What the price of a website depends on
The price of a website depends above all on three things: how many pages and types of content need to be designed, whether the visual design is custom or based on a ready-made template, and which features the site has to support – from a simple form to bookings, multiple languages or integration with a company system.
On top of that comes work that isn't visible at first glance but has a huge effect on results: technical SEO, loading speed, accessibility and a correct analytics setup.
Types of websites and their typical scale
| Type of website | What it includes | Scale of work |
|---|---|---|
| One-page site | a single page: offer, about the company, contact | smallest |
| Company website | several to a dozen or so pages, separate service pages, CMS | medium |
| Landing page | one page for a campaign, conversion tracking | small to medium |
| Large website | blog, several languages, integrations, customer area | large |
If the site has to let customers sign in, book appointments or place orders, it's usually no longer a "website" but a web app – and it's priced differently.
One-off costs
- visual design – a template is cheaper, a custom design reflects the brand better and is easier to fit to the content,
- build – coding, CMS, forms, responsiveness, testing on different devices,
- content – texts, photos, icons; if they have to be created from scratch, that's a separate item,
- technical SEO at launch – heading structure, titles and descriptions, structured data, a sitemap, redirects from old addresses,
- analytics and cookie consent – GDPR-compliant, without random plugins.
Recurring costs (every year)
- domain – usually a small annual fee, but watch out for first-year promotions and high renewal prices,
- hosting – from cheap shared plans to dedicated servers, depending on traffic and technology,
- SSL certificate – available free of charge with most hosting,
- updates and support – especially important with WordPress, where outdated plugins are the most common cause of break-ins,
- paid plugins or services – e.g. forms, newsletter, bookings.
Ask the contractor who the domain will be registered to and who will have access to the hosting. They should belong to you – it's your asset, not the contractor's.
WordPress or a site without a CMS?
WordPress makes sense when you often update content yourself: adding posts, changing the offer, the gallery or the price list. In return it needs regular updates.
A static site (or one built in, for example, Next.js) is faster, more secure and cheaper to maintain when content rarely changes. There's no panel to update and no plugins to patch.
There's no single right answer – the choice should follow from how you'll actually use the site.
A cheap website – where's the catch?
A low price usually means something has been left out. Most often:
- Speed – a heavy template with a dozen plugins that takes several seconds to load on a phone. More on this in the article about Core Web Vitals.
- SEO – no titles, descriptions, heading structure or sitemap. The site exists, but Google "doesn't understand" it.
- Redirects – when an old site is rebuilt, the old addresses stop working and Google rankings drop.
- Ownership – the domain or hosting registered to the contractor.
- No support – once the site is handed over, nobody is responsible for updates and security.
How to compare offers
Ask for a breakdown of exactly what the price includes: the number of pages, whether the design is custom, whether content, technical SEO, analytics, domain and email setup, CMS training and a support period after launch are included. Only a breakdown like that shows whether you're comparing like with like.
We describe how we build websites – fast, SEO-ready and with a clear path to getting in touch – on the websites page.
Related services: websites.