Ask what a medical website costs and the honest answer is that it depends on two things: who builds it, and what it has to do once it's live. A page with your hours and phone number is one job. A site that books new patients, takes intake forms and feeds your ads is another.
This guide uses only prices that vendors publish on their own pages, each checked on 8 October 2026 and linked so you can check them again. Prices and promotions change, so treat every figure as a starting point for your own quote. We're an agency too, so our own price is at the end, stated exactly as our pilot page states it.
How much does a medical website cost?
The short answer, from published price pages: about $19 to $39 a month if you build it yourself on a general website builder, while website subscriptions built for therapists and agency plans that bundle a new site with marketing set their own monthly fees. Custom builds by freelancers and agencies are quoted per project, so ask each for the price in writing.
| Who builds it | Published price, checked 8 October 2026 | What you get | Ask before you sign |
|---|---|---|---|
| You, on a general website builder | Squarespace: $25 a month, or $19 a month paid yearly (Basic) | Templates and hosting. You design it and write it. | Will this tool sign a BAA if a form collects health details? |
| A website subscription built for therapists | A monthly fee set by each vendor; ask for it in writing | Whatever the plan lists. Check what each tier adds. | Who keeps the design, content and domain if you cancel? |
| An agency plan that includes the site | A monthly fee set by each agency; ask for it in writing | A new site plus ongoing marketing. Ask whether ad spend is extra. | How long is the contract, and what do you keep if you leave? |
| A freelancer or a custom agency build | Quoted per project, no list price | Whatever the written scope says | Are hosting, updates and fixes after launch included? |
General website builders
Squarespace's pricing page lists its Basic plan at $25 a month, or $19 a month when you pay for a year up front, and its Core plan at $39, or $29 a month paid yearly. Yearly plans include a free domain for the first year, which then renews at the standard rate.
This is the cheapest route in cash and the most expensive in your time. You choose the template, write every page and set up booking yourself. Before any form on the site asks a patient about symptoms, medications or why they're booking, check whether the form tool will sign a business associate agreement (more on that below).
Website subscriptions built for therapists
Some companies build and host websites for therapists for a monthly fee. A subscription site bundles design, hosting and support into that fee, which keeps the upfront cost low. The trade is that you pay for as long as the site is up, so ask what happens to the design, the content and the domain if you leave. If you're a therapist weighing these against a designer, our page on therapist website design covers what the site needs to do.
Agency plans that include the website
Some agencies sell a new website as part of a monthly marketing plan. That makes the website part of a monthly marketing fee, so compare it with the total of a website plus the marketing you'd buy anyway, not with the website alone. Check the contract length, any setup fee, and who owns the site if you stop paying.
Freelancers and custom builds
Custom builds are quoted per project, so there is no list price to compare.
The fair way to compare custom quotes is to send every builder the same written scope and ask each one to split the price into one-time work and monthly costs. The checklist at the end lists what to include.
What drives the cost of a medical website
Two quotes for "a medical website" can describe very different jobs. These are the items that move the price, and the ones to look for in any quote you get.
- One page per service. A page for each service or condition you want patients to find is more writing and design. It's also what lets an ad for one service land on a page about that service, rather than your homepage.
- Online booking. Booking can come from your scheduling or practice software rather than from the website itself. IntakeQ, for example, lists a Practice Management plan with a booking widget at $84.90 a month, plus $30 for each additional practitioner. Our medical website design work starts from the page that has to take the booking.
- Intake forms that collect health information. Under HIPAA, a vendor that creates, receives, maintains or transmits protected health information on your behalf is a business associate (45 CFR 160.103). You may let it do so only with satisfactory assurances, documented in a written agreement (45 CFR 164.502(e)): the business associate agreement, or BAA. These rules bind covered entities; for a provider, that means one that sends health information electronically for a covered transaction, such as a health care claim (also 160.103). If you're not sure whether that's you, ask your attorney. Published price: IntakeQ's Forms Only plan is $54.90 a month and lists a BAA among its features. Confirm the BAA in writing whichever form tool you choose.
- Accessibility. The Justice Department's guidance on web accessibility (18 March 2022) lists medical offices among the businesses open to the public under Title III of the ADA, and says the department has consistently taken the position that the ADA applies to what those businesses offer on the web. It points to WCAG and the Section 508 Standards as helpful technical guidance. Building and testing for accessibility takes design and development time, so ask each quote which standard it builds to and how it tests.
