Key takeaways in 30 seconds
- Simple brochure site: €400–1,500, site with booking or a shop: €1,500–6,000, complex custom build: €6,000+
- The headline price is never the total — add domain, hosting, maintenance and updates
- A quote with no line for content is an incomplete quote: writing is often 30% of the real work
- The real risk is not overpaying, it is paying for a site nobody visits — a site without search visibility is an expensive brochure
Why the spread is so wide
When quotes range from €500 to €8,000 for what looks like the same site, the difference is almost never the graphics. It is three things invisible from the homepage: how much content has to be produced, what runs behind the scenes, and how much time goes into making the site findable.
A five-page site with client-supplied copy has nothing in common with a five-page site where every line must be written and the search structure built. Both look identical in a portfolio.
Real ranges by site type
Landing page — €300–800
One page, one goal: get a form filled or a call placed. The most profitable format when you already have traffic to send somewhere.
Brochure site — €600–2,500
Four to eight pages. The standard format for a tradesperson, a practice, a shop, a service provider. The low end is a template fitted to your colours and copy; the high end is a design specific to your brand plus serious local search work.
Site with booking — €1,500–5,000
The moment a visitor picks a time slot, complexity changes nature: availability, confirmations, cancellations, reminders, calendar sync.
Online shop — €2,000–10,000
The catalogue is the hidden cost. Thirty products with photos, descriptions, variants and stock is several days of data entry nobody quotes for.
Custom build — €6,000 and up
Client area, connection to a business system, quote calculator. At this point it is an application, not a site.
The costs nobody announces
| Item | Annual range | Avoidable? |
|---|---|---|
| Domain name | €10–40 | No |
| Hosting | €60–400 | No |
| SSL certificate | €0–100 | Usually included |
| Maintenance and updates | €200–1,200 | No, with a CMS |
| Content changes | €50–120/hr | Yes, if self-service |
A €900 site costing €800 a year to maintain is more expensive over three years than an €1,800 all-inclusive site. Most quotes make that comparison impossible.
Three questions that expose an honest quote
"Who writes the copy?" A vague answer means the budget will grow or the site ships with placeholder text.
"What happens if I want to change a price in six months?" A site you cannot edit yourself costs a billed intervention per comma.
"Will the site be findable on Google, and for which terms?" A serious provider names specific local queries. "It will be SEO-optimised" tells you nothing.
The real trade-off
A business that does not appear when someone searches its trade in its town loses customers daily without ever seeing it. That loss is silent, so it is easy to ignore — unlike an invoice.
One extra customer a month at a €150 average basket pays for the site within a year at any point in these ranges. The question is not what it costs, but when it starts paying.