Small business · Online stores · Professional services · Healthcare / Columbia & Newberry, SC · and remote
Almost every studio makes you book a call to find out what it costs. Here it is, in writing, before you talk to anyone.
Taking projects starting October
01 / Transparency
Ask a web studio what a site costs and you will almost always be told it depends, followed by a calendar link. Sometimes that is genuine. Often it is a way of finding out what you can afford before quoting.
Every buyer’s guide written for small business owners says the same thing: a vendor who won’t give you a number before a call is pricing you, not the work.
So the numbers are here. If they are wrong for your business, you have lost thirty seconds instead of an hour. If they are right, the first call can be about the actual website.
Agreed before work starts. It does not move because the project took longer than we estimated — that is our problem, not yours.
The domain, the hosting account, the files, the content. All in your name. Nothing is held hostage.
You get a date at the start. If we need something from you to hit it, you will know exactly what and exactly when.
Monthly support is optional and cancellable. Leave whenever you like and we will help you move, free.
02 / What we build
A two-person trade business, a restaurant, an online shop, a consultant, a multi-location practice — the process is the same, the prices are the same, and so is the promise: you get the site you asked for, on the date we agreed, for the price on this page.
A fast, credible site that explains what you do, shows why people choose you, and makes it easy to call, book or ask for a quote.
Products, checkout, shipping and tax set up properly on a platform in your name — so the store is yours, not ours.
Connected to the scheduling tool you already use, or help choosing one, so customers can book without picking up the phone.
Keep what works on your current site, fix what doesn’t, and move it somewhere you actually control.
One focused page for a new product, an event, a campaign or a new location, built as one of the pages in any of the three tiers.
For creatives, consultants, coaches, speakers and authors — people whose work is the product.
Donations, events and volunteer sign-ups, built to be usable by everyone you serve.
Where we started. We know where privacy exposure hides on a practice website and build around it — see the scope.
Built forTrades & home services · Restaurants & cafés · Retail · Professional services · Real estate · Salons, spas & fitness · Churches & nonprofits · Startups · Medical & dental practices
03 / Pricing
Half to book the slot on the calendar, half on launch — or spread a Starter or Business Site over six monthly payments. No hourly billing, no change-order surprises. If the budget is tight we reduce the scope, not the rate — same quality, fewer pages.
Tier 01
$4,500
or 6 monthly payments of $795
1–2 weeks
A small business, solo professional or new venture that needs a credible, fast, accessible site that brings in customers.
Tier 02 · Most businesses
$8,500
or 6 monthly payments of $1,500
3–4 weeks
An established business with several services, team members or products that each need their own page to be found.
Tier 03
$15,000+
6–8 weeks
Multiple locations, a full online store, integrations with the systems you already run, and a formal accessibility audit.
$195 / mo
Optional support. Hosting, updates, security, accessibility spot-checks and small edits. Cancellable any month, and if you leave we migrate you out free. Nothing on this page requires it.
$495
Website fix-up. Not ready for a new site? We fix the one you have, on the platform it’s already on. We check up to 10 pages and fix what we find: wrong phone numbers, emails or hours, broken links and buttons, text left over from a template, out-of-date dates, and pages that break on a phone. It’s done within five business days of getting access, with a written list of every change. Anything bigger, like new pages or a redesign, gets a written price before we touch it. Ask for a fix-up and choose “Website fix-up” on the form.
04 / Scope
Being specific about the boundary is not modesty. Overclaiming — on accessibility, on privacy, on healthcare compliance — creates real liability for us and for you, so here is the line, drawn plainly.
For any business open to the public. Businesses open to the public are places of public accommodation under ADA Title III. There is no codified technical standard for their websites, and accessibility lawsuits against small businesses are filed every year — which is why conformance belongs in the code from day one.
For healthcare practices, on the federal deadline — since it gets quoted wrongly. The HHS rule requiring WCAG 2.1 Level AA applies to healthcare providers receiving federal funds. An interim final rule in May 2026 extended the dates by one year: recipients with 15 or more employees now have until 11 May 2027, those with fewer than 15 until 10 May 2028. The standard and the scope did not change — only the dates. Title II covers state and local government entities — public hospitals, county clinics, university health systems. If someone has quoted you a Title II deadline for a private practice, they have quoted you the wrong rule.
05 / Selected work
One site we can talk about properly beats a wall of thumbnails you can’t learn anything from: who it was for, what we built, and why it looks the way it does.
