What a breeder website costs.

Ask what a website costs and you get a range so wide it is useless. The reason is that four different things are being sold under one word. Here's the actual market, in bands, with who charges what.

The four bands

Why a cattery site isn't a five-page brochure

A florist's website is finished when it launches. A cattery website is finished about four times a year and unfinished in between, because the thing it exists to advertise keeps changing.

That's the whole cost difference, and it's worth being concrete about what has to move when one kitten is reserved: the kitten card, the count on the availability page, the banner across the top of every page, the litter page for that pairing, and the facts behind the page that AI reads. Five places, on a good day, if nobody forgets one.

You can pay somebody to do that by hand every time, which is the $300 a litter model. You can do it yourself and forget the third place, which is why only eight of the twenty-three sites we read had anything current on the availability page. Or the site can do it, which is what a build costs money for.

What we charge

Published in full, the same for everybody, on the prices page. Three builds at $2,200, $3,400 and $4,800, and a care plan from $150 a month with a six-month minimum. The full price is paid to book.

The middle one is built for selling beyond your own town. Every build has the editor that stops a site going stale between litters, so what the middle one adds is the writing: landing pages for the places buyers come from, and the pages somebody two states away needs before they will send a deposit.

You own your site's files and your web address. Leave after month six and both transfer to you, with no exit fee. We put that in writing because the alternative, which is common, is a site you can't take with you.

When we're the wrong answer

If you have one litter a year, sell locally to people who already know you, and your current site has your name, your town, your prices and a phone number on it, you don't need us. Spend the money on photographs.

If the site is fine and the writing is the problem, that is a smaller job than a rebuild. Tell us that when you write, and we'll tell you what those pages would take instead of quoting a build.

Questions

How much does a cattery website cost?

Ours are $2,200, $3,400 and $4,800, depending on how many pages you need and how much of the writing you want done for you. Template and subscription options start near nothing and stop being enough at about the point you have a second litter a year.

Why does a cattery site cost more than a normal small business site?

Because a cattery site is a small inventory system with photographs. A restaurant's menu changes twice a year. Your kitten list changes every time somebody puts a deposit down, and the site has to change with it in more than one place.

Is a $50 a month builder enough?

For a one-page holding site with your contact details, yes. It stops being enough when you need availability to update itself, the facts behind the page that AI can read, or a page per search you want to win.

What's the ongoing cost?

Ours is $150 to $350 a month depending on how much work you want done for you. A subscription builder is $16 to $50 a month and does less. A per-litter agency charge, which is common, is often the most expensive of the three without looking like it.

Do I pay it all up front?

The full price books the slot. The care plan starts at launch and has a six-month minimum, after which it's month to month.