What does a website really cost?

Before anyone talks money, a different question has to be settled. What should this website do for you? A three-page business card is a different thing from a site that brings you enquiries you can plan around. Until that part is clear, every number is a guess.

Here are the numbers I work with myself, and what they hang on.

What the price is made of

Scope moves the number most. Right behind it sits the question of who supplies the content. A site that comes with finished text and good photos from you is faster to build than one where I also write the copy and sort out the images.

A rough orientation. A small, clearly scoped project starts at 599 € with me. That is a real starting price I hold to, and it covers a lean one-page presence with a single clear goal. A small presence site of three or four pages is more like 1,200 to 2,500 €. A proper business site with its own design, a CMS and an SEO base lands at 3,000 to 7,000 €. And a bilingual site with a blog like this one, where every post is kept up in both German and English, runs 5,000 to 12,000 €. Those are the numbers I calculate with myself.

The biggest cost driver is the content. If the text is missing, the project stalls. That is exactly where most too-early fixed prices fall apart.

What a builder costs, and what it leaves to you

A website builder costs little per month. The catch here is that you build it yourself, you maintain it yourself, and on speed and findability you make compromises. For a quick stopgap that is completely fine. But the moment the site represents your business, the hour you saved turns into expensive time.

Here is a real example that has nothing to do with code. A client had her price list as a photo on the site. Looked tidy. The problem is Google cannot read prices out of an image, so for exactly those searches she did not show up. Small things like that cost nothing on the invoice but a lot of reach in everyday life. A builder never shows you that.

// A price range is a function of scope, not a fixed number.
function rangeFor(scope: 'card' | 'business' | 'bilingual') {
  // My ballpark numbers, depending on scope.
  return {
    card: '~1,200–2,500 €',
    business: '~3,000–7,000 €',
    bilingual: '~5,000–12,000 €',
  }[scope];
}

What a low starting price really means

A starting price is a starting point. That is fine, as long as it is said openly what is included and what is not. That is exactly how I mean my 599 €. A small, fully scoped project I actually build at that price. It gets dishonest when the low price only exists to pull you into a conversation, and the real number shows up after you have already invested.

My approach is the other way around. Show first, talk later. If you want to know what your site would actually cost, have a look at the Next.js vs. WordPress comparison too (in German, no English version yet). Which system you pick often shifts the running cost more than the starting price does.

The fastest way to a real number

Ask for a free design draft. Then you are not talking about abstract prices, you are looking at your own site in front of you. On that basis I give you a fixed price you can actually follow. No pressure, you decide afterwards in your own time.