How much does a therapist website cost?

A professional therapist website costs about $2,900–$8,700 from a freelancer and $7,250–$20,300 from an agency, according to Project Cost Estimator. A DIY site costs less up front and more of your time. Here’s how the options compare:

Option	Typical cost	What drives it	Source
DIY builder	$19–$99/mo billed annually ($25–$139 month to month)	Plan tier, whether you need payments	Squarespace pricing
Therapy website subscription	$78–$299/mo billed annually, plus a $100 setup fee on the two lower plans	HIPAA forms and secure email only on the Flourish plan	Brighter Vision pricing
Freelance build	$2,900–$8,700	Template vs. custom design, number of specialty pages	Project Cost Estimator, therapist (updated July 2026)
Agency build	$7,250–$20,300	Same scope, higher overhead	Project Cost Estimator, therapist
HIPAA-compliant form add-on	$300–$800 to set up	Forms that collect client health information	Project Cost Estimator, therapist
Ongoing running costs	$30–$150/mo	Hosting, tools, maintenance	Project Cost Estimator, therapist

Project Cost Estimator says its numbers come from more than 600 project quotes and rate benchmarks. Treat every range here as a starting point for your own quotes.

Specialty pages. A solo practice with one “services” page is cheap to build and hard to find. People search for “anxiety therapist near me” or “couples counseling,” so each specialty you want to be found for needs its own page. In my projects, that’s the biggest lever on price.

A clinician directory. Group practices need a page per clinician with specialties, insurance and whether they’re taking new clients. That’s more design, more writing and more pages to keep current.

Copywriting. Therapy copy has to be warm without being vague, and it has to answer what a nervous first-time client wants to know: who you help, what a first session is like, what it costs, and whether you take their insurance. If I write it, that’s part of the quote.

Scheduling and telehealth. Most practices already pay for a practice platform. SimplePractice, for example, lists plans from $49 to $99 a month on its pricing page. I link the site to that platform so you aren’t paying twice for scheduling.

This is general information, not legal advice. Talk to your compliance advisor or attorney about your own practice.

Forms are where most risk sits. A plain website contact form usually emails submissions in the clear. If a form asks about symptoms, history or insurance, it should run through a provider that signs a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) and encrypts what clients send. Two published examples:

• Hushmail’s HIPAA plans, as listed on Brighter Vision’s pricing page, run $14.99 to $24.99 a month and include a BAA.
• Jotform offers HIPAA features only on its Gold plan ($99 a month billed annually, $129 month to month) and Enterprise.

Tracking scripts need care too. In June 2024 a federal court in Texas vacated part of HHS’s guidance that had restricted tracking tools capturing visitor IP addresses on public pages of health providers’ websites. HHS dropped its appeal on August 29, 2024, according to the American Hospital Association. That ruling was about public pages. Client portals and booking flows are a separate question, so I keep ad pixels off them unless your advisor says otherwise.

My usual approach is to keep the website itself light on client data. Contact goes through a BAA-covered form, and anything clinical happens in your practice platform.

Will it bring in clients, or only look calmer?

A nervous first-time client is comparing three or four practices on a phone, usually at night. The site that gets the call answers their questions before they have to ask: who you help, what a first session is like, whether you take their insurance, what it costs, and how to book without a phone call. A soft color palette on a page that says “we offer a safe space” doesn’t do that.

The other lever is search. “Anxiety therapist” or “couples counseling” plus your town is a different search from “therapist,” and each one you want to be found for needs its own page that reads like you wrote it. Pair that with a Google Business Profile that lists the same specialties and the same address, so the map result and the website back each other up.

What will you need from me?

The specialties you want more of, and any you’re closing to new clients. Which insurance panels you’re on. Your practice platform and whether you want booking on the site or a link to the portal. For a group practice, a short bio, photo, specialties and availability for each clinician, plus who keeps that list current after launch. A photo of you and the office, or a date for a shoot, because clients want to see the room they’d sit in. Logins for your domain and your current site. If I write the pages, an hour on the phone about how you talk to clients, and a few hours across the project to review every page before it goes live.

What should I ask before I hire anyone?

• Which form service do you use, and will it sign a BAA? If the answer is “the built-in contact form,” keep asking.
• Who owns the domain and the design? If you leave a subscription, find out what comes with you. The domain should be registered in your name either way.
• Will you write the specialty pages, or am I writing them? Copy is often the part that stalls a project, so know up front who’s doing it.
• What does the monthly fee cover? Hosting alone is cheap. Updates, security, backups and edits are what you’re really paying for.