A website costs what its content and its connections cost, not what its design costs.
Twice a week somebody asks us for a price on the phone, before we know anything about the job. The honest answer is that we cannot say yet. Two studios can quote 600 EUR and 3,000 EUR for what sounds like the same website, and both of them can be telling the truth.
What moves the price, in order of impact
This is the order we go through with every new client, and it is roughly the order of weight on the final figure. Design sits much lower on that list than most people expect. If you can answer these five points before you ask anyone for a quote, you will get numbers you can actually compare.
- How many pages, and whether the text and the photos already exist. Five pages with your own material is a different job from five pages where somebody has to write them and go and take the photos.
- Whether you sell online, and how many products and variants. Thirty products in one size is a small catalogue. Thirty products in four sizes and three colours is three hundred and sixty things to keep in stock and in order.
- How many languages. Each language is content that somebody writes and then maintains for years, not a button in the corner. A second language adds about as much work as a third of the site.
- What it has to connect to: bookings, accounting, the warehouse, a customer list, a newsletter. Every connection has to keep working after we leave, which is why it costs more than a page does.
- Whether you want to edit it yourself afterwards. That means a simpler structure, a short training session and a few guardrails, and it is worth paying for if your prices or your news change often.
The part everyone forgets: the content
Nearly every argument about a quote that we have seen starts here. The owner is comparing two prices for a website, and one of them quietly assumes the text and the photos arrive by email on the first day. If that is not true, the words still have to be written by somebody who understands the business, and somebody still has to spend a morning photographing the shop. When a quote looks strangely low, this is almost always what it leaves out.
It helps to know what published prices look like. Ours are on our price page: a one-page informational landing at 200 EUR for the first year as a launch offer, then 120 EUR a year; a full website from 890 EUR; an online shop from 1,900 EUR. Those are starting figures for a defined scope, and the scope is the whole conversation. Any studio's from is the version where you bring the material and nothing unusual has to be connected.
What happens after you publish
A site is not a purchase that ends on launch day. Four things carry on costing money every year, and all four are small next to the development. The amount is not the problem. The problem is finding out about them in month eleven instead of in week one.
- The domain, which is your address on the internet. Ten to twenty euros a year for an ordinary one. What matters more than the price is that it is registered in your name, so that you can take it with you if you change studio.
- Hosting, the space where the site lives. Between thirty and a few hundred euros a year, depending on the shop and the traffic. Cheap hosting shows up as a slow site, and slowness is the one problem your visitors really do notice.
- Updates. The software behind the site receives security patches, and somebody has to apply them and check that nothing broke. On a shop this is not optional, because a shop handles other people's money and addresses.
- Small changes during the year: new prices, a new person on the team, holiday closing dates, a product that no longer exists. Agree in advance whether these are included, charged by the hour or bundled, and how quickly they get done.
Five signals in a quote that are worth stopping for
Compare scope, never totals. Put the two quotes side by side and ask both of them the same questions: what exactly is included and what is extra, who writes the text and who takes the photos, whose name the domain and the hosting account are in, what the delivery date is and what happens if it slips. If one quote answers in writing and the other does not, you are not looking at two prices for the same thing.
Five things should make you slow down. A quote that does not say what is included. A quote that does not say who writes the text. A quote that says nothing about the domain or whose name it is in. A quote with no delivery date. And a promise of first place on Google, which nobody can sell you, because nobody owns the ranking. None of the five proves bad faith. They mean the job has not been thought through yet, and the missing parts will come back later as extras.
In short
- A site costs what its content and its connections cost.
- Decide up front who writes the text and shoots the photos.
- Every extra language is content to write and maintain for years.
- The domain must be registered in your name, not the studio's.
- Compare quotes by scope and written dates, never by the total.
If you want a figure for your own case, with the scope written down, start here: prices and packages.