How Much Does a Dive Shop Website Cost in 2026?

The honest answer: a dive shop website costs anywhere from about $50 a year to more than $10,000 up front, and the sticker price is rarely the number that matters. What matters is what you pay over two or three years, plus the hours you or your staff spend keeping course prices and trip dates current.

I'm Xavier Pladevall. I'm an SSI-trained diver (Advanced, Deep, Nitrox, Rescue), I grew up in the Dominican Republic, and I built ScubaDock, a $99/month website builder for independent dive shops. That's a conflict of interest, so this guide sticks to published prices. Every number below links to the page it came from, and I checked each one on October 3, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with the vendor before you sign anything.

The short answer: price ranges by option

Option	Up front	Ongoing	Who does the work	Source (checked Oct 3, 2026)
DIY on Wix	$0	$17 to $159/mo on annual billing (US)	You	Wix plans
DIY on Squarespace	$0	$19 to $99/mo annual, $25 to $139/mo monthly	You	Squarespace pricing
WordPress.com	$0	From $4/mo annual ($9/mo monthly)	You	WordPress.com pricing
Self-hosted WordPress	Theme and plugins vary	Hosting from $3.99/mo intro, renews at $9.99/mo	You or a developer	Bluehost
Freelancer	$1,500 to $8,000	$50 to $200/mo maintenance	Freelancer	Project Cost Estimator
General agency	$5,000 to $25,000	Retainer varies	Agency	Project Cost Estimator
Dive-industry web designers	$999 to $3,500 (published examples)	$20 to $499/mo	Designer	See Option 1 below
FareHarbor Sites	Not published	Reported $2,000/yr (Web Lite) to $5,000/yr or $499/mo (Web Core)	FareHarbor	Findstack, Bókun
ScubaDock	$0	$99/mo	Drafted from your current site, you review	ScubaDock pricing

If you just want a rule of thumb: plan on $200 to $1,200 a year if you'll do it yourself, $1,500 to $8,000 up front plus monthly care if you hire a freelancer, and $2,000 to $6,000 a year for a fully managed tour-operator website.

If you want those ranges with your own page count, languages, and hourly rate, use the dive shop website cost calculator.

Option 1: Hire a web agency or freelancer

This is the right call when you want a custom design and someone else to own the project.

What general agencies and freelancers charge

Project Cost Estimator's 2026 guide, based on what it describes as 600+ project quotes, puts a template build with a freelancer at $1,500 to $5,000, a custom freelancer build at $3,000 to $8,000, and an agency build at $5,000 to $25,000. The same guide suggests budgeting $50 to $200 a month afterward for hosting, security, updates and basic support. Timelines run from two to twelve weeks depending on scope.

What dive-industry designers publish

A few designers who focus on the dive industry post their prices, which is more than most do:

• OCG Creative advertises a 5-page WordPress site with three blog posts for $999 as a DEMA special, with extra pages at $199 each (OCG Creative). Special offers can end, so ask whether it still applies.
• Fathom1k Design Lab, which builds for watersports operators, lists a $3,500 full build ($1,000 deposit, $2,500 before launch) and then $145, $250 or $499 a month for hosting, upkeep and SEO (Fathom1k).
• Scuba Dive Marketing charges $40 an hour or a custom fixed quote, plus $20 a month for hosting (Scuba Dive Marketing pricing).
• DiveMedia sells monthly packages at $49, $99 and $199 a month that include design, build and ongoing updates (DiveMedia packages).

The tradeoff

You get a finished site without learning a builder. You also get a dependency: every price change, new course date or holiday schedule becomes a request, and either you pay by the hour or you wait. Ask any designer, before you sign, who owns the site files and domain if you leave.

Option 2: DIY on Wix, Squarespace or WordPress

DIY builders are cheap in dollars and expensive in hours.

Subscription prices

• Wix lists Light at $17/mo, Core at $29/mo, Business at $39/mo and Business Elite at $159/mo, billed yearly. Wix notes that prices and currency vary by location (Wix plans).
• Squarespace lists Basic at $19/mo, Core at $29/mo, Plus at $49/mo and Advanced at $99/mo on annual billing, or $25, $39, $65 and $139 month to month (Squarespace pricing).
• WordPress.com Personal starts at $4/mo billed annually or $9/mo monthly, and plugins are allowed on every paid plan (WordPress.com pricing).
• Self-hosted WordPress needs a host. Bluehost's Starter plan is $3.99/mo on a 36-month term and renews at $9.99/mo (Bluehost). Premium themes and plugins are extra and vary.

Wix and Squarespace annual plans include a free domain for the first year. Squarespace states that the domain renews at its standard rate after that (Squarespace pricing).

The cost nobody quotes: your time

A dive shop site is not a five-page brochure. It needs a page per course (Open Water, Advanced, Rescue, specialties), a page per trip or boat schedule, current prices, a booking button that works on a phone, and a fast way for divers to ask questions. On a DIY builder, you write and lay out every one of those pages yourself, then keep them current every season.

If you or someone on staff enjoys that work, DIY is the cheapest option on this list. If the site has been "almost done" for six months, it isn't cheap.

Option 3: FareHarbor Sites and booking-vendor websites

Many dive shops already take bookings through FareHarbor, so its website service is a natural option to price.

FareHarbor Sites pricing

FareHarbor doesn't publish website prices on its public site. Its help-center pricing page requires a FareHarbor login. Two third-party sources report:

• Web Lite: $2,000 a year, and Web Core: $5,000 a year or $499 a month (Findstack, which says it last updated the data on July 24, 2026).
• Web Core at $5,000 a year or $499 a month, plus optional SEO add-ons at $2,200 a year (Silver) and $5,000 a year (Gold), with a note that rates vary by location (Bókun; Bókun sells competing software).

