How much does a website cost? A logical first question, and at the same time one almost nobody answers straight. That's because the price varies widely per project. Still, you can estimate the ballpark upfront just fine.
Below I list the going rates, explain where the difference comes from, and point out what to look for so you get value for your money.
What does a website cost on average?
In the Netherlands, prices roughly look like this. A simple one-pager or starter site is often between €500 and €1,500. A professional multi-page business site, custom designed, usually sits between €1,500 and €4,000. A webshop starts around €3,000 and goes up with the number of products and integrations. Genuinely custom work with its own functionality sits above that.
These are guide prices for the Dutch market, not a quote. Two sites that are both called 'five pages' can differ by a factor of three in practice, depending on the design, the technology and who builds it.
Where does the price difference come from?
The biggest difference isn't in the number of pages, but in custom work. Filling in an off-the-shelf theme takes little time and little money, but your site looks like a thousand others. A unique design that fits your brand and is built to turn visitors into customers costs more, and delivers more too.
You also pay for what you don't immediately see: speed, security, a clean technical foundation and good findability in Google. A cheap site that is slow and stays invisible ends up more expensive than a site that actually does the job.
Don't forget the running costs
Besides the build there are running costs: hosting, a domain name, an SSL certificate and maintenance. Count on a modest monthly amount for hosting and maintenance combined. Updates and security sound boring, but they keep your site safe and fast and prevent expensive problems later.
Watch out for providers who quote a low build price and earn it back with high monthly fees or a site you can't manage yourself. Always ask who owns the site and the domain. That should be you.
What does your website cost?
The honest answer: it depends on what you need. That's why I don't work with a fixed list price, but with a fixed quote upfront, so you know exactly where you stand. See how I build websites, or request a free website concept. I'll show you, with no strings attached, what your site could look like and what it would cost.
