"How much does a website cost?" is the most common question I get, and it is also the hardest one to answer cleanly. "It depends" is true but useless. So here is the version nobody in the industry likes to write: a transparent breakdown of what custom websites actually cost in 2026, what you get at each price point, and where the money goes.
The short answer
For a small-to-medium business, a serious custom website costs €500 to €2,000 depending on scope. Below that you are generally looking at a template. Above it, it is no longer a website but a web application — an online store with a database, a customer portal, a booking system — and that range starts at €800.
Those are our figures, broken down tier by tier on the website pricing page. They are not a market average: you will find offers at €145 and offers at €8,000 for something that reads the same on paper.
Here is the breakdown.
Simple site: €500 to €900
One to five pages. Typical use: a local business that needs a presence, basic contact info, some photos, and maybe a simple contact form.
What is included:
- Custom Figma design (desktop + mobile).
- Fully responsive build in React or Astro.
- Basic SEO: meta tags, schema, sitemap, robots.txt.
- Contact form wired to email.
- Analytics setup.
- Deployment on a free hosting tier (Vercel, Cloudflare Pages).
- Domain and DNS setup.
- 30-day support window.
Timeline: 2 to 3 weeks. This is the entry point for a real custom site rather than a template slap-job.
Business site: €900 to €1,500
This is where most work lands. A 6 to 15 page business site with a blog, service pages, multiple languages, a CMS, maybe a booking or inquiry system.
What is included on top of the previous tier:
- Multilingual support (usually 2, 3 languages).
- Lightweight CMS (Sanity, Supabase-backed admin, or a simple markdown setup).
- Blog system with individual post pages.
- Multiple contact/inquiry flows.
- Advanced schema markup (LocalBusiness, Article, Organization).
- Performance tuning to 95+ Lighthouse mobile score.
- 60-day support window.
- Content staging environment.
Timeline: 4 to 6 weeks.
Database, store or portal: from €1,500
The moment a site has to remember something — orders, bookings, customer accounts — it crosses into a web application and the arithmetic changes. This tier runs €1,500 to €3,000, with larger catalogues and integrations above that.
What is included:
- Everything above, plus:
- Database (usually Supabase Postgres).
- Custom authentication (customer accounts, admin panel).
- Payment integration (Stripe or local equivalents).
- Inventory / booking / reservation management.
- Order tracking or booking confirmation flows.
- Email notifications.
- More extensive QA (real payment testing, edge cases).
- 90-day support window.
Timeline: 8 to 12 weeks. White Sail Split sits roughly here: boat trip bookings with their own admin, no intermediary taking a commission.
Above €3,000: real complexity
At this point the project is no longer a website but a custom application. Large catalogues, complex integrations with third-party APIs, several user roles. These are scoped individually — see business application pricing.
Where the money actually goes
Clients often imagine they are paying for "the coding". That is maybe 30% of the time on a typical project. The rest is:
- Discovery and planning (~10%), understanding the business, writing the brief, mapping the content.
- Design (~25%), Figma work, iterations, style guide, responsive variants.
- Development (~30%), writing the code, including image optimization, schema, tests.
- QA and performance (~15%), cross-browser testing, real-device testing, Lighthouse tuning, fixing the long tail of small issues.
- Deployment and launch (~5%), DNS, analytics, handover, final sanity checks.
- Post-launch buffer (~15%), the initial support period, small fixes, honest padding for the unexpected.
When an agency quotes €6,000 for the same scope, the difference is usually overhead you are paying for — project managers, sales, an office — not extra value.
The hidden costs people forget
Most quotes only cover the build. Real ongoing costs for a business website include:
- Hosting: €0 to €30/month depending on tier. Vercel and Cloudflare Pages are free for most small-business traffic.
- Domain: €10 to €20/year.
- Email: €5 to €10 per mailbox per month if you need
@yourdomain.com. - Database (Supabase): Free for small use, €25/month after.
- Payment processing fees: 1.4%+€0.25 per transaction on Stripe Europe.
- Ongoing content updates: Either your time, or hourly developer time.
- Occasional bug fixes and browser-update compatibility: Budget €100 to €300/year for minor fixes.
A well-built site on a modern stack costs almost nothing to run. A WordPress site with plugin licenses, security updates, and shared hosting easily costs €300 to €600/year just to keep running. I wrote about that gap in Why Your WordPress Site Is Slow.
Why the same "website" costs €150 or €6,000
Because "website" covers a huge range:
- A template slapped on WordPress: €150 to €500. Looks like everyone else's, slow, awkward to update, more expensive to keep running.
- A serious developer doing design, build, SEO and deployment: €500 to €2,000. This is what we do.
- A site that has to remember things — store, bookings, accounts: €2,000 to €3,000.
- A small agency for the same scope: €3,000 to €6,000. Same output, more overhead.
- A large agency: €6,000 and up.
Picking the right tier depends on how important the website is to your business. If it is a side concern, template it. If it is how customers find and judge you, invest properly.
Work with me
I am transparent about pricing before any commitment. Every project starts with a free 30-minute call where I understand the scope and give you a realistic quote in writing. No surprises, no hidden fees, no upsells after the fact. Email info@tonibarisic.com or use the contact form to start that conversation. See the portfolio for examples at different tiers, or the website pricing page broken down by tier.