it, including the chat assistant answering a customer, before any money or commitment. If it is not what you wanted, nothing happens.
Get started

Get your painting
demo built free.

Tell me about your company and I will build it, then message you on WhatsApp when it is ready to look at.

If you have one I will look at it first, so the demo is a straight comparison. If you do not, that is fine too.

No card. No contract. You see it before you decide.

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