What a Website Should Actually Cost

Ask three agencies to quote the same website and you can easily get 1,500, 6,000 and 20,000 euros. That spread is not because two of them are lying. It is because "a website" describes about as much as "a vehicle" does.

Here is what actually moves the number, so you can read a quote instead of just comparing totals.

What you are really paying for

Almost every quote is some mix of six things:

Design. A template configured with your logo and colours is a few hours. A layout designed around your content, your customers and your conversion goals is days or weeks. Both are legitimate; they are not the same product.

Content. Someone has to write the words, source the photos and structure the pages. This is the single most common thing left out of a quote and the single most common reason projects run late. If the quote does not mention content, ask who is writing it. If the answer is "you", that is fine — but now you know there is unpaid work waiting for you.

Build. The actual construction. A five-page brochure site is not the same job as a booking system with accounts and payments.

Integrations. Payments, a CRM, a booking calendar, an ERP, a newsletter tool. Each one is a small project of its own, and the cost is rarely in the connecting — it is in the edge cases when the other system misbehaves.

Compliance and quality. Accessibility to WCAG AA, cookie handling, privacy documents, performance, testing on real devices. On a good quote these are line items. On a cheap quote they are absent, which usually means absent from the site too.

Launch and handover. Migration, redirects from old URLs, analytics, search console, and someone showing you how to use the thing.

Rough bands, honestly

Prices vary by country and by who does the work, but the shape is consistent across Western Europe:

Under 1,000 euros. A template with your content dropped in. Fine for a first business card online. Do not expect custom design, real SEO groundwork or accessibility work.
1,500 to 3,000 euros. A small custom site, roughly one to five pages, properly built, responsive, decent technical SEO. The typical sweet spot for a young company or a landing page that has one job.
3,000 to 8,000 euros. A full company site: ten to twenty pages, custom design, a CMS so you can edit, multilingual if you need it, integrations, real performance and accessibility work.
8,000 to 25,000 euros. Web applications, shops with complex catalogues, booking or account systems, anything with substantial custom logic.
Above that. Platforms, marketplaces, things with ongoing product teams.

If a quote sits far below the band for what you described, the work has not disappeared — it has been moved to you, or it is not being done.

The recurring costs nobody mentions

The build price is not the total cost of ownership. Every site has running costs, and a quote that hides them is not doing you a favour:

Domain: 10 to 20 euros a year.
Hosting: from nothing on a modern static host to 20-50 euros a month for something with a database and traffic.
Maintenance: updates, security patches, backups, monitoring. Typically 50 to 200 euros a month depending on complexity. A site left unpatched for two years is not a saving; it is a liability.
Content changes: either your time, or someone's hourly rate.

Add those up before you compare two quotes. A cheap build on an expensive proprietary platform can cost more over three years than a more expensive build you actually own.

How to tell a good quote from a bad one

A quote worth trusting will tell you:

What is included, in specifics. Not "SEO" but "keyword research, meta titles and descriptions for every page, structured data, sitemap, Search Console setup".
What is not included. Honest exclusions are a sign of experience, not weakness.
How many pages or screens, and what happens if you want more.
How many rounds of revisions, and the hourly rate beyond them.
Who owns what at the end. Code, design files, domain, accounts.
The timeline, and what the agency needs from you to hit it.
What happens after launch. Warranty period, support, maintenance options.

Two red flags. The first is a single number with no breakdown: you cannot compare it to anything, and neither can you challenge it. The second is a quote that arrives without anyone asking you a question. If nobody asked what your business does, who buys from you and what you want the site to achieve, they are pricing a template.

Fixed price or hourly?

For a defined project — a company site, a landing page, a shop with a known catalogue — a fixed price is better for you. You know the number, and the risk of overrun sits with the agency, which is where it belongs.

Hourly makes sense when the scope genuinely cannot be pinned down: an ongoing product, an unclear integration, a research phase. If someone quotes hourly for a five-page brochure site, ask why.

There is a middle path that works well: a fixed price for a clearly defined first phase, then an hourly or retainer arrangement for what comes after. You get certainty where certainty is possible.

How payment should work

Nobody should be asking for the full amount upfront, and nobody should be building a whole project on a promise. The usual pattern in this industry is instalments tied to milestones — something like a portion at kick-off, a portion when the design is approved, and the balance on delivery.

That structure protects both sides. You are never far ahead of the work, and the agency is never far behind the money.

The question underneath the question

"How much does a website cost" is usually standing in for "am I about to be overcharged". The honest answer is that price alone will not tell you. A 2,000 euro site that brings in one client a month is excellent value. A 15,000 euro site nobody can find is not.

So ask a different question: what is a customer worth to you, and how many would this site need to bring in to pay for itself? For most service businesses the answer is a surprisingly small number — and once you have it, the quotes in front of you stop being abstract.