- Section 504, if you take HHS funding. HHS's Section 504 rule applies to recipients of federal financial assistance from HHS (45 CFR 84.2). It requires their websites and apps to meet the Level A and AA success criteria of WCAG 2.1 (45 CFR 84.84). An interim final rule published 11 May 2026 moved the compliance dates to 11 May 2027 for recipients with 15 or more employees and 10 May 2028 for those with fewer. The 2024 rule cites a court holding that Medicare and Medicaid are federal financial assistance for Section 504. A cash-pay practice that takes no Medicare, Medicaid or other HHS money isn't a recipient under that definition. If you bill Medicare or Medicaid, ask your attorney whether the rule applies to you.
- Analytics without health data. Analytics and ad tags on booking and intake pages can carry more than page views. Before adding them, check the HHS Office for Civil Rights' current guidance on online tracking technologies, and ask whoever builds the site how conversions will be tracked without sending health details to ad platforms.
- Hosting, domain and upkeep. The builder above lists hosting in its plans; ask any subscription or agency plan whether hosting is included. With a custom build, ask who hosts the site, who renews the domain, who applies updates and fixes, and what a change to a page costs after launch.
Agency fees, ad spend and other line items
The website is one line. What healthcare marketing costs overall splits into three parts: the agency's fee, the ad spend that goes to Google or Meta, and the tools and listings you pay for directly. Agencies charge for their part in different ways, and each model rewards something different.
| Fee model | Published example, checked 8 October 2026 | What it rewards | Risk to the practice | Question to ask |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly retainer | No published example used here | Keeping the account | The fee is the same whatever happens | What exactly is done each month, and what's the notice period? |
| Percentage of ad spend | No published example used here | A bigger ad budget | The agency earns more when you spend more | Is the percentage on top of the spend, and whose account is the spend in? |
| Per-channel fee | No published example used here | Adding channels | Each channel judged on its own, not on bookings | How much of that figure reaches Google or Meta, and how much is the fee? |
| Pay-per-lead | No published example used here | Lead volume | You pay for inquiries, not booked appointments | What counts as a lead, is it sold to anyone else, and can you reject bad ones? |
| Flat pilot or project | Fill The Lobby's Proof Pilot, $2,500 for 30 days | Finishing a defined scope | A short window, then a new decision | What happens after it ends, and what do you keep? |
| Performance-based | No published example used here | Whatever the contract measures | Disputes over what counted as a result | How is a result counted, and has your attorney reviewed the arrangement? |
Whatever the model, the fee and the ad spend are separate numbers. Get both in writing, along with who owns the ad accounts. Our guide to choosing a healthcare marketing agency covers the rest of that conversation.
Ad spend: how Google bills it
Ad spend is the money Google or Meta charges for the ads themselves. In Google Ads you set an average daily budget for each campaign. Google's help page on average daily budgets says a campaign may spend more on some days and less on others, but you will never pay more than two times your average daily budget on a given day, or more than 30.4 times it in a month, for most campaigns. A $10 daily budget means at most $304 a month.
You don't pay a fixed price per click either. Google's page on choosing your bid and budget says you'll often pay less than your maximum bid, because you only pay what's needed to hold your ad's position. So any single "average cost per click for doctors" tells you little about your city and services. The same page points to Keyword Planner for estimated average costs per click on your own keywords, which is the better number to plan with. Our guide to Google Ads for doctors covers setting up a first campaign, and medical PPC management is what we run.
How much does medical SEO cost?
SEO can be sold bundled with a website plan, which makes it hard to price on its own. Ask for the SEO work to be priced as its own line, separate from the website and from any ad management.
Judge an SEO quote on the work it names each month: pages written or improved, Google Business Profile updates, listings, technical fixes and reporting. Google's own advice on hiring an SEO is blunt: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google." Our guide to local SEO for healthcare covers what the work involves, and our healthcare SEO page covers how we do it.
Other line items
| Line item | Published price, checked 8 October 2026 | Who needs it |
|---|---|---|
| Phone answering | Ruby, a virtual receptionist service: 50 receptionist minutes a month for $250, up to 500 minutes for $1,725 | Practices that miss calls during sessions or after hours. Our after-hours answering service guide covers how medical answering services price and what to ask. |
| Psychology Today profile | $29.95 a month, no contract | Therapists who list in the directory. See whether Psychology Today is worth it. |
| LegitScript certification | Standard Healthcare Certification: $975 to apply and $2,150 a year, per website. Addiction Treatment Certification: $1,395 to $1,595 to apply and $2,550 to $3,095 a year, per facility, or $535 to apply and $1,070 a year for an individual practitioner. Expedited processing adds $2,500 per application. | Only some practices. Our guide to LegitScript certification explains who needs it. |
| Secure intake forms | IntakeQ Forms Only, $54.90 a month | Any practice whose forms collect health information. Confirm the vendor signs a BAA. |
How to set a marketing budget from your own numbers
There's no percentage of revenue in this section, on purpose. A percentage ignores the two things that decide your budget: how many new patients you can take, and what a new patient is worth to your practice.
