A barbershop does not need a website the way a restaurant needs one. It needs something narrower: a place a stranger can look at for eight seconds and find out what a fade costs, whether you are open on Saturday, and whether they can call you right now. Everything a shop spends on the web is either buying those three answers or buying something else it thinks it needs.
This is the arithmetic of that, for one-chair studios and four-chair shops, with the 2026 prices written down.
The three-answer test
Open your own link on your phone, one hand, the way a client does on the bus. Then answer these:
- Can I see the price of a haircut without tapping anything?
- Can I see today's closing time without leaving this screen?
- Is there a number that dials when I tap it?
Three yeses: whatever you are paying, you are paying for the right thing. A single no means the page is not doing the job, and no amount of design or a new template fixes it — the missing thing is a field, not a theme.
Why this test and not "is the site nice": nobody chooses a barber because of the website. They choose because a photo of a cut looked right and the price was on the screen before they had to ask. The website's only job is to not lose that person in the last ten seconds.
The 2026 prices, from each vendor's own page
These are US list prices before tax, read on 13 November 2026. Annual billing means paying for the year up front at a lower monthly rate; monthly billing is what most people default to when they are trying a tool out.
| Option | Per month | Year 1 | 3 years | What it answers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Squarespace Basic (annual) | $19 | $228 | $684 | A real multi-page site, custom domain, blog, SEO tools |
| Squarespace Basic (monthly) | $25 | $300 | $900 | The same, at the month-to-month rate |
| Linktree Starter (annual) | $7 | $84 | $252 | A list of buttons — branding stays |
| Linktree Pro (annual) | $14 | $168 | $504 | The same list, without Linktree's name at the bottom |
| Linktree Pro (monthly) | $17 | $204 | $612 | The same, at the month-to-month rate |
| MapToSite Card | $0 | $0 | $0 | One page: prices, hours, address, tap-to-call |
| MapToSite Board | $6.99 | $83.88 | $251.64 | The same page with a custom domain and extras |
| MapToSite turnkey kit | — | $49 once | $49 | The page plus fifteen print pieces, built for you in 24 hours |
Read the middle column slowly, because it is where the $200 lives. A shop on Linktree Pro paying monthly spends $204 a year. The same shop on Squarespace Basic, annual, spends $228 a year. Both are more than $200 — for a page that, in the Linktree case, cannot show a price list at all, and in the Squarespace case, requires the owner to build and maintain the thing that does.
Where the $200 actually goes
A one-chair barbershop doing twelve cuts a day at $30, over 25 open days, is turning over $9,000 a month. $204 a year is not going to close it. So the argument is not "you are being robbed" — it is "you are paying rent on something you could own, and the rent buys features you will not use".
| If your page is… | 3-year cost | Kept vs a $0 page |
|---|---|---|
| Linktree Pro, billed monthly | $612 | $612 |
| Squarespace Basic, billed annually | $684 | $684 |
| Linktree Starter, billed annually | $252 | $252 |
| MapToSite Card, free | $0 | — |
Three years is the right window for this decision, not one year. A yearly subscription starts to feel small precisely because it is small every year, and the third renewal is the one nobody re-reads. Over three years, a barbershop on a monthly Linktree Pro plan has spent enough on a page without prices to buy twelve $49 kits.
The honest half: what the subscriptions buy that a one-pager does not
A one-page shop site is a poster that fits in a pocket. It is not a website in the 2010 sense, and pretending otherwise would be the kind of thing that costs you a customer. What you give up:
- Pages. No about page, no services page per stylist, no blog. One page, one scroll.
- A shop. No product sales, no gift cards, no deposits, no memberships.
- Booking. No calendar. A booking arrives as a phone call, a message, or through whatever tool you already use.
- A custom domain on the free tier. The free page lives on our address, like a link-in-bio. A domain is a paid tier and a separate yearly cost wherever you buy it.
- Analytics. No funnel, no heat map, no "where did they drop off". If you need the numbers, you need the bigger tool.
If any of those five is the actual requirement, buy the bigger tool. Squarespace is good at what it does and its $228 a year is not unreasonable for a business that needs a real site — it is just unreasonable for a barbershop that needs a price list. The mistake is paying for the multi-page product when the requirement was three answers.
There is a middle path people forget: run both. Free page as the link in the Instagram bio — the one that answers the three questions — and the bigger site as the second link, for the people who want the whole story. That is $0 for the part that has to be fast.
