The Costs of a Professional Website

We have already established that a poor website can be costly. But what does it actually cost to create a new website? What differences exist? What are the main cost drivers? And what kind of “Return on Investment” can you expect? You may be surprised.

This article is quite detailed, aiming to explain the background of each item thoroughly. If you want to jump straight to the final cost breakdown for the mentioned example project, click here:

The Scenario: A New Website for a Medium-Sized Business

In most cases, it is challenging to provide a blanket estimate for service costs. Too much depends on the specific circumstances. Additionally, a cost breakdown is of little use if you do not understand what the costs are for and what lies behind them. Therefore, we will approach this question with a practical scenario:

A medium-sized furniture store in a rural area with 12 employees has been doing well through word-of-mouth advertising and occasional ads in the local newspaper. Customers come in and are satisfied with the quality of the products and the service. However, the website has been neglected. Essentially, it is just a web business card with contact details and opening hours, which is poorly accessible on smartphones. The managing director knows that something needs to be done. More and more people are no longer asking acquaintances for recommendations but are searching online. Neither Google nor modern AIs have really put the company on their radar. However, the seemingly high costs of a website deter him.

Is a New Website Not Extremely Expensive?

First of all, these costs depend on what is actually needed and who develops the website.

What is needed is determined by the target audience of the website: In the case of our furniture store, this includes well-off young families who are building or renovating their own homes, as well as large developers looking for reliable suppliers.

Both target groups require information about the company’s products, services, and contacts, and they also seek inspiration. Particularly young families, where women statistically make most purchasing decisions, are looking for a trustworthy provider that conveys a positive feeling. If the company can convey this sense of new beginnings, it can attract new customers online.

In our example, a website would sensibly include:

• A homepage,
• Landing pages for individual services and product categories,
• A contact page with a contact form,
• An “About Us” page with contacts, and
• A blog function for regular, relevant content.

Various Providers for Websites

Who can implement such a website? There are different types of companies that offer these services. In our example, we will take a closer look at two types of internet agencies and explain our own calculations. I must simplify things considerably, and I will exclude website builders, which I have already dedicated a separate article to.

• One-Person Agencies: There are many sole proprietors who create websites cheaply using WordPress or similar CMS platforms. They are often not programmers but rather designers. Therefore, they use third-party designs found on platforms like themeforest.net and merely adapt them to the specific use case. Payment is usually a flat fee, possibly hourly for additional work.
• Large Internet Agencies: Regional or national internet agencies are an alternative. They often work in a division of labour, employing project managers, developers, designers, photographers, etc., and occupy representative offices in the nearest larger city. Large agencies typically also work on a flat fee basis for various reasons (including the fact that this makes it harder for clients to compare the value of individual services, allowing for higher overall prices).

The costs mentioned below are net (plus 19% VAT, if applicable).

The Conceptualisation of the Website

In the first phase after the initial meeting, the focus is on the conceptualisation of the website. There are already significant differences between providers at this stage:

We do not have representative offices that you would pay for, but rather work from home offices and are happy to visit clients. This way, we also get a personal impression of the character and atmosphere of the company—important factors for an authentic online representation. The initial discussions focus centrally on the needs of the target audience, but of course, it also concerns you as a client, your goals, values, and strengths—essentially, your brand. We develop a sensible structure for the website and a plan for the upcoming work.

Cost Factor: Because we do not have to pay expensive rent for an office and because these discussions are crucial for the success of the later work, we can and want to offer you the initial consultation, including brand and target audience, for free, provided we are allowed to implement the website. We only charge for travel at €0.40 per km.

The Design Phase

In this phase, the design of the new website is established. The design phase is one of the largest cost drivers for a new website, as many clients mistakenly believe that the success of a new website primarily depends on its appearance. Accordingly, most agencies place a strong emphasis here, even though their approaches can differ significantly.

We typically take a different approach to large agencies. We also develop an individual design based on optimised in-house templates (not external themes!). However, this is done not in graphic software but directly on the actual website based on a sample page. Changes can still be made quickly, as with Figma & Co., but the client sees the actual result (including responsive view!) and saves the costly intermediate step.

If clients explicitly request it, we also have design professionals in our network who can create entirely custom designs as graphic previews in advance.

Cost Factor: We usually charge based on hours worked, at €100 per hour, but provide binding estimates in advance. For a “normal,” individual design, including one feedback round, the effort is about 8-20 hours (€800-2,000)—and then it is already implemented!

The Costs of Web Development

While good web design is undeniably important, the actual success factors of a website are established in web development. This involves setting up a website technically so that its operation is sustainable and low-risk, maintenance and adjustments are simple and inexpensive, and development complies with all legal requirements (data protection, accessibility, etc.). What you save here often costs you double later on.

We approach technical questions with an open technology mindset, but over the decades, we have gained many experiences that influence our recommendations. Our criteria for selecting the CMS and web development are:

• Content management systems that are proven, secure, easy to maintain and edit, open-source, and widely known (no vendor lock-in from us).
• Web development using languages and technologies that will still exist in 10 years (PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, HTML, CSS…).
• Exotic solutions (static websites, rare CMS, etc.) only where they truly provide added value that justifies the higher effort and risk.
• Compliance with EU regulations on data protection and accessibility—this is in the client’s own interest. Who can be sure today that the website and their data on US servers will still be accessible tomorrow?