06 / Who we are
Cornerstone Designers is based in Newberry, South Carolina, and Hayden works from Orlando, Florida. He’s your first contact for prices and new projects, and from then on you work directly with the people designing and building your site — nobody passing messages along.
Newberry, South Carolina · Midlands & Upstate
Founder, owner & web developer
Before websites, I ran my own lawn care and landscaping business for four years, installed industrial fire protection systems, managed solar installation projects, and worked as an EMT with Richland County EMS, then moved into environmental health and safety. EMS and safety work run on compliance, careful records and clear decisions under pressure, and I bring the same habits to accessibility, privacy and code that holds up. Running my own business taught me what people want from anyone they hire: a straight price, a date that holds, and a person who gets back to you. It’s how I run Cornerstone Designers, and it’s why the prices are on this page.
Orlando, Florida · Central Florida
Sales representative & web designer
Hayden is the first person you’ll talk to about a new website. Send the form and he’ll get back to you about prices, what each package includes and when we can start, and he designs sites alongside Taylor once the work begins.
07 / Process
Most projects that run late run late because nobody said clearly what was needed and by when. Each step below names who is holding the ball.
Before we start · you, then us
We send one email of questions about your business, your customers, the pages and features you need and the look you’re after. Answer by replying, or on the form. Within two working days of your answers you get a written scope and a fixed price — not a range.
Week 1 · your turn
Half the fee, or the first monthly payment, books your slot. We send one checklist of anything still missing: logo files, photographs, product or service details, logins for anything we’re connecting. One list, not a drip of emails.
Weeks 2–3 · our turn
You see it on a private link as it comes together, not as a surprise at the end. Two rounds of revisions are included and almost nobody uses the second.
Week 4 · together
We go live on the agreed date, walk your team through it, and hand over every account in your name. Balance is due here. On a payment plan, the monthly payments simply carry on, and the hosting and files move into your name with the last one. Then you are free to leave or to keep us on.
08 / Coverage
Two areas with someone close by: the South Carolina Midlands and Upstate, where we will come to your business and see how customers actually find you, and Central Florida, where Hayden is your local contact. Everywhere else runs the same way, without the visit.
Based in Newberry. In-person kickoff and handover included.
Newberry · Columbia · Lexington · Irmo · Greenwood · Greenville · Spartanburg
Hayden is based in Orlando and handles new projects across Central Florida. Send the form and he’ll get back to you.
Orlando · Winter Park · Winter Garden · Kissimmee · Lake Mary · Clermont · Sanford
The same process, the same price, the same launch date. Video calls instead of a site visit. Most of our review happens on a shared link anyway.
09 / Questions
If yours is not here, ask it on the form below. We answer in writing, not on a call you have to book.
Almost any. Trades and home services, restaurants, shops, consultants, real estate, salons and gyms, churches and nonprofits, startups, and medical and dental practices — which is where we started.
What stays the same is the process: one set of questions up front, a written fixed price, a launch date, and a site you own outright. If a project is outside what we do well, we will tell you so and point you to someone who does it better.
By asking properly before we build anything. After you get in touch we send one email of questions — your customers, the pages you need, the features, the look, the sites you like and the ones you don’t. You answer by replying, in your own words.
Everything you tell us goes into the written scope, and we check the finished site against it line by line before you see it. Two rounds of revisions are included for anything that still isn’t right.
Yes. We set it up on a platform in your name — so the products, the customer list and the payouts belong to you — with checkout, shipping and tax configured properly.
A small catalog usually fits the Business Site tier. A large catalog, subscriptions or a custom checkout is a Custom Build. Either way you get the number in writing before anything starts. Platform and card-processing fees are charged by those providers, not by us.
Because hiding them mainly benefits us, and we would rather have the trust. A published price means you can decide in thirty seconds whether we are worth a conversation, and it means we are not quietly quoting a bigger business more for the same work.
It also means the people who get in touch are people the price already suits. That is a better use of everyone’s afternoon.
Sometimes that is the right call, and a template or a DIY builder can be a fine start. At that price something has to give, though, and it is usually what you only notice later: who owns the domain and the hosting, whether the site works with a keyboard and a screen reader, whether anyone set up local search, and whether there is a written scope and a launch date.
