How much does an RV park website cost?
Anywhere from nothing to more than fifteen thousand dollars, and the sticker price is the least useful number. Here is what each level costs over three years, what it buys, and what it quietly leaves out.
THE SHORT ANSWER
A booking platform page is free but does not get found. A do-it-yourself builder is $10 to $40 a month plus your time. A local designer or agency build is $3,000 to $15,000 up front plus hosting and hourly changes. RV Park Sites is $85 a month with no build fee, maintenance included, and the site owned by you. Over three years the cheapest option that actually brings in new guests is usually the monthly service, because the real cost of a park website is keeping it current, and that is the part every other model leaves to you.
The five price levels
Every park website falls into one of these. The price ranges are as of this writing and drift, so treat them as brackets.
| Option | Up front | Monthly | Who maintains it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Booking platform page | $0 | Included in platform fees | You, in the dashboard |
| DIY builder (Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy) | $0 | $10 to $40 | You |
| WordPress, self-managed | $0 to $500 for a theme and setup | $5 to $50 hosting | You, or a contractor |
| Local designer or agency | $3,000 to $15,000 | $5 to $50 hosting, plus hourly changes or a $50 to $200 retainer | The designer, if available |
| RV Park Sites | $0 | $85, $150, or $250 by band | Us |
What the free page costs you
Campspot, RoverPass, Firefly, Newbook, and the rest give every park a page. It books guests who already know the park. It does not rank for your town, it looks like every other park on the platform, and it is gone if you switch platforms. The cost is invisible: it is every guest who searched "RV park near Buena Vista" and found the park with a real site instead. For a park that is full from regulars, the free page is enough and we say so. For everyone else, it is the most expensive option on the list because it earns nothing. The platform page, compared.
What a builder really costs
The plan is $10 to $40 a month. The cost is the hours. Building a decent site from a template takes an owner four to twenty hours, depending on how much they care about the result. Keeping it current takes one to three hours a month in season: rates in April, a photo swap, the new pool hours, the closing date in October. At any honest value of an owner's time in summer, the builder costs more than $85 a month by June, and the result is as good as the owner's eye for design and search, which is usually the problem. Two more costs hide here. First, the site cannot be exported from Wix, GoDaddy, or Duda, so the hours are spent again when you outgrow it. Second, nobody at the park is checking whether it loads on a phone with one bar at a highway rest area, which is the only place a camper is. Wix, Squarespace, and GoDaddy, compared.
What an agency build really costs
A designer or agency quotes $3,000 to $15,000 for a park site. The build is often good. The quote does not include the three things that matter after launch: hosting and security, which are $5 to $50 a month and your problem; changes, which are hourly at $75 to $150 or a retainer; and the fact that the designer built a dentist's site last month and a roofer's next month and does not know what a camper is deciding. A $6,000 site with $25 a month hosting and two changes a year is about $7,500 over three years and shows year-one rates by year three. That is the 2019 site with 2019 rates you see on half the parks in any state. A local designer, compared.
What $85 a month buys
Our Website band is $85 a month with no build fee. It includes the build, designed for your kind of park; connection to the reservation system you already use; local search set up correctly from day one; hosting, backups, security, and speed; changes when you send them; and a person who answers the phone. You own the site, the source code, the domain, and the content. Twelve months minimum, then month to month. Pay the year up front and get two months free.
The Listings + Reviews band at $150 adds the park map, drawn and printed, your listing kept accurate on Google, Apple Maps, Bing, Yelp, and the directories, reviews monitored and answered, and a monthly report. The Marketing band at $250 adds pages for each kind of guest, photography at your park, ongoing search work, and a quarterly call. All three on the pricing page.
Three years, side by side
| Option | Three-year cost | State of the site at year three |
|---|---|---|
| Booking platform page | $0 extra | Same page, never found |
| DIY builder | $360 to $1,440 plus about 100 hours | As current as the owner's last free weekend |
| Agency build, no retainer | About $7,500 | Stale, rates from launch |
| Agency build with retainer | About $10,000 | Current, if the designer stayed |
| RV Park Sites, Website band | $3,060, or $2,550 paid yearly | Current, maintained, owned by you |
The hours line is the one to look at. A hundred hours of an owner's time over three summers is the real price of the cheap option.
What changes the price at any level
- Who does the ongoing work. A site is a monthly job. The cheapest option is the one where someone else does that job for a fair price.
- Booking integration. Any real site connects to your reservation system rather than replacing it. Ask how, and who maintains the connection.
- Search setup. Titles that say what and where, a Google Business Profile that matches, a page per kind of guest, FAQ blocks machines can read. This is where free and DIY sites lose, and it is most of what you are paying a professional for.
- Photography. Your own photos are usually enough. When they are not, it is a separate line at any provider. Ours is included in the Marketing band.
- Ownership. Wix, GoDaddy, Duda, and most platform add-ons cannot be exported. If leaving means rebuilding, the price is higher than it looks.
How to compare quotes
Ask every provider the same five questions and write the answers down. What is the total in year one and year three. Who changes the rates in April and what does that cost. Does it connect to my reservation system and who keeps that working. What exactly is done for search, in plain words. And what happens to the site if I leave. The answers sort the options faster than the prices do.
Questions that come with this one.
What is the average cost of an RV park website?
There is no useful average because the models differ. A booking platform page is free and does not get found. A DIY builder is $10 to $40 a month plus your time. An agency build is $3,000 to $15,000 up front plus hosting and changes. RV Park Sites is $85 a month with no build fee and maintenance included.
Is a $10 a month website good enough for a campground?
It is good enough for a park that books by phone and does not need new guests. It is not good enough for a park competing for bookings, because the template, the search setup, and the maintenance are all on the owner, and the site cannot be exported when it is outgrown.
Why does RV Park Sites charge monthly instead of a build fee?
Because a park website is a monthly job. Rates, dates, photos, listings, and reviews change every season. A one-time build is current the day it launches. The monthly covers the build and everything after it, and there is nothing to earn back before the site pays for itself.
Do I own the website if I pay monthly?
With RV Park Sites, yes: the site, the source code, the domain, and the content are yours, and you take them if you leave. With most builders and platform add-ons, no, and that is worth asking any provider before signing.
Want a number for your park?
A twenty-minute call and you will know which band fits, what it would look like, and what it would replace.