What does a website cost for a small business? Honest numbers.

Ask three providers, get three answers: €0, €800, €8,000. And the strange part is — none of them is necessarily lying. They're just selling different things under the same name.

The three price brackets, and what you actually get

“Free” to €20 a month — website builders. Wix, Jimdo and the like. The price is real, but you pay with your time: you build it yourself, you maintain it yourself, you solve every problem yourself. And the site isn't truly yours — leave the provider and you start from scratch.

€200 to €1,500 — small providers and freelancers. Here you get a site built individually, by actual people. The range comes down to scope: a one-page site with a clear message costs less than ten subpages in two languages with appointment booking. This is the bracket we work in — from €199.

€3,000 to €20,000 — traditional agencies. Here you're not just paying for the website but for the apparatus: project management, meetings, workshops, interim presentations. Sensible for large companies. For a hair salon: not so much.

What the price is made of

• Scope: One page or twelve? Every subpage is work — text, images, structure.
• Languages: Every additional language means all of it again, properly translated.
• Features: Contact form, appointment booking, directions — all doable, all effort.
• Content: Do you have texts and images, or do they have to be created first?
• Visibility: Basic optimisation for Google is a must; targeted SEO for competitive search terms is extra.

The costs nobody mentions

After the build comes running it: a domain (roughly €10–20 a year), hosting (from around €5 a month), and somebody who takes care of things when your opening hours change or something breaks. Factor that in before you compare — a “cheap” site that nobody looks after is an expensive building site two years later.

Rule of thumb: be wary of any offer that won't name a fixed price — and of any that promises you the top spot on Google.

What does that mean for you?

Think about three things beforehand: what should the site do, who should find it, and who maintains it afterwards? With those three answers, any serious provider can quote you a fixed price. With us you can work it out yourself — using the same numbers that end up in the quote.