What does a website actually cost, and why do quotes differ tenfold?
The same brief comes back at €400 and at €4000, and neither is necessarily a scam. Here is what the difference actually buys — and the costs that appear in neither quote.
Why the same brief comes back at €400 and €4000
The cheap quote is usually a template with your logo dropped into it. The expensive one is usually an agency where a project manager, a designer and a developer each bill their hours to your invoice. Both produce a website. Only one of them produced it for you.
The honest middle is a small studio: no template, and no layer of managers between you and the person writing the code. That is where most good small-business work actually gets done.
What you are actually paying for
Four things, always: the design, the code, the words and photos, and the setup — domain, hosting, mail, search. A quote that says only "website" has hidden three of the four.
Ask which of the four are included. The gap between €400 and €4000 is usually sitting right there, and one question brings it into the open.
The costs that never appear in the quote
The domain, roughly €10–15 a year. Hosting, from nothing to about €10 a month for a small site. A booking system or card payments may carry their own monthly fee.
None of these are large. They are permanent, though — and finding out about them after launch is how a good project turns into a bad memory.
Cheap gets paid for twice
A template site costs less on day one and more on day sixty, when you need the one thing it was not built to do. You then pay a second time to have it done properly.
This is not an argument for expensive. It is an argument for asking what happens when you need a change — before you sign, not after.
Four questions before you sign
Who owns the code and the accounts when it is finished? What is the exact price and the exact date? What is deliberately not included? And what does a change cost after launch?
Anyone who answers all four in writing is worth working with. Anyone who answers "it depends" to all four is quoting you a number they intend to revise.
Want the number for your case?
Our prices are on the site, in the open. After a 30-minute call you get the exact figure and the exact date in writing, within 48 hours.
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