Treat those as estimates and get a quote. What FareHarbor does state publicly on its Sites page: packages include hosting, maintenance, SEO support and price sync with your FareHarbor dashboard; sites usually go live within one to two months; you buy and keep your own domain; FareHarbor doesn't host email; and if you leave, "the site itself and the WordPress theme that it is built on are the property of FareHarbor and will not be transferred." Your text, images and domain stay yours.

For a side-by-side look at keeping FareHarbor for bookings and using a separate shop site, see FareHarbor website.

Booking software with a builder included

Some booking platforms bundle a basic website. Bókun says its website builder is included in its entry-level plan and lists Xola, Checkfront, Rezdy and others as platforms that include one too (Bókun). If you're choosing a booking system anyway, ask whether the bundled site lets you write proper course pages, not just a list of bookable products.

Option 4: A dive-shop website builder (ScubaDock)

This is the option I built, so read this section with that in mind.

ScubaDock is $99 a month, with no setup fee, no booking commission and no contract (ScubaDock pricing). That's $1,188 a year. You paste your current website URL and it drafts a mobile-first site with home, course, trip, about and contact pages from what's already public. You review it, confirm the shop is yours, and publish.

What it does:

• Course and trip pages, each with a booking link to FareHarbor or whatever booking page you already use. Divers pay there, not through ScubaDock.
• A WhatsApp button and an inquiry form, so divers who want to ask before booking can reach you.
• Hosting, page titles, descriptions and a sitemap.

What it doesn't do yet, honestly:

• Custom domains are coming soon. Today your site lives at yourshop.scubadock.com. If your current domain carries years of Google history, that matters, and you may want to wait.
• It isn't a booking engine. Your booking tool's own fees still apply.
• It's one plan with fewer design controls than Wix or Squarespace. If you want full creative control over every pixel, a general builder or a designer is the better fit.

Hidden costs: booking fees, card fees, domains, photos and upkeep

The subscription or build fee is only part of it. Budget for these too.

Booking and platform fees

FareHarbor's standard model charges the diver a separate booking fee at checkout, and its provider terms also describe an alternative where the operator pays a monthly commission instead. FareHarbor doesn't publish the rate. Bókun reports booking fees of "up to 6%" (Bókun). Other platforms price this differently. EquipDash, for example, publishes $29 to $149 a month plus a 1% to 2% platform fee on direct online bookings (EquipDash pricing). Your website choice doesn't change these fees, but a site that sends divers to a marketplace instead of your own booking page can add a commission on top.

Card processing, especially international cards

Most of your divers may be tourists paying with foreign cards. Stripe's standard US pricing is 2.9% + 30¢ per card transaction, plus 1.5% for international cards and 1% if currency conversion is required (Stripe pricing). Squarespace Payments lists 2.5% to 2.9% + $0.30 by plan, a 1.5% international card surcharge and a 1% currency conversion fee (Squarespace pricing). On a $500 Open Water course paid with a foreign card that needs conversion, the Stripe rates above come to about $27.

Domain and email

A .com at Namecheap is $14.98 a year at the regular rate, with a cheaper first year for new customers (Namecheap). Google Workspace Business Starter lists at $7 per user per month (Google Workspace pricing). Builders often throw in the first year of either, then renew at full price.

Photos

Real photos of your boat, your instructors and your house reef do more than stock images, and they cost what your time or a local photographer costs. Prices vary too much to quote. Shoot a batch on a calm morning and reuse it everywhere.

Upkeep and redesigns

Prices change, courses get added, the boat schedule shifts each season. Someone has to update the site, either you or a designer at their hourly rate or retainer (see Option 1). Sites that nobody updates end up showing last year's prices, and divers notice.

Which option fits your shop

If your shop...	Best fit	Rough first-year cost
Has a staff member who likes building and updating pages	Wix, Squarespace or WordPress	About $50 to $1,200 plus their time
Wants a unique, custom design and has budget for it	Freelancer or dive-industry designer	$999 to $8,000 up front plus $20 to $499/mo
Runs FareHarbor and wants FareHarbor to handle everything	FareHarbor Sites	Reported $2,000 to $5,000+/yr; get a quote
Needs a full booking system and doesn't have one	Booking software with a bundled builder	Varies by platform and booking fees
Has an outdated or broken site and wants it fixed fast for a fixed monthly price, keeping its booking tool	ScubaDock	$1,188/yr
Depends on years of SEO history on its own domain	Stay on your domain for now; ScubaDock custom domains aren't live yet	Varies

A few questions help decide:

1. Who will update prices next season? If the answer is "nobody," pick an option where updating is fast or someone else does it.
2. Can a diver on a phone find a price and a booking button in under ten seconds? Whatever you choose, test that.
3. What happens if you leave? Check who owns the site, the theme and the domain.

If you want to see what good looks like before you spend anything, I'm putting together dive shop website examples worth copying. If you're on FareHarbor and want to keep your current builder, there's a guide on adding FareHarbor to your dive shop website coming soon.

You can run your own numbers in the dive shop website cost calculator.

And if your current site is the problem, you can paste its URL into ScubaDock and look at the draft before paying anything. If it isn't a fit, the comparison above still stands.

Prices checked October 3, 2026. This post is refreshed every January. Spot a price that changed? Let me know through the contact page.