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A professional brochure website usually costs €800–2,000 with a freelancer and €3,000–5,000 with an agency; complete business websites run from €2,000 to €5,000 and up. DIY costs €180–360 a year but takes a lot of time. My prices start at €300 for a custom brochure site: I work on my own, with no agency overheads and well-tested components, and every quote states exactly what is and isn't included (pages, design, basic SEO, support). See the packages.
Sources: Stanford Web Credibility Project (2002); Google/DoubleClick (2016); Netcraft Web Server Survey (December 2025)
| Option | Upfront cost | Yearly costs | Timescale |
|---|---|---|---|
| DIY (Wix, Squarespace) | €0 | €180–360 | 20–40 hours of your time |
| DIY WordPress | €150–300 in the first year | €150–300 | dozens of hours |
| Freelancer: brochure site | €800–2,000 | €200–600 | 2–4 weeks |
| Freelancer: complete business site | €2,000–5,000 | €200–600 | 5–10 weeks |
| Agency | from €3,000–5,000 | often with paid maintenance | 5–10 weeks |
Indicative market ranges; my prices start at €300 for a custom brochure site.
What determines the price of a website
The cost of a website isn't arbitrary. It depends on concrete, measurable variables. Knowing them lets you assess any quote clearly — whether it's €800 or €8,000.
Type of site: the most important variable
A brochure site with 5–8 static pages (homepage, services, about, contact) is the simplest and cheapest project. A business website with structured sections, a blog, advanced forms and CRM integration is considerably more complex. A portfolio for creatives or professionals needs particular care in its visual presentation. An online store is a completely different category in terms of cost and complexity — if you're considering an online shop, prices change significantly compared with a simple brochure site.
Complexity and number of pages
Every additional page has a cost — in terms of structure, content and optimisation. But complexity isn't just quantitative: a page with a product configurator, an interactive map or an advanced animation can cost as much as five standard pages.
Who builds the site: DIY, freelancer, agency
The factor with the biggest impact on the final price isn't the technology — it's who builds the site. Each of the three options has a distinct profile of costs, advantages and limitations. The right choice depends on your goal, your available budget and the kind of result you expect.
A DIY website: the real costs
Visual builders such as Wix, Squarespace and Webflow have made it possible to build a site without knowing how to code. The prices look affordable — but the total cost has to be calculated across every item, including the less visible ones.
Builders like Wix and Squarespace
Wix and Squarespace are the most popular with people starting from scratch. Business plans start at €15–30/month (about €180–360/year), all included: hosting, SSL, a domain for the first year, templates. The limits begin when you step outside the standard templates — customising beyond a certain level requires workarounds or buying add-ons. For SEO, they work well enough for simple sites but have structural limitations on more complex ones. The most significant hidden cost: your
DIY WordPress
WordPress is free as software, but the total cost of a DIY site includes: hosting at €5–10/month (€60–120/year), a domain at €15–25/year, a premium theme at €50–80 one-off and any premium plugins at €20–100/year each. First-year total: €150–300. But WordPress requires active maintenance — core, theme and plugin updates, backups, security. Neglecting these exposes the site to real vulnerabilities. The time needed to learn to manage it is significant if you start without technical experience.
Webflow: the advanced builder
Webflow sits between consumer builders and professional development. It offers much more visual control than Wix or Squarespace, with the ability to build complex layouts without writing code. Plans for business sites start at €23/month. The learning curve is steeper — it isn't a tool for beginners. It's often used by designers who want to publish independently without depending on developers. For DIY, it's only realistic if you already have digital design experience.
A website built by a freelancer
A specialised freelancer is the most common choice for small businesses and professionals who want a professional result without the costs of an agency structure. Prices vary a lot depending on experience, specialisation and the complexity of the project.
A simple brochure site (€800–2,000)
A brochure site with 5–8 pages, a customised template, a contact form and basic SEO optimisation. In this range you'll find freelancers with enough experience to build clean, functional sites. Always check the portfolio and ask for references from real clients — the difference between an €800 freelancer and a €2,000 one shows in the attention to detail, the quality of the code and the performance optimisation.
A complete business website (€2,000–5,000)
A site with a blog, a structured SEO architecture, a custom design, advanced forms and performance optimisation. This is the range where a good freelancer offers the most value for the cost — the work is more complex, but there's no agency mark-up. A well-built site in this range can pay for itself within a few months through the enquiries it generates.
Complex and specialised projects (€5,000–12,000)
Sites with advanced integrations, custom development, elaborate animations or particular performance needs. In this range, freelancers are often senior developers with specialist skills — not just web design but technical architecture, performance and scalability. For projects of this complexity, the difference between a senior freelancer and an agency depends mainly on how many parallel resources are needed to meet the deadlines.
A website built by an agency
Agencies offer a more structured service — a dedicated team, a project manager, copywriting, SEO, maintenance — but at higher prices. The mark-up compared with a freelancer is real, but it's often justified by the guarantee of a process and the ability to manage several variables in parallel.
- Your budget is between €800 and €5,000
- The project has a clear, defined scope
- You can provide the content and copy yourself
- You prefer a single point of contact you work with directly
- You don't need a multi-specialist team
- Your budget exceeds €5,000 and you have integrated needs
- The project includes copywriting, SEO and advertising in a single contract
- You want contractual guarantees on SLAs and maintenance
- The company is medium-to-large, with structured approval processes
- The site is part of a wider digital strategy
Recurring costs: what you spend every year
The development price is one-off — but a site has fixed annual costs that need to be included in the total budget. Ignoring them is one of the most common mistakes when assessing a quote.
