» The honest price ranges
There is no official price for a website. What exists are ranges the market has settled into. The figures below are typical orders of magnitude for solo professionals and small businesses in Europe – not a statistic, but what realistically turns up in quotes.
Page builder, built by you: €0–30 a month plus your time
The well-known builders cost you somewhere between nothing and about thirty euros a month, depending on whether you need your own domain, more storage or a shop. You are paying for an interface you click around in yourself. What you are not getting: a strategy, copy that sells, and someone who notices that your home page never says what you actually offer.
The second catch is dependency. Your site lives inside the provider’s system. Cancel the subscription and it is gone – taking it with you is usually not an option. And loading times on builders are rarely good, because a lot of machinery loads that your site does not need.
Freelancer: €800–3,000
This is where most solo professionals land. For €800 to €1,200 you typically get a solid but lean build: few pages, and you supply the copy and images. Between €1,500 and €3,000 sit projects with more pages, written copy, SEO foundations and a design that does not look like a template.
What you are mainly paying for is one person who keeps the whole thing in view. Short routes, direct conversations, no ticket system. The downside: one person has limited capacity – and if they get ill, your project waits.
Small studio: €3,000–10,000
Here several people work on your project: concept, design, build, often copy and SEO separately again. You are paying for process, review rounds, documentation and cover when someone is away. For a company with several offers, locations or audiences that makes sense. For a one-person business with one clear offer it is usually far more machinery than the result requires.
Large agency: from €10,000
At this size the work is brand development, user research, custom systems, connections to inventory or CRM. Sensible for companies with a marketing department. For a solo professional this is not a benchmark, it is a different league.
» What actually drives the price
When two quotes say €900 and €2,900, the difference is almost never one person’s greed. It is these points:
- Page count. Every additional page costs concept, layout, copy and testing. Going from five to twelve pages roughly doubles the work. Before you pay, it is worth asking how much website a one-person business actually needs – often four or five pages.
- Copy. The single largest price difference. Supply finished text and you save several hundred euros quickly. Have someone write it for you and that costs time for the interview, the structure and the wording – but the site usually sells better.
- How custom it is. Adapting a template and designing from scratch are two different jobs. Either can be right. The quote should just say which one you are getting.
- SEO. Basic technical optimisation is usually included. Keyword research, content strategy and optimising for AI search are separate services with separate prices.
- Functions. A shop, online booking, a members area, multiple languages or a client login change the order of magnitude immediately. A booking system alone can cost as much as the rest of the site.
- Urgency. „By next week“ means other projects have to wait. Rush surcharges of twenty to fifty per cent are normal in the market.
» The running costs nobody mentions
The quoted price is only the beginning. These items come on top – and they are the reason some „cheap“ website turns out, two years later, to have been the expensive one:
- Domain: typically €10–25 a year.
- Hosting: €3–20 a month for a small site. For a static site the lower end is plenty, because there is no database running.
- Maintenance and updates: systems with plugins need regular security updates. Maintenance packages typically run €30–150 a month. With a static HTML site this item largely disappears – there is simply nothing to patch.
- Licences: premium theme, form plugin, backup tool, SEO tool – €100–400 a year adds up fast, often as a subscription.
- Changes after launch: new price, new offer, new photo. Ask in advance what a small change costs. Answers between „I’ll do that quickly“ and „minimum one hour billed“ are both legitimate – you just want to know beforehand.
- Builder subscriptions: the classic. Twenty-five euros a month sounds harmless, but it is €300 a year and €1,500 over five years – for a site that in the end is not yours.
» The honest maths on doing it yourself
„I’ll do it myself, that costs nothing“ is the most expensive sentence in this calculation. Count it properly:
- Learning the tool: 5–10 hours
- Structure and page layout: 6–10 hours
- Writing copy, scrapping it, writing it again: 10–20 hours
- Finding, cropping and optimising images: 4–8 hours
- Checking it on a phone, testing the form, adding the legal pages: 5–10 hours
That is thirty to sixty hours. Take a cautious hourly rate of €60 for your own time: that is €1,800 to €3,600 of work you are not billing. At €90 an hour it is €2,700 to €5,400. On top of that comes what you did not do in that time – client work, outreach, proposals.
That does not make doing it yourself wrong. If you are starting out, have time and the budget is tight, it is an honest option. It only means this: it is not free. You are paying in a currency that never appears on an invoice.
» How to recognise a fair quote
Price alone says little. Whether a quote is fair shows in five points:
- A fixed price, not an estimate. For a clearly defined website project there should be a number in the quote, not a range with an asterisk. Anyone giving you only an hourly rate is moving all of the risk onto you.
- Scope in writing. Page count, number of revision rounds, who supplies the copy, who sources the images, delivery date. If that is missing, every later argument is already scheduled.
- The files are yours. Ask directly: „Do I get the finished files, and can I move them to a different host?“ If the answer dodges, you know enough.
- Changes are priced. What does a small text change cost in six months? A new page? A fair quote answers that before you ask.
- The price is public. Someone who shows their prices on their own site has done the maths. Why open prices build trust applies to web designers exactly as it applies to you.
» My own prices, as a reference point
So that you have a concrete number to measure against, here are mine. The Basis package costs €2,500 plus VAT and covers up to five pages, responsive design, a contact form, analytics set up, and the finished files to take with you. The Komplett package costs €3,900 plus VAT and adds up to eight pages, all copy written by me, SEO foundations, newsletter connection and image selection. Both live within seven working days of your content being signed off.
On top of that come extras at fixed prices: an additional offer page €490, a blog set up €490, funnel plus newsletter €990, ongoing care from €89 a month. Everything in detail is on my offer page.
I am not naming these because they are the right price for everyone. I am naming them because you need some fixed point to compare quotes against. If somebody quotes you €400, you now know that copy, SEO and handing over the files are probably not included. If somebody wants €12,000, you can ask specifically what that difference buys.
» What this means for your decision
A website is not an expense, it is an investment with a lifespan. So never count the quoted price alone – count the total over three years, including hosting, maintenance, changes and the time you put in yourself. Then set that against what a single additional client per year is worth to you.
If your average job is worth €1,500, a website at €2,500 has paid for itself after two enquiries – on a site that runs for three years. If it brings you no client at all in three years, then even the €300 builder was too expensive. The price is rarely the real problem. The question is whether the site brings in enquiries at the end of it.
Common questions
What does a website cost for a solo professional in 2026?
Typical market rates for a professionally built website of four to eight pages are €800 to €3,000 with a freelancer and €3,000 to €10,000 with a small studio. Building it yourself on a page builder costs €0 to €30 a month, but thirty to sixty hours of your own time. The price is driven mainly by page count, copy, how custom the design is, and functions.
What are the running costs of a website?
Budget €10 to €25 a year for the domain and €3 to €20 a month for hosting. On top come licences for plugins or themes, maintenance and security updates, and changes after launch. A static HTML site has the advantage that plugin licences and regular security updates disappear entirely.
Is it cheaper to build the website myself?
Only on the bank statement. Realistically a beginner needs thirty to sixty hours for a decent website including copy. At an hourly rate of €60 that is €1,800 to €3,600 of unbilled time – plus the work you did not win during those hours. The builder is rarely the cheaper option, just the one where the payment is invisible.
Fixed price or hourly rate – which is better?
For a clearly defined website project a fixed price is usually safer: you know the total in advance and the risk of delays sits with the provider. An hourly rate makes sense for ongoing support or projects whose scope is still moving. Either way, what matters is a written scope with page count, revision rounds and a delivery date.