01 / Insights
2026 price bands at a glance
Every quote you receive can be accurate and still tell you nothing, because the word “website” covers everything from a template with your logo on it to a custom-built commerce platform. These are the realistic bands we see across the European market in 2026:
- DIY website builder (Wix, Squarespace, Hostinger): €120–600 per year, plus 40–80 hours of your own time
- Freelancer: €800–5,000, from one-pagers to solid business websites
- Independent studio: €1,500–3,500 for a focused landing page, €3,000–10,000 for a complete business website, €5,000–20,000 for e-commerce (our guide to online shop costs breaks that last band down)
- Full-service agency: €10,000–50,000 and beyond, where the price reflects process and headcount as much as output
02 / Insights
What drives the price (and what doesn't)
Four things move a website quote more than anything else: the depth of strategic thinking before design starts, how much of the design is custom, how much content still has to be created, and the functionality behind the pages, such as bookings, multiple languages, integrations and commerce.
What barely moves the price: the tool it is built with, the number of animations, or the size of the agency on the proposal. A senior three-person team and a fifteen-person agency can ship the same website; most of the difference pays for the layers in between.
03 / Insights
Route one: the website builder
A builder is a legitimate choice. If you are testing an idea, running a side project or cannot invest more than €1,000, a Wix, Squarespace or Hostinger site beats no site. Our comparison of website builders and studios runs the three-year numbers.
Just price it in full. The subscription is the smallest part. The larger cost is 40–80 hours of your working time, a design that looks like everyone else's, SEO ceilings you hit as soon as rankings matter, and content that is painful to move once you outgrow the platform, which successful businesses do.
04 / Insights
Route two: the freelancer
A good freelancer is often the best value in the market: €800–5,000, direct communication, no overhead. The catch is coverage. A website needs strategy, design, code and SEO, and very few individuals are senior in all four, so one discipline usually gets the template treatment.
Freelancers also carry a single point of failure. Ask what happens if they are ill, fully booked or gone in two years, who owns the code, and what support after launch looks like. Good ones have clear answers; the rest do not.
05 / Insights
Route three: studio or agency
An independent web design studio (a small senior team like ours) typically sits between €1,500 and €15,000. You get several disciplines, direct contact with the people doing the work and no junior layer billed at senior rates.
A full-service agency starts to make sense above €10,000: dedicated project managers, formal approval workflows, capacity for large organisations. If you run a small or mid-sized business, a meaningful share of an agency invoice pays for coordination rather than craft. That can be fine, as long as you choose it knowingly.
06 / Insights
The hidden line items nobody quotes
The build price is not the total cost of ownership. Added up over three years, the recurring items often exceed a cheap build, so include them before you compare offers:
- Domain: €10–30 per year
- Hosting: €60–400 per year, depending on traffic and stack
- Maintenance and updates: €300–1,500 per year, more for shops
- Licences: premium plugins, fonts and stock imagery add up over the year
- Content: professional copy and photography are the most common surprise line
- Compliance: privacy, cookie consent and accessibility are legal requirements for consumer-facing sites in the EU
- The next redesign: most websites are rebuilt every four to six years (see the signs it is time)
07 / Insights
Running costs: what a website costs per month and per year
Once the site is live, the bill does not stop. For a typical small business website the recurring costs fall into two groups: the things every site needs, and the care that keeps it safe and current. Market ranges for 2026:
Put differently: a €3,000 website with a care plan costs around €4,000–7,500 over three years, a builder costs less in cash and more in your own time. What maintenance should include, and when you can do it yourself, is a topic of its own; we keep cost figures for care consistent across our articles so you can compare like with like.
- Domain, hosting and licences only: roughly €100–450 per year for a simple website
- Professional maintenance on top (updates, backups, monitoring, small changes): roughly €300–1,500 per year, or €25–125 a month
- Online shops: usually €100–400 a month in total before marketing, because platform fees, apps and payment charges recur
- Content updates, new photos and campaign pages: budget separately, because they depend on how active you are
08 / Insights
Red flags in cheap quotes and expensive ones
On the cheap end, watch for rental models (“your website for €49 a month”) where you never own anything, quotes with no defined scope, and “from €299” prices that triple once your actual requirements enter the picture.
On the expensive end, watch for vague deliverables, guaranteed rankings (nobody can guarantee Google) and day rates without a cap. A serious provider can tell you in writing what you get, when, and for how much.
09 / Insights
How we price it, and how to budget
We publish our starting price on purpose: focused landing pages from €1,500, complete websites quoted as a fixed price after a short discovery call. 50% deposit, 50% at launch, and most projects go live within 2–6 weeks. Scope and price are fixed before work starts, and there is no meter running.
Before you contact anyone, answer four questions: what is the one action the website must drive, what content already exists, which systems does it need to connect to, and which band is your budget in. With those answers, every quote you receive becomes comparable, and the sales meetings get much shorter. Our guide on choosing a web design agency lists the questions to ask next.
FAQ
Common questions
01How much does a small business website cost in 2026?
For a professionally designed website of four to eight pages, expect €1,500–5,000 with a freelancer or independent studio, and €5,000–15,000 with larger agencies. Builders cost €120–600 per year, plus 40–80 hours of your own working time.
02Why do quotes for the same website differ so much?
Because they describe different products: template versus custom design, with or without strategy and copywriting, one generalist versus a senior team. Ask every provider for an itemised list of deliverables; that alone makes quotes comparable.
03What ongoing costs should I plan for after launch?
Domain, hosting and licences cost roughly €100–450 per year for a simple website. A professional care plan adds about €300–1,500 per year. Online shops typically run €100–400 a month in total. Budget separately for content updates.
04How much does a website cost per month?
After the build, a simple business website costs roughly €10–40 a month for domain, hosting and licences, plus €25–125 a month if a professional maintains it. Shops cost more because platform, app and payment fees recur.
05Is a website builder good enough for my business?
For validating an idea or a temporary presence, yes. Once the website has to win clients, rank on Google and carry a premium brand, the builder's ceilings in design, SEO and performance start costing more than a proper build.