Ask three restaurant owners what their website costs and you'll get three numbers that don't mean the same thing. One pays $400/mo to a platform. One pays "nothing" and gives up a cut of every order. One pays $20/mo and ten hours of their own time every month.
The number on the invoice is rarely the real cost. Here's how to read the three pricing models.
Model 1: Flat-rate platforms
You pay a fixed monthly fee — typically $150 to $400 — for the website, hosting, and updates.
Watch for: the base price is rarely the full price. Online ordering, a CRM, email marketing, and accessibility fixes are often separate line items. Setup fees run $300–$1,000. And the classic trap: your menu, photos, and guest list live on their servers. Stop paying and it all goes dark — your "website" was a rental.
The honest version of this model exists: one flat number, everything included, your data exportable. It's just rarer than it should be.
Model 2: Revenue-share and "free" ordering sites
No monthly fee. Instead, the platform takes a percentage of every order, or charges your diners fees, or both.
Watch for: 15–30% of an order is a lot of money. On $5,000/mo of online orders, a 20% cut is $1,000/mo — more than any flat-rate plan. The fee is invisible until you do the math, which is the point. "Free" here means you pay in margin instead of dollars.
Model 3: DIY with hidden costs
A generic site builder for $15–$30/mo. Looks cheap on paper.
Watch for: your time. Building the site, writing the copy, fighting the menu plugin, fixing mobile layout, renewing the domain, patching whatever broke. Owners routinely spend 5–10 hours a month on this — hours a restaurant week doesn't have. Then there's what you don't get: restaurant-specific features (real menu structure, reservations, ordering) and accessibility. A generic template isn't built for screen readers, and retrofitting that is a project most DIY sites never finish.
If that time line item is the one that stings, we wrote about the alternative: website design that doesn't become your second job.
The number that matters
Add it up honestly: monthly fee + per-order cuts + add-ons + your hours at whatever your time is worth. That's the real cost.
Our deal is simple enough to state in one line: free — $0/mo — if you take online orders through Square, or a flat $99/mo (founding pricing, regular $149) if you're dine-in only. Everything included, WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility built in, and you own your data and can leave anytime.
Want the full math for your situation? The cost page walks through it in about a minute.