How much does a website cost a business in 2026?

“How much does a website cost?” is the first thing everybody asks me, and it almost always arrives with an apology in the voice, as if asking it straight away were rude. It isn’t. It is the right question, and it is normal that it comes before all the others.

The problem is the answer people usually get. You search online and you find two worlds: on one side the do-it-yourself platforms saying “from a few euros a month”, on the other the agencies saying “it depends” and offering you a free consultation to find out. Neither gives you what you need right now, which is simply a sense of the order of magnitude before you talk to anyone.

Here I will do the only useful thing: write the numbers down. The ones going around the market, and mine as well.

The short answer

For a company or a small business, a brochure site built properly sits between €1,500 and €3,000, paid once. Below that bracket you are in template and do-it-yourself territory. Above it are the bigger sites: many pages, more than one language, unusual features.

Mine starts at €1,500, and I write it in public because it is the first thing you want to know and I see no reason to make you write to me for it. What it includes is on the websites for businesses page.

If the rest does not interest you, you already have your answer. If you want to understand why that figure moves so much from one quote to the next, keep reading: that is the part you need in order to read a quote without taking anyone’s word for it.

The price brackets you find on the market

I looked at what the sites that come up first for this question say. What follows are orders of magnitude observed out there, not official averages: there is no national price list for websites, and anyone who hands you one as hard data is selling you something.

Brochure site: around €800 to €2,500. A few pages, who you are, what you do, how to reach you. It is what the vast majority of businesses need: a tradesman, a practice, a shop, a restaurant. The range is wide because it holds both the templates filled in quickly and the work made to measure.

Structured company site: around €2,500 to €8,000. More pages, maybe two languages, catalogues, private areas, content that has to be kept up to date. Here the price is not set by the design: it is set by how much there is to organise.

Online shop: around €5,000 to €20,000. Selling online is another matter: catalogue, variants, payments, shipping, returns, invoices. The difference between a shop with ten products and one with eight hundred is not a question of looks, it is work.

Maintenance: around €200 a year if you rely on one person, around €100 a month if you rely on a structured agency. It is the line almost nobody reads before signing, and it is the one that within three years can cost more than the site itself.

One thing worth holding on to while you read these numbers: ranges this wide do not mean the market has lost its head. They mean that under the same word, “site”, sit very different jobs.

What pushes the price up, or down

It is five things, almost always the same five.

How many pages you actually need. There is no rate per page, but five pages and twenty five are two different commitments. It is worth asking which ones you really need: plenty of companies start out asking for ten and end up using five.

Who writes the text. This is the single thing that delays most projects. If you have to write it yourself, the quote is usually lower and the site comes out three months later, because writing about your own work is harder than it sounds. If the person building the site writes it, it costs a bit more and it gets finished.

The photos. Your own photos, taken properly, are the single element that lifts perceived quality the most. If there are none, either you do a shoot (more cost, better result) or you work with what there is.

The features. A contact form is included everywhere. A booking system, a price calculator, a customer area, a configurator: those are software inside a site, and they are paid for like software.

The rush.If it has to be ready for a fixed date it can be done, but something has to give: either the number of pages or somebody else’s time. Be wary of anyone who accepts any deadline without blinking.

What a site costs with me, and what is included

A brochure site starts at €1,500. Inside are the pages your business needs, the text written by me, the phone version taken care of before the desktop one, the right groundwork so Google understands what you do, and going live: I hand it over working.

It costs less than it would at an agency for two reasons, and I will give you both.

The first: I do not carry an agency’s structure. No office to keep, no salesperson passing the job to a department, nobody sitting between you and the work. What is saved on structure you find again in the price.

The second: I do not really work alone. I have built myself a team of AI agents and I use them like employees: one looks things up, one plans the structure of the pages, one prepares the text, one builds, one checks everything at the end. They do the heavy lifting, the part an office splits between several people. I give the instructions, look at every result and decide what to keep.

So no, it does not cost less because it is worth less: it costs less because I have less structure to pay for, and it arrives sooner because I have more hands than I look like I have. The choices, the care and the direction of the work stay mine, and the person you deal with is always the same one.

The other thing that changes is the order of the steps. Normally you are asked to decide on a quote and then they build. I prefer the opposite: I build the site and send it to you finished, you open it on your phone, try it in your own time and decide with the work in front of you instead of the idea of the work. If something is wrong I change it, and if it needs redoing I redo it. When you decide to take it, payment comes before delivery: first you settle, then the site becomes yours, I connect the domain and publish it. I say it now because being vague about this helps nobody.

Timing follows the same logic. The part that depends on me is quick: when it is needed, I deliver a site in 24 hours.

A little further up I told you to be wary of anyone who accepts any deadline without blinking, and that still holds: when an agency speeds up, it usually gives away somebody else’s time, and either another client or the quality of your job pays for it. In my case nothing is given away, because the speed is not a strain put on production: it is the way production is built. It is the same reason the price is what it is, explained two paragraphs ago.

What does stretch a job, if anything, is the material: how quickly photos, information and answers arrive from your side. If a quote promises you a date without having seen what you already have ready, that date is a guess.

The warning signs

If you are comparing quotes, these are the places to look.

A price that is too low. Below a certain point nobody is building you a site: they are installing a template and filling in the fields. Which is fine, if you know it. The problem is when that price hides a compulsory subscription you discover later.

A quote that lists nothing. “Website build: €2,000” is not a quote, it is a figure. You have to be able to read how many pages, who writes the text, who provides the photos, what happens after it goes live.

Recurring costs that are not declared. Domain, hosting, any licences, maintenance. They have to be written down, with the amount and how often it falls due. If you cannot find them, ask: it is not rude, it is the line that weighs the most over time.

Anyone promising you first place on Google. Nobody can guarantee that, me included, and somebody who puts it in writing is telling you they are willing to promise things they do not control. You can work well so that a site is easy to find. Guaranteeing a position, no.

Anyone who shows you nothing. Ask for finished work, with the links, not just pictures in a slide deck. If there are no links, ask why.

The questions I always get

If you run a business and you are thinking about redoing the site, write to me and tell me what you do: I will give you a clear idea of cost and timing, with no commitment. If you would rather first work out whether the site is worth it at all, I have written about that too: a website, or just Instagram?