Budget & decisions
What a website really costs a small business
One quote at 1,500 €, another at 12,000 €, a third saying « bespoke, please enquire ». You ask for a price and you are told it depends. So let us publish the whole calculation, including everything that arrives after launch.
Key points
- 1The price of the site is not the cost of the project. Over three years, a site that exists comes to about 3,350 €; a site that gets found, to 9,750 €. The build itself costs 1,500 €.
- 2Our prices are public: 1,500 € excl. VAT for a site, 50 €/month excl. VAT for infrastructure, 1,000 € then 150 €/month excl. VAT for visibility. The full calculation is in this article, and you can redo it.
- 3A website on its own brings nobody in, and you now have to be found twice: on Google, and inside ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Perplexity. At a two-person metalwork firm, search appearances went from 200 to 1,800 a month; at another client, AI engines already bring more enquiries than Google.
- 4A cost cannot be judged in the abstract. 9,750 € over three years is five sales to recover if you sell at 2,000 €, and close to five hundred if you sell at 20 €. Run that calculation before signing, and insist on a positioning study: in a market saturated with paid advertising, the best site in the world will come behind those who pay.
« How much does a website cost? » is the most asked question in our trade, and the worst answered. The honest answer fits in one sentence: the price you are quoted rarely covers what you will pay.
This is not always dishonesty. Building a site is a project, with an end date. A site that is live is an expense, and it runs. The two do not compare, yet they are handed to you in the same quote, on the same line.
Why nobody gives you a price
Three reasons. Two are fair, the third less so.
- Scope changes everything. A five-page brochure site and a shop handling stock, carriers and VAT have nothing in common. Announcing one price for both would be a lie.
- Content is the real work. Copy, photographs, translations, legal notices. An agency that leaves it out of the quote will hand you an empty site, and you will discover the work when it is time to fill it.
- And for some, silence is a method. The figure is decided after measuring what you appear able to pay. It is legal, it is common, and it is precisely what a published price makes impossible.
We chose the opposite: our eleven services carry a public price, readable without an appointment (see pricing). That commits us. It also makes the rest of this article possible, with figures you can check.
The four items a quote does not show
1. The build
The only item everyone announces. With us, from 1,500 € excl. VAT, live within two weeks. It covers design, integration and launch, and nothing else.
2. Infrastructure and upkeep
A site has to live somewhere, be backed up, encrypted, kept current. A site left unmaintained does not break the next day: it decays slowly, until a vulnerability or an expired certificate takes it offline. With us, from 50 €/month excl. VAT, depending on how complex the thing is to run: European hosting, backups, monitoring, security updates, fixes, security certificate included.
« Excluding infrastructure » on a quote does not mean it is free. It means that item will arrive later, and often with no figure attached.
The domain name is a different matter: it is not ours, and it must never belong to your supplier. You buy it yourself, in your own name. Budget 5 to 20 € a year depending on the name you choose. It is the smallest item in the project, and the only one you will not be able to buy back if someone else has registered it in theirs.
3. Visibility
The item no website quote contains. And rightly so: it is not the same trade. With us, 1,000 € to set up (an audit of your visibility and your competitors', a content strategy, your Google listing, the technical groundwork), then from 150 €/month excl. VAT depending on how often you publish and on whether it is a brochure site or an online shop.
You can do without it. The table below puts a figure on what that changes, and the rest of the article shows what it really costs.
4. Content
Copy, photographs, translations. Either you produce them, and that is your time; or you buy them. Either way it is a cost, and it is the item that delays projects most often.
| Item | A site that exists · 3 years | A site that gets found · 3 years |
|---|---|---|
| Building the site (from) | 1,500 € | 1,500 € |
| Hosting and upkeep · 50 €/month | 1,800 € | 1,800 € |
| Domain name, in your name · 5 to 20 €/year | 15 to 60 € | 15 to 60 € |
| Setting up visibility | 0 € | 1,000 € |
| Visibility, monthly · from 150 €/month | 0 € | 5,400 € |
| Total excl. VAT | ≈ 3,350 € | ≈ 9,750 € |
Two columns, two different projects. The left one is a site that exists. The right one, a site that gets found. The build is 45 % of the first and 15 % of the second: either way, that is not where your budget is decided. A quote that only covers it has not lied to you: it has shown you one line out of five.
