The short answer: most business websites I build start from €5,000, fixed price, with the number and timeline in writing before work starts. A simple site with a few pages sits at the lower end; a multilingual site with a CMS, custom sections and integrations sits at the top. Below that range you're usually buying a template with your logo on it; far above it, for a marketing website, you're usually paying for agency overhead, not a better website. (The exception: once a "website" needs accounts, dashboards or paid features, it's really a product — and product work legitimately costs far more. Where that line sits, and the whole ladder from €0 to six figures, is its own article: web development cost by budget.)
That's the answer to the question. The rest of this article explains where a specific number inside (or outside) that range comes from — so you can read any quote, not just mine.
What actually drives the price
Two websites can look similar and cost very different amounts. These are the factors that genuinely move the number:
1. Number of unique page designs
This is the biggest driver. A "10-page website" might need only 3 unique designs — homepage, a content page template, a contact page — with the other 7 reusing the templates. Or it might need 10 genuinely different layouts. Design is where senior time goes; templates are cheap to fill, expensive to invent.
Cheaper: few unique layouts, reused sections. Pricier: every page is a bespoke composition.
2. Content readiness
If your texts, photos and case studies exist and are good, the builder assembles. If they don't, someone has to write, structure and source them — and "we'll send the content next week" is the single most common reason website projects run over. Some quotes include copywriting; most silently assume you'll provide everything.
Cheaper: content is ready. Pricier: copywriting, photo sourcing, or content strategy is part of the job.
3. CMS: do you need to edit it yourself?
A fully static site is the cheapest to build and the fastest to load — but every text change goes through the developer. A CMS (a friendly admin panel where you edit pages, publish blog posts, swap images) adds setup work: modeling the content, building the admin, wiring previews.
If you'll publish weekly, a CMS pays for itself. If your site will change twice a year, paying for a CMS is buying a truck to carry groceries.
4. Integrations
Contact forms, booking calendars, payment processing, newsletter tools, CRM connections, analytics. Each integration is small on its own; five of them together are a meaningful chunk of the build — and the flaky ones (undocumented APIs, legacy systems) can eat days.
5. Multilingual
A second language is not "the same site twice", but it's not free either: every template must handle text of different lengths, the URL structure and hreflang must be correct for SEO, and someone has to manage the translations. Expect a multilingual site to sit in the upper half of any honest range.
6. Custom features vs. standard patterns
A standard marketing site is a known problem — that's why a fixed price is possible at all. A configurator, a customer portal, a calculator with business logic: that's product work, not website work. It's still scopeable, but it's scoped separately (and honestly, it's often the start of an MVP conversation rather than a website line item).
What €5,000+ buys from me — and what the same money buys elsewhere
For that range, my projects include:
- Custom design — not a purchased theme with your colors swapped in
- Hand-built, fast code — the kind that scores well on Core Web Vitals, which Google measures and users feel
- SEO structure from day one — correct headings, metadata, sitemap, indexable content; not a plugin bolted on later
- A CMS if you need one — so text and image changes don't require me
- Mobile-first responsiveness — most of your visitors are on phones
- You own everything — code, domain, hosting accounts, content. No hostage situations.
Now the honest comparison. Agencies commonly quote several times more for a comparable scope — not because the website is several times better, but because the fee also covers account managers, project managers, sales commissions and office overhead. You work with one senior person instead, so more of the money goes into the actual product and it ships faster — often in weeks, not the quarter an agency needs to move it through its pipeline. There are projects where a full team is genuinely needed; a 6–10 page business website is rarely one of them. And when a project does need more hands or specialist skills, I bring in independent specialists I already work with — scaled up for that job, not a standing team baked into every price.
At the other end, very cheap offers (a few hundred euros) commonly deliver a page-builder template. It can look fine on day one. The costs show up later — which brings us to red flags.
Red flags in cheap offers
If a quote is dramatically below market, one of these is usually why:
- No SEO structure. The site looks like a website but reads like a picture to Google: wrong heading hierarchy, no metadata, content invisible to crawlers. You'll pay a second time to fix it — often more than the site cost.
- Page-builder lock-in. Built on a proprietary platform you can't export from. Want to leave? You rebuild from zero. The monthly fee is the real price, paid forever.
- You don't own it. The developer registers the domain in their name, keeps the hosting account, or licenses you the design. If the relationship sours, your website is their bargaining chip.
- "Unlimited revisions" with no scope. Sounds generous; actually means nothing was defined, so nothing can be finished. These projects don't end — they get abandoned.
- No performance care. Bloated themes and 40 plugins produce sites that take 6+ seconds to load. Slow sites lose visitors and rank worse — the discount gets repaid in lost customers.
- Price per hour, total unknown. If nobody will commit to a total, the total is not going to surprise you pleasantly.
Questions to ask any developer before paying
Send these to anyone quoting you — including me. Honest builders answer them easily; the pattern of dodging tells you everything.
- Is the price fixed, and is the scope written down? If not: what exactly happens when it takes longer than estimated?
- What precisely is included? Design? Copywriting? SEO structure? CMS? How many unique page designs?
- Who owns the code, domain, and hosting accounts? The only acceptable answer is: you, from day one.
- Can I leave? If we part ways, can another developer take over the site without rebuilding it?
- How will I see progress? Weekly demos, or silence until "the big reveal"?
- What happens after launch? Who fixes bugs, and for how long? What do changes cost?
- Can I see live sites you've built — and can I talk to those clients?
- What's my part of the work, and when? (Content, feedback, approvals — and what happens to the timeline if I'm late.)
Any competent developer has answered these a hundred times. Hesitation on questions 1 and 3 is where projects go to die.
How I run a website project
So you can compare against the process behind my numbers:
- Free 20-minute call. You describe the business and what the site must do. I ask the scoping questions above — in reverse.
- Fixed written quote. Scope, price, timeline, what you provide and when. If the fit isn't right, I'll say so and point you elsewhere.
- Weekly demos. You see the real site on a live preview link every week. No surprises at the end, and course corrections happen while they're cheap.
- Launch — and you own everything. Code, domain, hosting, CMS access, content. Handover documented.
- I reply within 24 hours. During the project and after it. A website is a relationship, not a transaction.
That's the model behind 120+ launches over 10+ years, from Warsaw for clients across the EU and beyond.
Adjacent cases: redesigns and MVPs
Two situations that look like "a website" but price differently:
- You already have a site that underperforms. A redesign can often reuse your content and structure, which changes the math — sometimes down, sometimes up (migrations have their own traps).
- Your "website" is actually a product. If users need accounts, dashboards, or paid features, you're describing an app. MVPs start from €5,000 fixed and ship in 2–4 weeks; larger apps get scoped in phases so you never sign up for one scary number.
Get your number
The genuinely fastest way to find out what your website costs: book a free 20-minute call. You'll get a fixed price and a timeline in writing — and if I'm not the right fit, you'll at least leave knowing what a fair quote for your project looks like.