A barbershop's page, line by line
The service list is where most shop pages go wrong: twelve services, half of them rarely asked for, so the four that matter are buried. Five lines, price at the end, in the words clients use:
Skin fade 35
Crew cut 28
Scissor cut 32
Beard trim 18
Hot towel shave 40
Kids (under 12) 22
Tue–Sat 9:00–18:00 · closed Sunday and Monday
Walk-ins until 16:00, after that by phone
+1 555 0132 · 12 Example Street
Three details on that list do more work than they look like they do. "Kids (under 12) 22" answers the question parents ask by message before they ever come in. "Walk-ins until 16:00" removes the "can I come now?" call that interrupts a cut. And the phone number is a link, not a string of digits — on a phone, that is the difference between a tap and a copy-paste.
What to leave off
Your life story, a carousel of thirty photos, the loyalty program nobody has joined, and any price that ends in "from". A client reads "from $25" as "$25" and hears "$40" at the chair, and that conversation is worse than no price at all.
The printed half nobody quotes
Most shops stop at the page. But the same price list has to survive contact with the physical shop, and that is usually where the money actually leaks: a client sits down, asks the price, and the answer depends on who is on shift.
The pieces that pay for themselves in a shop with chairs:
- A price card at the chair or on the mirror — the five services, the same numbers as the page. One A4 sheet.
- A door sign with the hours, big enough to read from the pavement, matching what the page and Google say.
- A 70 mm QR sticker on the mirror or the till, pointing at the page — for the client who is already seated and wondering about a beard trim.
- Review cards — the "leave us a review" ask printed, because asking out loud happens about a tenth as often as it should.
The reason to have them made together is consistency: one price change should not mean three edits in three tools. Our kits are built this way — the page, the poster, the menu sheet, the cards and the stickers are generated from the same list, so the paper and the phone cannot disagree.
The twenty-minute version, if you are doing it yourself
- Write the five services and their prices in a notes app, one per line, number at the end. If a service has a "from" price, either fix the price or leave the service out.
- Write the hours exactly as you would say them, including the closed days. Not "Mon–Sat" if Saturday is short.
- Check the number you want called. The shop line, not the personal mobile, unless you want it published on the internet forever.
- Publish the page on a free builder — ours takes one form and gives you a link plus an edit key. It is here, no card, no account.
- Test it the way a client would, and fix anything that fails before you send the link to a single person.
That is the entire project. Everything else — a domain, a booking engine, a shop — is a separate decision made later, by you, with the page already earning its keep.
Related reading: from a Maps pin to a printable QR menu and table tents, a nail salon's price list page without a monthly fee, the three-year cost of a Linktree bio link, and the three-year cost calculator.
When paying monthly is the right answer
Say it plainly: if you sell products, run a blog, need a page per stylist, want a domain and a professional email address, or take deposits online, a hosted builder is the correct tool and $19–$29 a month is what that tool costs. The three-answer test is a floor, not a ceiling.
The mistake is not paying for software. It is paying a monthly fee for the floor — a price list, an hours line and a phone number — and then not having the time to build the rest of the site that fee was supposed to include.
Questions we get asked
Do I need a website if I already have Instagram and a Google listing?
You need one address that holds your prices, your hours and a number that dials. Instagram captions cannot be edited into a price list, and a Maps listing has no price field. One page is enough for that; a multi-page site is a different purchase.
Can a one-page site take bookings?
No. A booking is a call, a message, or a booking tool you already pay for. Deposits and calendars are a booking product, priced and supported separately.
Is the $49 kit really one payment?
Yes — one payment, no renewal, fifteen files and a live page within 24 hours. The limit is scope: Starter includes ten tables and one revision round, and the page lives on our address, not a custom domain.
What if I change a price?
With our pages you edit the page with your own link and ask for the paper to be regenerated; the printed files are rebuilt from the same list, not patched by hand. With a builder you edit the page and reprint whatever you printed.
The page and the paper, made once
Send a Maps link, your five services and your phone number. Within 24 hours: the live mobile page, the A4 QR poster, the printable service sheet, table cards, 70 mm stickers, the door sign, review cards and the rest of the fifteen pieces — $49 once, no subscription, nothing auto-renewing.
Want to try it before deciding? The free page takes about thirty seconds, needs no account, and stays free:
Create a page — free MapToSite vs Squarespace vs Linktree
Sources, all read on 13 November 2026: Squarespace plan prices — Basic $19 a month billed annually ($228 a year, $684 over three years) or $25 billed monthly; Core $29/$39 — from squarespace.com/pricing. Linktree plan prices — Starter $7 annual / $9 monthly, Pro $14 / $17, Premium $30 / $35 — from linktr.ee/s/pricing; Pro is the cheapest tier that removes Linktree's branding. MapToSite's Card, Board, Sign and turnkey prices are on this site and are charged through Polar as merchant of record, never monthly on this page. Three-year figures are 36 months at the stated rate. This is an opinion piece about what a shop page should carry; the vendor numbers are the vendors' own, and they change — check the page before you subscribe.