Those are what our prices pay for, and they are in every tier. If $500 is the real budget and you already have a site, our $495 fix-up may be all you need: we fix what’s wrong with the site you have rather than building a new one. If you need a new site at that price, tell us. We will say plainly whether we are a fit and, if we are not, point you to a builder that is.
Not for the work in the written scope. If it takes us longer than we estimated, that is our misjudgment and our cost.
It changes only if you ask for something that was not in the scope — an extra service page, a second location, a booking integration we did not know about. When that happens we quote it separately in writing first, and you decide before any work starts. You will never open an invoice you were not expecting.
You do, completely. The domain is registered in your business’s name, the hosting account is yours, and you get the files. If you decide next year to move to another studio, you take everything with you and we help with the migration at no charge.
On a payment plan, the domain is still in your name from day one. The hosting account and the files move into your name with the last monthly payment.
We do not build on a proprietary platform you can only leave by starting over. That is a business model, not a service.
No. It is $195 a month, it is genuinely optional, and plenty of clients skip it. It covers hosting, updates, security, accessibility spot-checks and small edits — useful if nobody on your team wants to touch the site, unnecessary if someone does.
You can start it later, stop it any month, and it has no effect on your ownership either way.
Yes, for a Starter or Business Site: six monthly payments of $795 or $1,500. That comes to $4,770 or $9,000 in total, a little more than paying in two halves. Custom Builds can be spread out too; we put the schedule in the written quote.
The first payment books your slot, the same way a deposit does. After that, Stripe emails you an invoice each month with a Pay button, and they stop after the sixth. The build runs on the same schedule either way, so a payment plan never slows your launch.
Often, yes. Our $495 fix-up covers up to 10 pages on the platform you already use, whether that’s WordPress, Wix, Squarespace or most others: wrong contact details and hours, broken links, leftover template text, out-of-date dates, and pages that break on a phone.
We look first and send you the list of what we’ll fix before you pay anything. You add us as a user on your site, so you never have to send a password. If what’s wrong goes deeper than a fix-up, we’ll say so and quote it in writing, and nothing changes unless you say yes.
They are cheaper because they do not work. Overlay products have repeatedly failed to deliver conformance, and several have themselves been named in accessibility lawsuits. Courts have not accepted overlay compliance as a defense.
In 2025, 8,667 ADA Title III lawsuits were filed in federal court (buildings and websites together), and one tracker counted more than 5,000 website and app accessibility lawsuits across federal and state courts. The FTC also fined the best-known overlay maker $1 million for claiming its widget made sites compliant. We build conformance into the markup instead, which is the only version that holds up. The full story, with sources.
No, and neither is anyone who says they are. There is no government body that issues HIPAA certification — no federal agency accredits vendors. When a web company advertises it, they are describing a private training course they paid for.
What we actually do is build sites that stay out of HIPAA’s way: no protected health information collected, stored or transmitted, and analytics configured so the practice is not handing patient data to a company that will not sign a Business Associate Agreement. If you need a patient portal or records access, you need a specialist vendor, and we will say so on the first call.
No. A BAA is for vendors who handle protected health information, and we deliberately build systems that do not. Signing one would imply a service we do not provide.
If your practice needs a website component that genuinely touches PHI — a portal, an intake that collects history, an integration with your EHR — that belongs with a vendor who specializes in it and carries the insurance for it. We will happily build around whatever they provide.
On an appointment or intake page, yes. Google has confirmed it does not offer a Business Associate Agreement for GA4. If a page where a patient requests an appointment is sending data to Google, the practice — not Google, and not us — carries that exposure.
Almost every small practice site we look at is doing this right now, usually because whoever built it dropped in the default snippet without thinking about it. We configure an analytics setup that gives you the numbers you need without that problem, and we explain it in writing so you can show your compliance officer.
10 / From the blog
What websites cost, what actually makes one accessible, and what to ask before you hire anyone — including us. Read the blog.
What a dental practice website needs in 2026: the pages patients look for, safe forms and analytics, accessibility dates, and Google setup.
Shopify vs Square Online for a small SC shop: monthly and per-sale costs (checked October 2026), sales tax basics, and which fits how you sell.
How to choose a web designer in Columbia, SC: whether local matters, what a Midlands business site needs, how to vet a designer, and free help.
11 / Contact
Send the form and you will get a reply from a person, usually the same day and always within one working day. If you would rather talk it through, say so on the form and we will call you.
A short form. We reply with the questions that shape your site — answer them by email — and then a written fixed price.