Flat rate website design means you pay one fixed monthly fee and that fee covers the whole job. At Topos, it's a flat $50/month with design, build, hosting, security and updates all included. There's no upfront cost and no hourly rate.
Small business owners know the usual alternative: ask for a quote, wait for it, decode a vague scope, sit through a "discovery phase", then brace for extra invoices when the hours run over. You just want a site that works so you can get back to the job.
That's the gap we built Topos to fill. You send your logo and photos, and your custom-designed site goes live in about a week.
What drives the price of a small business website?
Four things drive the price: the number of pages, how custom the design is, any features beyond a brochure, and who writes the words. Each one can push a quote from a few hundred dollars into the thousands.
More pages and a truly custom design mean more build time. Features like online booking, member areas or e-commerce add cost again. If someone else has to write your copy, that's another line on the invoice.
For a typical cafe, tradie or solo professional, you need about five pages, a custom look and clear words about what you do. Our flat $50/month covers the design, build and hosting for that, so none of those factors turns into a surprise bill.
How does flat rate compare with DIY, freelancers and agencies?
The four routes, side by side
Flat rate sits between a DIY subscription and a big agency project: you pay a fixed monthly fee, and someone else does the work. Here is how the options typically look for Australian small businesses.
- DIY builders: advertised from about $15/month, but a realistic plan with your own domain and key features is $30-60/month, plus your time.
- Freelancers: typically $800-3,000 upfront, then you're largely on your own.
- Agencies: $5,000-20,000, which suits complex, larger operations.
- Managed flat-fee services: one fixed monthly fee, everything included.
What five years truly costs
Day-one prices mislead. Over five years, a realistic DIY plan comes to about $2,000-3,500, and that's before the hours you spend building and fixing it yourself.
Our flat $50/month works out to $3,000 over the same stretch, with no upfront cost, no hourly rates and no rebuild bill in four years.
The costs people forget
On most routes, the extras creep up on you: hosting at $10-50/month, a .com.au domain at around $20-40/year, maintenance such as updates, security patches and backups, paid changes, and a rebuild every four to five years.
With us, hosting, security and updates are part of the fee.
Who is flat rate website design best suited to?
Flat rate website design suits cafes, tradies, builders, painters and solo professionals who need about five fast, mobile-friendly pages that make it easy to call. If customers check you out online before picking up the phone, this is built for you.
It isn't for everyone. We don't build online shops, booking systems, user accounts, payment systems or apps, and complex builds for larger operations are better handled by an agency. We'd rather tell you that now than after you've signed up.
The price is public: $50 a month, and it isn't negotiable. If you want more after launch, we also offer optional hands-on updates and SEO backlinking as an add-on.
Ready to get a website without the big bill?
It starts with one step: send us your logo and photos. We design and build a custom site, and it's usually live in about a week for a flat $50/month with hosting included.
You keep running the business. We'll get you found.