Website cost — the two halves of the bill and where yours sits

Website cost spreads further than almost anything else a company buys — and almost never because someone is overcharging. This section is about where that spread comes from and how to work out where your case sits.

It is not a guide to read end to end. It is a switchboard: eight questions about money that companies actually ask, one article for each. Below is what is worth knowing before you open any of them.

The bill has two halves, and that is the whole difficulty

Most misunderstandings about what a website costs start in one place: the conversation covers two separate bills and is held as though there were one.

The build is the one-off: design, content, construction, launch. It ends on handover day and it is the figure in the quote.

Upkeep starts the day after. Domain, hosting, updates, backups, technical care — charged every month whether or not anybody visits. It rarely appears in a quote, and after three years it can exceed the entire build.

So "how much does a website cost" has no answer until someone says which of the two bills they mean. The working rule for the rest of this section: judge every quote over three years, not over one invoice. Only then can two proposals be laid side by side.

What it costs — the market, and us

Two reference points beat one. The first is the middle of the market, so you know whether the quote in front of you is normal. The second is an actual price list, so you know where a conversation starts.

The middle of the market

There is no European market price for a website, and we will not invent one. No European study of website pricing publishes a sample size — nothing comparable to the Swiss study that states how many agencies sit behind each tier. What exists are national agency price lists, and they do not add up to a European figure: labour costs differ several times over between member states, French reference grids stop before the business-site tier, Spanish pricing sits structurally below the German-speaking markets, and Nordic prices are quoted in local currency, where a euro figure would be an exchange-rate artefact. An average of those would describe no market anybody buys in.

So the useful reference point is the one you build for your own market, and it takes an afternoon:

• Send the same brief to three suppliers. Same pages, same features, same content split. Quotes on different briefs cannot be compared; quotes on one brief show the spread of your market directly.
• Read the published price lists in the country you buy in, and note what each tier includes. A list that starts cheaper usually sells as extras what another includes in the base.
• Compare by tier, not by total. A one-pager, a business site of 5–15 pages and a larger site with integrations are different products; the step between them is structure, not appearance.

Whatever middle you find is not a price. Scope decides, not category, so your case can sit anywhere in the band. Treat it as an order of magnitude — enough to tell a normal quote from a strange one, not enough to negotiate against.

Our own starting rates

If we write about prices on our own site, we should publish ours. These are the base figures from our calculator — public, so you can check each one and price your own variant. All amounts net.

On top of that sit the items marked separately, because not everyone needs them: a CMS (WordPress +€1,625, a custom build +€3,900), a Figma prototype +€975, a blog +€780, a second language +€2,275, user accounts +€2,275, and forms, gallery and search at +€520 each.

Two things are worth taking from that table. Our starting rate includes scope that the cheaper segment sells as extras — so compare it item by item, not against a headline number. And: the step from a one-pager to a business site is a doubling, and what that doubling buys is structure, not appearance.

The second half of the bill, monthly

Upkeep is counted separately, and here too it starts from a specific number:

Then infrastructure, depending on what the site stands on: shared hosting €20 a month, cloud €19, VPS €78, dedicated server €325. Mail on your own domain €16, CDN €20.

Reading those two tables together is the right way to read any quote: a €4,550 business site is about €7,600 over three years, once you add the care plan (€65) and shared hosting (€20) across thirty-six months. That is the number to compare — not the first one.

What appears in no price list

Three items never show up in a quote, ours or anyone else's — and they decide whether the project works and what it costs.

Your time. Brief, decisions, sign-off, gathering material. On a business site that is usually a dozen hours or more on your side, spread over several weeks. Not on the invoice, but in the calendar — and the item that most often moves the deadline.

Content, if you write it yourself. Copywriting is a separate line precisely because it is real work. Writing it yourself makes sense — nobody knows the offer better — but it is a choice to pay in time rather than by invoice, not a saving.

Photographs. Stock images are free and it shows. Your own, even on a phone in good light, do more for credibility than any template — and cost an afternoon.

The rule that ties this together and carries across the section: a quote prices the supplier's work, not the cost of the project. The difference sits on your side, and is worth calculating before you sign rather than in week three.

Which article answers your question

Eight articles, ordered by where you are in the decision.

Before you buy

You have two quotes and cannot see the difference. Six factors move a quote further than page count does, and the strongest is settled before anybody negotiates: website design cost.

You have a quote and do not know what is missing. How a quote is built, how the three billing models differ, where the contingency goes and what can be negotiated: website quote.

The quote looks suspiciously cheap. Three price tiers, the real bill after twelve months, and four signs of a price with no scope behind it: cheap website design.

When the budget is near zero

You want to know whether it can be done for nothing. It can, by three routes — with a precise limit that falls in the same place for all three: create a website for free.

You are considering a free server. What you actually get for nothing, what to check in any such offer, and what happens when the provider announces a shutdown: free web hosting.

After launch

The site is live and the invoices have started. Four layers of the recurring bill, what happens when you stop paying, and which charges can safely wait: website maintenance cost.

You are not sure what you pay for each year. The two smallest items in the project and the two most often mis-planned, because the price you buy at is not the price you renew at: web hosting cost.

You are choosing between paying once and paying monthly. The five-year arithmetic, the crossover in the twenty-sixth month, and what is left when the contract ends: pay monthly website design.

Price your own case

Three quotes on one brief tell you where you stand against your market — not what your project costs. Price the build in the website cost calculator, and what accrues after launch in the maintenance cost calculator. Both update with our price list, so they will not go stale with this text.

If a quote is already on the table, the fastest route runs through two articles in order: website design cost, to see where the difference comes from, then website quote, to know what to ask.