What does it cost to have a website built?

Having a website built can cost a few hundred euros — or a few hundred thousand. And both can be perfectly sound decisions. The difference lies in what the site needs to do. In this article we lay out what drives the price, so you can judge quotes on their merits.

The main price factors

• The type of site — a business website with a handful of pages is a very different project from a web shop, a member portal or a site with integrations to other systems.
• Design — lightly adapting an existing theme is affordable; a fully custom design that carries your brand costs more, but also truly stands out.
• Content — are copy and images supplied, or does the agency need to (help) write them? Good copy is often more work than the technology.
• Findability — a site that also needs to be found calls for SEO work: technology, structure and content aligned with what your customers search for.
• Maintenance — who keeps the site up to date and secure afterwards? Budget for recurring hosting and maintenance costs on top of the build.

Rough indications

Market-wide, purely for orientation: a simple, well-built business website starts around one to a few thousand euros; a custom site with its own design, strong content and a solid SEO foundation sits well above that; and once web shop, portal or integration functionality comes into play, it moves towards the price range of custom software. Be critical of prices that seem too good to be true: they tend to pay themselves back in slow technology, poor findability or a site nobody can maintain.

Technology that pays for itself

We prefer to build websites statically (with Astro): pages are generated in advance, making the site extremely fast, hard to hack and free of vulnerable plugins. Speed is also a ranking factor — a fast site is a more findable site. Among other things, we built two healthcare practice websites this way.

How to request a good quote

Describe what the site needs to do (inform, sell, generate leads), who it is for, and what you will supply yourself. Ask explicitly what is arranged after delivery: hosting, maintenance, changes. And compare quotes not just on price, but on what is actually delivered. Curious what your website would cost? Get in touch.