The honest answer is "it depends" — but that's a useless answer, so let's make it a useful one. Here's the real landscape of what a therapist website costs in 2026, what actually moves the number, and how to tell which option fits your practice.
The three ways therapists pay for a website
1. Do it yourself on a platform
Squarespace, Wix, or a therapy-specific platform like Brighter Vision or TherapySites. The sticker price is low and monthly — roughly $20–$100 a month, depending on the platform and add-ons. What you're really buying is a rented template you assemble yourself. Cheap to start, but the meter never stops, and the site disappears the day you stop paying. Fine for testing whether a practice will happen; expensive and fragile for the long haul.
2. A template designer
A designer who customizes a Squarespace or WordPress template for you. Typically a few thousand dollars up front, plus the platform's ongoing monthly fee. You get something nicer than DIY, faster than a full custom build — but underneath, it's still a template on a subscription, and you're often locked to that designer's system for edits.
3. A custom, hand-coded build
A site built from scratch around your specific practice. This is a one-time investment rather than a subscription — you own the domain, the hosting, and the code outright, with no recurring platform fee. Custom work costs more up front than a template, and the range is wide depending on scope, but the total cost of ownership over a few years is usually lower than the subscription path — because there's nothing to keep paying.
What actually drives the number
Whichever route you choose, the price moves with a handful of real factors:
- Solo vs. group. One clinician is a handful of pages. A group practice needs individual profiles, specialty pages, and a way for the right client to reach the right therapist — more design, more build.
- Copywriting. Writing your homepage, about, and service pages in a voice that sounds like you is often the most valuable part — and it takes real time. Bringing your own finished copy lowers the cost; having it written for you raises it.
- Page count and features. A blog, a contact form that never drops a lead, an intake flow, custom illustration — each adds scope.
- SEO and structure. A site built to be found (clean markup, local targeting, schema) is worth more than a pretty brochure that no one lands on.
The cheapest site is the one that brings you clients. The most expensive is the beautiful one nobody finds.
So which do you actually need?
If you're not sure your practice will stick, or you truly want to drag-and-drop your own pages every week, a DIY platform is a reasonable place to start. If your practice is established and you plan to be online for years, a site you own outright almost always wins on both cost and quality over time — you stop renting, and you end up with something that looks and performs like it belongs to you, because it does.
That's the work I do: custom, hand-coded therapist websites, quoted per project after a short conversation — because the right number genuinely depends on your practice, and I'd rather scope it honestly than post a one-size price that's wrong for everyone.
Want a real number for your situation? Tell me about your practice and I'll put together a fixed quote — no pressure, no sales script.