The short version
Doing it yourself takes 20–40 hours spread over a few weekends. A freelancer typically takes three to eight weeks. An agency takes six to twelve. A fixed-scope build can be done in a week. The delay is almost never the building — it is waiting on photos, copy and decisions.
The honest answer is that building a five-page salon site takes a few days of actual work. Everything beyond that is waiting.
Doing it yourself
20 to 40 hours, usually across three or four weekends.
Roughly: an evening choosing a template, a day fighting the editor, several evenings writing copy and hating it, a day on photos, then a long tail of small fixes. Most owners get to about 80% and stall there.
The trap is that the last 20% — mobile layout, page speed, connecting booking properly — is the part that actually decides whether the site converts.
Hiring a freelancer
Three to eight weeks typically.
A week or two of back-and-forth on scope, one to two weeks building, then revision rounds. The variable is responsiveness — on both sides. Freelancers usually run several projects at once, so your two-day task can sit for a week.
Hiring an agency
Six to twelve weeks.
Discovery, brand workshop, wireframes, design concepts, revision rounds, build, QA, launch. The process is genuinely rigorous and genuinely slow, and most of it is scoping work a five-page salon site does not need.
A fixed-scope build
One week.
This is what I do: brief on Monday, live the following Monday. It only works because the scope is fixed and the niche is narrow. I am not learning your industry on your time, and there is no discovery phase because I already know what a salon site needs.
Most of a website timeline is decision-making, not construction. Remove the decisions that do not change the outcome — which template, how many revision rounds, what the process is — and a week is comfortable rather than rushed.
What actually causes delays
- Photos. The single biggest cause, every time. Waiting for a shoot, or waiting to feel ready to shoot.
- Copy. Owners underestimate how long writing about themselves takes. It is the hardest page on the site.
- Decisions. Every open question adds a day, and open questions accumulate quietly.
- Domain and hosting access. Nobody remembers the login. Chasing it can take a fortnight.
- Scope creep. “Could we also add a shop?” Yes, and that is another three weeks.
How to make it fast, whoever builds it
- Gather photos before you start. Twelve to twenty is enough.
- Write your service menu with prices first. It is the page that most often blocks everything else.
- Find your domain login now, before it is urgent.
- Decide your booking platform first. Changing it mid-build means rebuilding the flow.
- Give feedback in one pass, not five messages over five days.
Do those five things and almost any timeline shortens by a week.
A realistic seven-day build
- Monday: brief, photos and menu handed over.
- Tuesday–Wednesday: design and build.
- Thursday: copy, service pages, booking wired in.
- Friday: you review, one round of changes.
- Weekend: changes made, testing on real devices.
- Monday: live on your domain, SSL on, booking taking appointments.
Your total involvement is about an hour, plus the review.
Sites built on exactly this timeline
Brief on Monday. Live the following Monday.
$399 to launch, $50 a month after. No discovery calls, no revision rounds you did not ask for.
See what I build →