Ask five people what a website costs and you'll get five answers spanning two orders of magnitude. All five are telling the truth. The price of a website is really the price of who builds it, what they start from, and what happens after launch — so here are the honest brackets.
The €0–€300 bracket: DIY builders
Wix, Squarespace, and friends. Genuinely fine if you have the hours and the eye. The real cost is your time — most owners spend 20–40 hours getting to 'okay' — and the ceiling: when you need something the builder can't do, you start over. The monthly fees also never end, and you don't own the result in any portable way.
The €300–€1,000 bracket: marketplace freelancers — and me
This bracket is a lottery. Some marketplace freelancers are excellent; you can't tell from the listing. The common failure isn't the launch — it's month three, when you need a change and the person is gone. My €800 Starter lives in this bracket on price but not on model: fixed scope in public, a design system doing the heavy lifting, and a care plan so someone still answers in month three.
The €1,000–€5,000 bracket: independent professionals
The sweet spot for most small businesses that need more than one page. You're paying for judgment: what to say, what to cut, why the phone number goes there. Multi-page sites, SEO fundamentals, booking or a small store all live here.
The €8,000+ bracket: agencies
Worth it when you need a team — strategy, brand, custom engineering, ongoing campaigns. Overkill for a site whose job is 'look credible, get calls'. You'll also pay agency process: meetings, rounds, timelines in months.
The question that matters more than price
- Who owns the site — can you leave with it?
- What happens when it breaks on a Saturday?
- What does a change cost in month six?
- Does the price exist in public, or is it 'depends'?
Any builder who answers those four plainly — at any price — is probably safe to hire.