How to hire a web and tools developer
for a small business (2026)
A web developer in the United States earns a median of $92,650 a year and a web and digital interface designer $104,000, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics' May 2025 count. A small business rarely posts for either by name; it posts for the person who will finally build the thing: the mobile menu, the booking page that works on a phone, the report that takes a Saturday, the form that lands where someone will see it. Allying does that job priced off the salary you post, with a monthly minimum of $1,395, and does the first week before any call with you.
Last updated
What a web and tools developer earns in 2026
Two government rows cover this posting. A "web developer", "WordPress developer" or "application developer" title is filed under Web Developers (SOC 15-1254), 70,190 employed; a "website designer" title under Web and Digital Interface Designers (SOC 15-1255), 113,330 employed.
| Occupation | 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Web Developers (15-1254), a year | $48,100 | $64,230 | $92,650 | $126,230 | $162,290 |
| Web Developers, an hour | $23.12 | $30.88 | $44.54 | $60.69 | $78.03 |
| Web and Digital Interface Designers (15-1255), a year | $53,750 | $73,290 | $104,000 | $158,820 | $201,550 |
| Web and Digital Interface Designers, an hour | $25.84 | $35.24 | $50.00 | $76.36 | $96.90 |
Data: BLS OEWS May 2025 (released 2026-05-15); O*NET 31.0 (August 2026). National figures, self-employed excluded. Last updated 2026-09-20.
The six largest metros by employment in this occupation, with the web developer median in each: New York $104,820; Washington $134,350; Seattle $130,440; Chicago $96,870; Los Angeles $107,290; Dallas-Fort Worth $96,740.
What does a web and tools developer actually do?
O*NET's list for the job, in plain words: write the code a site or a web application needs; design, build and keep up the site with the platform's own tools; back up the files so a broken change can be undone; pick the tools for the job; check the code works in the browsers and on the phones people use; keep the databases behind the site; test after every change; make the day-to-day updates; renew the domain before it lapses.
For a restaurant, a clinic or a contractor, that comes down to five things. Build the page each launch, season or opening needs, before the date. Make the menu, the booking path and the forms work on a phone, where your customers are. Keep the tracking honest, so a form, a call and a sale can be traced to where they came from. Move the records when a system changes, without losing one. And build the report that today takes a person a Saturday, so it refreshes itself.
What to look for in a web and tools developer
Someone who builds on the host and the systems you already pay for rather than moving you to theirs. Someone who stages every change where you can look at it first and can show you the way back. Someone who says "it is live" only after they have looked at the live page, and "it can be undone" only when it can. Ask where they would get the true hours, prices and menu items before typing any, because the right answer is from you, not from the old page.
Be wary of anyone whose first plan is a rebuild on a new platform, whose portfolio has no live addresses, and who wants your personal login instead of an access you can issue and revoke.
How to write the posting
Name the host, the point of sale, the booking system and the CRM in the first lines. List the things you need built this quarter: the mobile menu, the booking page, the report, the form. Say who owns the facts: the menu from the kitchen, the prices from the till. Say what must be approved before it goes live (the homepage, any price, anything that touches money) and what can just be done. Give the salary; the price on this page is a share of it.
Leave out the list of thirty tools. A posting that names your systems and your five things gets a better answer than one that names a stack.
Five interview questions for a web and tools developer
1. "Our menu is a PDF on the site. What would you do this week?" A good answer builds a page from the menu the kitchen owns, checks it on a phone, stages it privately, and asks you before it replaces the PDF.
2. "How do you know a change worked after it went live?" A good answer reads the live page back, checks the form landed, and keeps the record; it never says done on the strength of the deploy log alone.
3. "We are moving from one booking system to another. What is your plan?" A good answer maps the fields, loads a test copy, reconciles the counts to the last record, keeps a backup and a rollback, and loads production only after you say yes.
4. "Our ad platform says forty leads and our phone log says twelve. What is going on?" A good answer audits the tracking, the tags and the form sources, and reconciles the platform, the CRM and the books before touching any setting.
5. "What happens to our old links when a page address changes?" A good answer says redirects, a map of every address changed, and a crawl afterwards to prove nothing broke.
How much does a web and tools developer cost?
A developer on payroll costs the salary plus what sits on top of it. In June 2026 wages and salaries were 70.0% of what private employers paid per hour worked and benefits the other 30.0%, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics' count (Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, released 2026-09-09, read 2026-09-17). At that split, a developer at the $92,650 median implies about $132,400 a year in total cost, and one at the 25th percentile, $64,230, about $91,800.
A freelancer or an agency prices the project. One platform vendor's 2026 guide reports freelancers at $75 to $150 an hour, or $2,000 to $8,000 for a five-to-ten-page brochure site, and agencies at $10,000 to $35,000 for a custom small-business site, with maintenance plans at $50 to $200 a month. Those are the vendor's reported ranges, not ours; your own quotes are the number that counts, and a project has an end date where a job does not.
