The honest answer to "how much does a website cost?" is: it depends on what you actually need. The same question can legitimately be answered with $500 or $50,000 — and both can be "right". In this article we explain why the price range is so wide and how to compare quotes properly.
The real cost drivers
Behind every website quote sit these labour items:
- Design: A ready-made template, or a design built around your brand? Custom design means research, drafts and revision rounds.
- Page count and content structure: A 5-page brochure site and a 40-page multilingual corporate site are not the same job.
- Functionality: A contact form, or a dealer login with custom price lists? Every custom feature adds development and testing time.
- Content production: Who writes the copy, prepares the images, handles the translations? This is the line item most projects forget.
- SEO and performance: Speed optimisation, technical SEO foundations, structured data — always more expensive to retrofit later.
- Maintenance and support: Post-launch updates, security, backups. A vendor who "delivers and disappears" carries a high hidden cost.
Rough ranges as of 2026
Figures vary heavily by project; treat the following as a guide for reading the market, not as fixed prices:
- Template-based setup: The budget end. Fast — but the design reflects the template, not you; you won't stand out, and you hit the customisation wall quickly.
- Custom-designed corporate site: The middle segment. Brand-specific design, SEO foundations, manageable content. For most SMEs this is the right spot.
- Multilingual / integrated corporate platform: The upper segment. Once ERP/CRM connections, dealer portals or multilingual structures enter the picture, the project is no longer a "website" — it's a software project.
The hidden costs of going cheap
Typical consequences of picking the lowest bid:
- Slow pages — you lose half your visitors in the first 3 seconds.
- No SEO foundation — you're invisible on Google, and try to compensate with ad spend.
- Content you can't update — every small change leaves you dependent on the vendor.
- Orphaned technical debt — two years later you get a "let's rebuild from scratch" quote, and end up paying twice.
Questions to ask when comparing quotes
- Is the design custom or template-based? How many revision rounds are included?
- Do they commit to concrete speed targets (e.g. Core Web Vitals)?
- Is technical SEO (meta structure, sitemap, structured data) in scope?
- Who enters the content? Who maintains the site after delivery?
- The domain, hosting and source code — registered under whose name?
That last point is critical: if the source code and domain aren't under your control, the site isn't really yours.
Summary
The right question isn't "who's cheapest?" but "who will deliver work that actually moves my business at this budget?" Come to the table with a clear list of needs, and the differences between quotes become easy to explain.
To get a realistic range for your project, get in touch — we'll listen to what you need and tell you honestly what's necessary and what isn't.