What a watch dealer website costs in 2026
Ezra Gonzalez · Updated · 3 min readShort answer: $2,222 to launch a complete dealer site with me, paid once. After that you pay the platform about $29–39 a month on Shopify (or $17–36 on Squarespace), about $20 a year for your domain, and nothing to me.
What the $2,222 covers
It’s one price for a complete dealer site — not a starting price with a menu of extras bolted on. You get:
- 9 pages: Home, Inventory, Find a Watch, Sell, Trade, or Consign, About, Contact, Blog, Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
- Inventory built around real watch data — reference, year, condition, box and papers — with filters for brand, price and availability.
- Inquiries that arrive with the exact watch attached, and a sell-or-trade form that collects photos before you reply.
- Unlimited revisions until you’re happy, training on launch day, 30 days of post-launch tweaks and a 1-year technical warranty.
- My Claude or ChatGPT inventory skill, so listing a watch can run itself instead of eating your evenings.
It’s the same $2,222 on Shopify or Squarespace. I recommend the platform — you don’t have to pick it.
What you pay every month — and to whom
After launch, the running costs go to the platforms, not to me. Everything is set up in accounts in your name.
| Cost | About | Paid to |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify plan | $29–39 / month | Shopify |
| or Squarespace plan | $17–36 / month | Squarespace |
| Domain | $20 / year | Your registrar |
| Retainer | $0 | Nobody |
That’s it for most dealers. There’s no hosting markup and nothing you rent from me.
The costs nobody mentions up front
These aren’t fees I charge. They’re what catches dealers off guard with any website, so it’s better you hear them now.
- Card processing. If you take cards online, the processor keeps a percentage of each sale. The platform shows you its rate before you switch it on.
- Apps. Some features come from paid apps. If your setup needs one, I’ll tell you what it costs before we start.
- Business email. An address like you@yourdealership.com is a small monthly cost. Worth it — buyers notice a Gmail address on a $20K invoice.
- Your time. Listing inventory is the biggest hidden cost. That’s why every site I build lists a watch in about a minute, and why the AI listing skill is included.
Do it yourself, hire a generalist, or hire a specialist?
All 3 can work. Here’s the honest trade-off:
- Do it yourself. Cheapest up front — a template and a platform plan. You pay in time instead: learning the builder, writing policies, setting up inventory fields a template never expected.
- A general web designer. You’ll get a nice-looking site, but they learn how watches sell on your project — sold archives, box-and-papers fields, sell-or-trade forms. Expect to explain a lot.
- A dealer specialist. That’s me. After 70+ dealer sites, the watch-specific decisions are already made, so the 30–45 days go into your brand and inventory.
A website doesn’t replace your groups or your marketplaces. It’s where a buyer who’s never met you goes to check you’re real before they wire.
What happens after launch
You get 30 days of tweaks included. After that, you text me when you need something — a photo swapped, a few lines changed, a quick update.
Most of those take under 15 minutes, and I don’t bill for them. If a job runs past half an hour, it’s $50 an hour. Custom code I built stays covered by the 1-year warranty either way.
How payment works
When we kick off, I email you an invoice for the $2,222. Pay it through Stripe with a credit card, or by Zelle if you’d rather. Work starts the moment it’s paid, so all sales are final. You see a first draft around day 10, and the site goes live in 30–45 days — only once you’re happy with it.
Quick questions
Is $2,222 a starting price?
No. It’s the price for the complete 9-page build, on either platform. If you want something beyond that, text me and I’ll quote it before we start.
Why is Shopify the same price as Squarespace?
Because the work is the same to you: a finished dealer site. I recommend the platform based on your inventory and how you sell — almost always Shopify now — and the price doesn’t change with it.
What do I need to have ready?
Your logo, photos of your inventory (or I pull them from your listings), your policies and your logins. I handle the design, build, copy and launch.
Do I own the site?
Yes. The store, the domain and the content are in your name. If we ever part ways, you keep all of it.