- Start with capacity. Count the open appointment slots you want filled each month by new patients. Money spent past that point buys a waitlist.
- Work out what a new patient is worth. Use your own fees, how many visits a typical new patient books, and your costs. That's your patient lifetime value.
- Decide what you'll pay to win one. Pick the most you're willing to spend, all in, to book one new patient.
- Multiply. Capacity times that amount is your monthly ceiling for ad spend, fees and tools together.
- Check it every month. Total spend divided by booked new patients is your patient acquisition cost. If it's above what you decided in step 3, change the plan before you add budget.
Illustrative numbers, not a benchmark: a practice that can take 16 more new patients a month and decides it can pay up to $300 to win each one has a ceiling of $4,800 a month across ad spend, fees and tools. Run your own figures through our patient acquisition cost calculator.
What Fill The Lobby charges
We sell what this guide describes, so read this section as a vendor's. Here is what our Proof Pilot page says:
- The Proof Pilot is 30 days for one flat fee of $2,500.
- Ad spend sits on top and goes from your own accounts straight to Google and Meta. During the pilot we never touch it and never mark it up.
- Week one is an audit of how patients find and book you. In week three the system goes live: your website cleaned up or rebuilt, a booking flow that works, and ads in your city.
- No targets are attached to the pilot. You see every booking, where it came from and what it cost.
- After the pilot, you decide. A long-term plan is priced per practice by clinician count, with the number in writing before you decide. If you walk away, you keep the ad accounts, data and pages, which are in your name from day one.
We don't publish a separate price for a website on its own. We scope it on the first call, once we know how many pages and clinicians it needs, and we usually start with the pages your ads send people to rather than the whole site. A BAA is signed before any patient data moves; our compliance page has the details.
How to get quotes you can compare
Send every vendor the same brief and ask for the answers in writing:
- The same scope. List your services, clinicians and locations, the pages you need, how patients will book, and what your forms ask.
- One-time and monthly costs, separately. Then work out the total over 12 and 24 months for each quote.
- Contract length and notice period.
- Ownership. Whose name are the domain, the website, the content and the ad accounts in, and what do you keep if you leave?
- The BAA. Which vendors will touch health information, and will each of them sign one?
- Accessibility. Which standard the site is built to, and how it's tested.
- Ad spend. Is it included in the price or paid separately, is there a markup, and whose account is it in?
- Reporting. Will you see booked appointments and what each one cost, or clicks and impressions?
Sources
- Squarespace — Pricing plans and features, checked 8 October 2026
- IntakeQ — Pricing, checked 8 October 2026
- Ruby — Plans and pricing, checked 8 October 2026
- Psychology Today — Join Psychology Today, checked 8 October 2026
- LegitScript — Healthcare Certification, checked 8 October 2026
- LegitScript — Addiction Treatment Certification, checked 8 October 2026
- Google Ads Help — About average daily budgets, checked 8 October 2026
- Google Ads Help — Choose your bid and budget, checked 8 October 2026
- Google Search Central — Do you need an SEO? (last updated 5 June 2026), checked 8 October 2026
- eCFR — 45 CFR 160.103, Definitions (business associate), checked 8 October 2026
- eCFR — 45 CFR 164.502(e), Disclosures to business associates, checked 8 October 2026
- U.S. Department of Justice — Guidance on Web Accessibility and the ADA, 18 March 2022, checked 8 October 2026
- eCFR — 45 CFR 84.2, Application, checked 8 October 2026
- eCFR — 45 CFR 84.84, Requirements for web and mobile accessibility, checked 8 October 2026
- HHS — Extension of compliance dates for web and mobile accessibility, interim final rule, 91 FR 25496, 11 May 2026, checked 8 October 2026
- HHS — Nondiscrimination on the basis of disability in programs or activities receiving federal financial assistance, final rule, 89 FR 40066, 9 May 2024, checked 8 October 2026