What a website costs, broken down line by line

Website pricing is opaque because quotes give a total without saying what is inside. Here is the structure underneath the number.

The line items

• Discovery. Understanding the business, the buyer and the goal. 5–15% of a good project. First thing cut on a cheap one.
• Content. Writing and images. Usually the largest single cost when included, and usually excluded.
• Design. Layout, type, colour, states, responsive behaviour. 20–30%.
• Build. Turning the design into a working, accessible, fast site. 30–40%.
• Setup. Hosting, domains, SSL, analytics, Search Console, redirects. 5%.
• Testing. Devices, browsers, forms, accessibility. 5–10%, first thing to disappear under time pressure.
• Training and handover. Usually an hour, and it decides whether you can maintain your own site.

Rough bands, honestly

• €500–1,500. A template with your content in it. Legitimate for a very small business; do not expect custom design or SEO groundwork.
• €1,500–4,000. Customised template or a simple custom design, several pages, basic SEO. Where most small businesses land.
• €4,000–10,000. Custom design, custom build, real content work, a proper structure that can grow. Where most businesses that depend on the site should be.
• €10,000–30,000. Multiple templates, multilingual, integrations, e-commerce, or a genuinely bespoke system.

The costs that come after

Hosting €10–80 a month. Domain €10–30 a year. Maintenance €40–300 a month. Premium plugin licences €100–500 a year. Content, if you want the site to keep earning. Budget roughly 15–25% of the build cost annually and you will not be surprised.

Where money is genuinely wasted

Pages nobody reads. Animation that delays content. A custom CMS when WordPress would do. Features requested because a competitor has them. And rebuilding every two years because the first build was too cheap to last.