1,500 €
the advertised price of a site, excluding infrastructure
≈ 3,350 €
a site that exists, over three years
≈ 9,750 €
a site that gets found, over three years
The item nobody prices: your time
No quote shows the hours you will spend on it. Gathering copy, finding photographs, explaining your trade to someone who does not know it, reviewing, approving. That is normal, and even desirable: a site written without you will not sound like you.
But that time exists, and it is paid for: in evenings, or in work not invoiced. The only useful question is: are you told about it up front, or do you discover it along the way?
A website on its own brings nobody in
This is the part quotes never mention, and it is the part that decides the return. A website is an address. An address does not bring visitors.
Appearances in search results, per month
Metalwork firm · two people · Occitanie, France
Source: the client's Search Console, February to July 2026, published with their agreement. Site, business listing and visibility work were carried out together over the period.
The site did not produce that result. The site plus the business listing, plus pages answering real customer questions, plus six months of consistency did. The site alone would have stayed at 200.
And lately, you have to be found twice
Google is no longer the only door. Your clients also ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity or Grok, and those engines answer by naming companies, sometimes with a phone number. Being cited there does not run on the same signals as a Google ranking, and nobody handles it on your behalf.
A property expert in Valencia reported the case to us, and he is pleased with it: several prospects confirmed they had found him thanks to ChatGPT, which gave them his name and even his phone number. Less than a month after setting it up, he receives more enquiries through those engines than through Google.
We do not promise it, and we do not generalise from one case. But it is a door that did not exist two years ago, and that is why we treat presence in these engines as search work in its own right, not as a curiosity.
What that changes for your budget is the gap between the two columns of the table: 6,400 € over three years, for the one difference that actually counts. The full case is published here.
« We did not buy software, we took on a partner. »
What it has to earn you, and whether it is even possible
Nine thousand seven hundred and fifty euros over three years is a real sum for a small business. It cannot be judged in the abstract: it is judged on what it brings back. And the answer depends entirely on what you sell.
The calculation is one division. How many extra sales does it take to cover the spend?
| Average price of what you sell | Extra sales, over three years |
|---|---|
| 20 € | ≈ 490 |
| 200 € | ≈ 49 |
| 2,000 € | ≈ 5 |
And that is revenue, not margin. If you sell at a high price, the investment pays for itself with a handful of clients. If you sell cheaply, it takes a volume the web may never bring you. Nobody runs that calculation for you, and it should come before all the others.
Insist on being told whether the ground is takeable
The second calculation is harder to hear. In a saturated market, those who pay for visibility will come out ahead of you. Sponsored links sit at the top of the page and stay there as long as the budget holds. You can have the best-looking site, the most complete one, the best offer at the best price: you will be named after a competitor who is dearer and worse. The only reason: they pay.
That is why we start with a positioning study. We list your direct competitors, we measure their reach, and we look at whether there is market share to take. Sometimes there is, and we know where. Sometimes there is not.
Five questions to ask before signing
- What does the price cover, and what comes afterwards? Ask for the three-year cost, not the project price.
- Who owns the domain name? The only good answer is: you do.
- What happens if I leave? You must be able to take your site, your domain and your content, without negotiating.
- Who writes the content, and is it priced? If the answer is vague, it is you, and it is not budgeted.
- Is there ground for you to take? Ask for the positioning study, the list of your direct competitors and their reach, before you sign. If nobody can answer, the answer is no.
A supplier who answers those four questions plainly may cost you more at signature. They will almost always cost you less over three years.
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Costs: WEDOOALL public rates as at 15 September 2026, excluding VAT, the same as on our pricing page, with no discount or mark-up for this article. Visibility: a client's Search Console, February to July 2026, published with their agreement and anonymised. The second case is reported by the client concerned, a property expert in Valencia, and published anonymised.