Cost Factor: We typically charge based on hours worked, at €100 per hour, but provide binding estimates in advance. For a website like the one in our example, the effort for web development is about 5-12 hours (€500-1,200).

Costs for SEO

SEO is the optimisation of a website for search engines. It overlaps with optimising a website for visitors. Both technical and content-related questions play a role here. If both are neglected, even the most beautiful website has little chance of success on the internet.

With us, a basic SEO optimisation is included for free when creating a website. This includes loading time optimisations via caching, meaningful page titles and descriptions for search engines, 404 management, and much more.

A comprehensive search engine optimisation, which is optional—but recommended!—begins in the planning phase and primarily involves thorough keyword research to find out what the target audience is searching for on Google. This is followed by the creation of an SEO strategy and the optimisation of the website structure and content within that strategy.

Cost Factor: A keyword analysis with extensive strategic evaluation takes us about 4-5 hours (€400-500). The website’s technical aspects will be optimised for free. Content optimisation occurs as needed and based on effort. The long-term implementation of an SEO strategy, e.g., with regular new content and reporting, starts at about €300 per month.

Costs for Content

The entire website would not make much sense without the content to present on it. Creating good content for a website is not trivial, and different agencies approach this topic in different ways:

Our agency is organised around a core that specialises in web design, web development, and online content, making us 100% flexible: If the client already has all the content themselves (e.g., because they use external photographers), they save these costs with us. At the same time, we can cover all the services they need through our extensive network of professionals.

Cost Factor: Services that we do not cover in-house (photography, videography, audio content, etc.) are billed directly with external service providers. The creation of SEO-optimised and target audience-specific online content is charged based on effort. For an average content page or blog post, including suitable images/videos from a stock database, we require about 2 hours (€200). For social media content, it greatly depends on the individual case. For ongoing contracts (regular creation of specific content), we charge flat rates based on requirements.

You can usually take care of uploading the content to the website yourself after a brief training session if you wish. Alternatively, we are also happy to manage your content for you. For external content, we charge approximately 10-30 minutes per subpage, depending on the effort involved.

Training and Maintenance

Websites require regular maintenance to operate safely and efficiently, just like your car or computer. However, it is often not in the interest of internet agencies to give clients free rein over their own website to adjust content or maintain the system. It is significantly more profitable to keep them tied to the agency long-term. This can be done in various ways:

We believe it is in our own interest for clients to be satisfied with their website and our services in the long term. Therefore, we give you full freedom: We are happy to take care of the long-term maintenance and care of the website for you, but we also allow you to manage everything yourself. With the systems we use, this is exceptionally easy—usually, a brief training session is enough to get by. In any case, you will receive all access credentials immediately upon request.

Cost Factor: For many systems, backups and updates now run automatically. If the website is configured wisely in advance (e.g., using external designs and plugins sparingly), no problems are expected after an automatic update.

Very simple websites can be implemented completely as static HTML pages without a CMS, which require no maintenance. Alternatively, we recommend that clients use automatic updates without supervision (and thus without costs). If a problem does occur later due to an automatic update, we bill the repair based on effort.

For those who want to be on the safe side, which we recommend for more complex websites, we offer a maintenance contract. This way, we check the automatic updates and ensure that the website functions correctly afterward. Should a problem arise, we will fix it for free. The costs of a maintenance contract depend on the complexity of the installation but usually range from €50-100 per month.

We bill training based on effort. For a standard introduction to the WordPress system, you can reasonably expect about 2-3 hours (€200-300). Other systems may be somewhat more challenging to learn.

Our Prices at a Glance

Every project is somewhat unique. However, it is important to us that you can transparently understand how our prices are determined. Therefore, we typically bill our services by the hour but provide you with a binding estimate of the effort required, with a range from minimum to maximum. In practice, we usually land in the middle of the estimate.

Through a lean structure and smart solutions for the most expensive services, we save you real money—while still providing you with a customised, professionally optimised, legally compliant, easy-to-maintain, and secure website.

The Costs* for Our Example Project, as Explained Above:

^{*) All costs are net, plus 19% VAT, if applicable.}

The ROI of Your Investment in a New Website

In this article, you hopefully gained a clearer insight into the expected costs of a new website.

The remaining question is—does it pay off? Why not go for the cheaper one-person agency or create the website yourself using a website builder? Here are some arguments for why investing in a professional website is worthwhile:

• Optimised: We focus on your customers and optimise the website ideally for Google and AI search engines. You will be searched and found—by customers, partners, and applicants. Marketing cannot be more effective.
• Sustainable: The website lasts a long time and is easy to update. Even a redesign while retaining the content is possible later on. A complete redevelopment every few years is no longer necessary.
• Independent: We only use open-source systems that are also familiar to other agencies and develop design and core functions ourselves. This avoids costly and potentially dangerous dependencies on others—or us.
• Legally Compliant: Our websites are developed with data protection, copyright, and accessibility in mind. This helps you avoid costly legal issues.
• Secure: With a professional website, you have fewer entry points for hackers. This can save you potentially significant amounts of money and immaterial damage.