Allying's price for this job is 30% of the salary you post, billed month to month, with a floor of $1,395 a month. A $60,000 posting is $1,500 a month; an $80,000 posting is $2,000. The floor matters only on an hourly or part-time posting; the exact figure is in the proposal before you decide.
| Option | What it costs | What week one looks like | Who decides, who spends |
|---|---|---|---|
| An employee at the median | $92,650 in salary; about $132,400 a year all in at the 70.0/30.0 split | Access, a tour of the systems, a backlog | You manage them; hosting and apps are on your card |
| A freelancer | $75 to $150 an hour, or $2,000 to $8,000 for a brochure site, per the vendor's guide | A proposal, then a build with an end date | You approve per project; nobody keeps it working afterwards unless you pay again |
| An agency | $10,000 to $35,000 for a custom small-business site, per the same guide | A kickoff and a discovery phase | The agency's project manager; ask who holds the host login |
| Allying | $1,500 a month on a $60,000 posting; floor $1,395 | An evidence pack on your site and forms, a page change packet, a tracking test plan and a change-card backlog, before any call | Nothing goes to production without your yes on its card; DNS, billing and deletes are never touched |
What should the first week produce?
Not a mood board and not a stack. In a good first week you should be able to open a page-by-page record of your site and forms with every broken path, missing image and observable tracking gap listed with where it was seen; a written change for the first thing you asked for, with every fact traced to its source or marked as a blank you fill; a plan for reconciling what the ad platform, the CRM and the books each say; and a backlog of change cards in the order your posting named, each with its test, its risk and the approval it needs.
If a first week produces a proposal and a quote, you have hired a project, not a job.
When not to hire a web and tools developer
When you need one site built once and nothing after: that is a contract with an end date, and it is priced as one total. When the posting is really a designer for the brand and the pages: post for a website designer. When the work is a mobile app, custom server software or hosting administration: that is a software team, and this job says so rather than pretending. And when nobody can say which system owns the menu, the prices or the bookings, settle that first, because every build can only read what you point it at.
How Allying does this job
Allying does the developer job as written in its playbook: it stages business process flows with test results and reads back the runs and errors after you approve an activation; it builds page previews with a visible diff, the facts traced to their source, and accessibility and speed scores, and reads the revision back after an approved release; it audits the tracking and stages the fixes, with a reconciliation table across the ad platform, the CRM and the books; it prepares point-of-sale changes as diffs and confirms an approved change reached every location; it maps fields, runs test loads, keeps backups and rollback plans, and reconciles counts and totals to 100% after an approved production load; and it builds dashboards whose tiles link to their source queries and refresh on the agreed calendar.
The first week, before any conversation with you, from public pages only, with no form submitted and no private system touched:
- A public site and form evidence pack: every visible defect, form structure, broken path, observable tracking signal, accessibility score and speed score, page by page, with the private destinations marked unknown.
- A preview-ready page change packet: a proposed diff for the first page, built only from cited public material, with a source placeholder for every fact about your business and the steps to stage it in your CMS once access is granted; labeled a proposal, never described as staged or live.
- A tracking test and reconciliation plan: the public UTMs, tags, forms and events mapped, then the private access and the test events needed to reconcile the platform, the CRM and the books, with before-and-after read-backs.
- A first change-card backlog: the fixes, the pages and the tracking first, then the point of sale, the migration and the dashboard where the public evidence supports them, each card naming its diff, test, evidence, risk and approval.
Nothing reaches production without your yes on that change's card; the first cards of each kind ask, and a standing permission for that exact kind of change is yours to grant and to take back. The work is done with AI and overseen by a named specialist who answers for it.
Mae Santos, Allying's co-founder, is the person you talk to; write to hello@allying.com and she answers. The work is reviewed before it reaches you.
What Allying refuses on this job
- Touching DNS or billing, or deleting anything from a host or a business system. You do those.
- Stating a fact about your business it cannot trace to your source sheet: a price, a menu item, an opening hour, a staff name. You supply the source, or it stays a marked blank.
- Putting protected health information into analytics for a clinic. The process owner handles that data in its own system.
- Describing a page as live before the production read-back, or a live change as reversible when the host has no rollback.
- Moving your data outside its host other than as an export you directed.
Questions owners ask
Do I have to move off Squarespace, Shopify or WordPress?
No. The job is done on the host you already pay for, in the shape that host uses, through an access you can issue and revoke.
Who can put something live?
You, on a card, for the first change of each kind. After you have approved a few, that kind can go on its own; a new page, the homepage, anything that touches money and anything you cannot undo keep asking.
What if the tracking is wrong?
It is audited first and reconciled against the CRM and the books before any setting changes, and the change to fix it comes as a card with a before-and-after test event.
Can it move our records to a new system?
Yes, with a field map, a test load, a backup, a rollback plan and a reconciliation of counts and totals to the last record, and the production load only after you say yes.
Will it build our mobile app?
No. This job is the site, the pages, the forms, the tracking, the point-of-sale changes, the migrations and the reports; an app is a software team, and the page says so.
Sources
- BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 estimates (released 2026-05-15), national and metropolitan workbooks. Read on 2026-09-20.
- O*NET 31.0 Database (August 2026), Web Developers 15-1254.00 and Web and Digital Interface Designers 15-1255.00, task statements and job titles. Read on 2026-09-20.
- O*NET license, CC BY 4.0. Read on 2026-09-20.
- BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026 (released 2026-09-09): private industry wages and salaries 70.0 percent of employer costs per hour worked, benefits 30.0 percent. Read on 2026-09-17.
- Elementor, How Much Does a Small Business Website Cost? (A 2026 Breakdown), Itamar Haim, updated 2026-06-29 (a platform vendor's guide; ranges reported, not measured by Allying). Read on 2026-09-17.
- Allying playbook, website builder / designer, version 1.5.0 (the family this page prices from). Read on 2026-09-20.
- Allying offer, software developer for a small business, version 1.0.0 (what the job owns, refuses and asks before doing). Read on 2026-09-20.