- Hosting: €5–15/month (€60–180/year) on shared hosting. VPS: €20–60/month. Managed WordPress hosting: €30–80/month.
- Domain: €15–25/year for a .it or .com. Turn on auto-renewal — losing your domain is a serious mistake and hard to fix.
- SSL certificate: free (Let's Encrypt) with almost every modern provider. Never pay for this.
- WordPress maintenance: updates, backups, security. DIY: €0 + monthly time. With a professional: €50–150/month.
- Premium plugins (if used): €20–100/year each. The essential plugins (SEO, forms, caching) cost €50–200/year in total.
- Professional email: Google Workspace at €6/user/month, or included with hosting. Don't use Gmail with a custom domain for free — it isn't professional and has technical limits on sending.
What a quote includes (and doesn't)
A website quote can look complete but hide significant extra costs. Reading the exclusions is as important as reading what's included.
What a professional quote should always include
A transparent quote includes: an agreed page structure, responsive design (mobile, tablet, desktop), hosting and domain set-up if required, basic SEO implementation (titles, meta tags, sitemap, Search Console), a working contact form, an SSL certificate, testing on the main browsers and a post-launch warranty period (typically 30–60 days to fix bugs). All of this should be spelled out, not taken for granted.
What's often not included
Items frequently excluded from quotes:
The site as an investment: calculating the return
Most business owners see the cost of a website as an expense to minimise. The most useful change of perspective is to treat it as an investment with a measurable return.
Calculating the value of an enquiry generated by the site
If your average sale is €1,500 and your close rate is 30%, each qualified enquiry is worth €450 on average. A site that generates 5 more qualified enquiries a month than the previous one is worth €2,250/month in potential extra revenue. From this perspective, the difference between a €1,500 site and a €3,500 one pays for itself in less than a month of extra business generated.
Conversion rate: why design has a direct impact
A site's
SEO and organic acquisition: the cost over time
A site built with a solid SEO architecture starts generating organic traffic over time with no extra advertising costs. The difference between an SEO-ready site and one that ignores SEO isn't visible in the first month — it shows at month 6, 12 and 24. Organic traffic is the digital asset with the best cost-to-return ratio in the long run: you build it once (with the initial investment and content production) and it keeps working even when you're not paying.
Common mistakes when assessing the cost
Questions to ask before accepting a quote
A serious professional answers these questions without hesitation. If the answers are vague or evasive, that's a signal you shouldn't ignore.
- Can I see a portfolio of sites similar to mine in type and sector?
- Who owns the rights to the code and design after payment? (they should be yours)
- Will the site be on my hosting or the provider's? (it should be yours)
- What happens if I want to change professional in future? (you must be able to export everything)
- What does post-launch support include? For how long?
- How are revisions and changes of scope handled?
- Does the site include technical SEO optimisation, or just design?
- Who writes the copy? Is it included in the quote?
When it's worth investing more
The most expensive site isn't always the right one. But there are situations where investing more is the most economically rational choice.
The site is your main customer acquisition channel
If most of your customers come from the web — or should — the site is a sales tool, not a digital business card. In that case, investing in structural SEO, optimised UX and loading speed has a direct, measurable return. A site that converts 3% of visitors instead of 1% is worth twice as much in business generated, regardless of what it cost.
The sector is highly competitive
In sectors where competitors have polished, professional sites, a mediocre site loses credibility before a potential customer has read a single line. The perception of quality from the site transfers directly to the perception of the quality of the service. Building a professional website in these contexts isn't optional — it's a competitive prerequisite.
Timescales: how long the project takes
The time it takes to build a site affects the cost indirectly — and it's often underestimated in planning. A project with tight deadlines needs extra resources or priority that can push the quote up. Knowing realistic timescales lets you plan the launch without emergency sprints.
Brochure site (2–4 weeks)
A brochure site with 5–8 pages, a customised template and content provided by the client takes 2–4 weeks on average from brief to launch. The slowest phase is almost always design approval and copy review — not the technical development. Providing complete materials (copy, a vector logo, optimised images) at the start of the project shortens the timescale significantly.
Complete business website (5–10 weeks)
A structured project — with a blog, multiple pages, advanced SEO, integrated forms and performance optimisation — takes 5–10 weeks. It includes longer review cycles, testing on different devices and browsers and setting up the analytics tools (Google Analytics, Search Console). Projects that include copywriting add 1–2 weeks for writing and reviewing the copy.
What slows things down (and pushes costs up)
The factors that most often lengthen timescales:
Site ownership: questions nobody asks but that matter
One of the least discussed aspects at quote stage — and one of the most painful to discover later — is ownership of the website: who owns what at the end of the project.
Code, design and content: who owns them?
In a proper professional contract, on final payment the client acquires full ownership of the source code, the bespoke design and all the content produced as part of the project. This seems obvious, but it isn't always the case. Some contracts state that the code remains the property of the supplier, with the client buying only a licence to use it — which means that changing professional in future may require rebuilding the site from scratch. Always check this before signing.
Hosting: on your account or the supplier's?
The site should be hosted on a hosting account in your name — not your developer's or your agency's. If the supplier manages the hosting for convenience, make sure the login credentials are yours and that you can transfer the site at any time without depending on their availability. Losing access to your own site because you fell out with the supplier or because they closed their business is a scenario that happens surprisingly often.
A website is an investment, not an expense. The question isn't how much it costs — it's how much it's worth to your business if it really works.
If you want to apply this to your own project, take a look at my website design and development service: clear prices from €300, a free quote and a reply within 24 hours.
