A small business website in Europe costs from about €150 a year if you build it yourself, to €10,000 or more from a custom agency. For most small businesses, a realistic budget for a proper site is €900–€4,000, built once at a fixed price.
So how much does a website cost for a small business? Less than the ranking guides suggest if your scope is clear. More than a builder ad suggests once you count your own time.
Then budget roughly €100–€750 a year to keep it online. That part is predictable.
Below: four tiers in euros, what each includes, what pushes the price up, and how to get a quote you can hold someone to.
How much does a website cost for a small business? Four euro tiers
Most price guides answer in dollars or pounds, with ranges so wide they don't help. Here is the same market in euros, split by who builds the site.
| Tier | Upfront | Per year after launch | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| DIY builder (Wix, Squarespace) | €0 plus 20–40 hours of your time | €150–€600 | A placeholder, a hobby, a first test |
| Freelancer | about €600–€4,800 | €100–€1,100 | Clear brief, flexible deadline |
| Fixed-price studio | €900–€4,000 | €100–€1,100 | Most small businesses |
| Custom agency | about €9,500–€30,000+ | about €1,000–€4,800 | Complex features, many templates, big brands |
Where these numbers come from:
- DIY: Wix plan prices in euros, as listed by a German comparison site in 2026.
- Freelancer and agency: UK figures from two 2026 price guides, converted from pounds at about £1 = €1.19 (the rate on 23 October 2026) and rounded. Treat the euro figures as approximate.
- Fixed-price studio: our own published packages, plus the UK guides' agency ranges for comparison.
- Running costs: builder plans, hosting, domain, email and care-plan prices, covered below. The agency figure is a 2026 guide's yearly maintenance range, converted from pounds.
Tier 1: DIY website builder (about €150–€600 a year)
You pay a monthly subscription. The builder gives you hosting, a security certificate and templates. You do the rest.
In euros, Wix's paid plans run roughly:
- Light: €12–€18 a month
- Core: €24–€32 a month
- Business: €35–€50 a month
The range depends on how long you commit. Monthly billing is the most expensive. Squarespace starts at $19 a month on annual billing, roughly €17.
That makes a builder site about €144–€600 a year in subscriptions. A domain is free for the first year on these plans, then you pay for it.
The real cost is time. Wix itself estimates 20 to 40 hours to build a small business site. That's writing, choosing photos, laying out pages and testing on a phone.
There's also lock-in. Wix says a site "needs to be hosted and operated on Wix's servers". You can't export it and move it later. If you leave, you rebuild.
A builder is the right call more often than agencies admit. We compare the two honestly in Is it worth paying someone to build a website?
Tier 2: Freelancer (about €600–€4,800)
A freelancer builds the site for you, usually on WordPress, Webflow or a builder.
Freelance pricing is mostly time. On Malt, the average day rate for an experienced freelance WordPress developer in France is €449. It ranges from €290 for under two years' experience to €500 for over fifteen.
A five-page site that takes three to eight working days therefore lands around €900–€3,600. That's our estimate from the day rates, not a quoted market figure.
The UK guides agree on the shape. One puts a five-page brochure site at £500–£1,500 (about €600–€1,800). Another puts a five-to-ten page site at £1,000–£4,000 (about €1,200–€4,800).
What you get depends entirely on the person. Some freelancers write copy and handle SEO. Some only build what you hand them.
The risks are practical:
- One person means one diary. Illness or a bigger client can stall your project.
- Scope often grows by email, and so does the invoice.
- Hosting and accounts are sometimes set up in the freelancer's name.
Ask who owns the domain, hosting and logins before you pay anything.
Tier 3: Fixed-price studio (€900–€4,000)
A small studio quotes one price for an agreed scope. Design, build, basic SEO and handover are in it. Extras are named up front.
This is where we sit, so here are our own website packages, excluding VAT:
| Package | Price | What's included |
|---|---|---|
| Launch | from €900 | Up to 5 pages, mobile-first, technical SEO (speed, indexing, schema), content optimisation per page, calls to action, forms and tracking, top-3 competitor analysis, 2 rounds of design feedback |
| Growth | from €1,900 | Everything in Launch, up to 12 pages, keyword research and content plan, landing pages for A/B testing, analytics dashboard, 30 days of post-launch optimisation |
| Scale | from €3,900 | Everything in Growth, unlimited pages or an online shop, two languages, motion and micro-interactions, 90 days of post-launch optimisation |
For comparison, one UK guide puts agency-built small business sites at £2,000–£6,000, roughly €2,400–€7,200.
The point of a fixed price is not that it's cheap. It's that you know the number before work starts.
Example: a neighbourhood bakery website
In the lab we made The Good Everyday, a neighbourhood bakery website with online pre-orders for next-day bread.
It shows how scope sets price. Strip it down to a home page, menu, opening hours, a short story and a map, and it's a Launch-sized job.
The pre-order flow is what moves it up. Orders need a cut-off time, a product list that changes, and confirmation emails. That's a feature, and features cost more than pages.
A bakery that only needs people to find it and call ahead doesn't need that flow. One that sells 40 sourdough loaves a night by pre-order probably does.
Tier 4: Custom agency (about €9,500 and up)
Larger agencies quote by project, often after a paid discovery phase. You get strategy, UX research, custom design, development and a project manager.
One UK guide puts agency brochure sites at £3,000–£12,000 (about €3,600–€14,300). London agencies sit at £8,000–£25,000 (about €9,500–€30,000).
This tier makes sense when you need:
- Integrations with booking, stock or CRM systems
- Many page templates, not just many pages
- Several languages with separate content
- Heavy animation or 3D
That last one has its own price ladder. Custom motion from a studio typically runs $20,000–$50,000, about €18,000–€45,000. We break it down in Animated website cost in 2026.
For a café, salon, trades business or small practice, this tier is usually more than the job needs.
What pushes a small business website design cost up
Four things set most of the price. They are the same four things we ask about before quoting.
- Pages and templates. Twelve pages built on three layouts cost less than eight pages that each look different.
- Features. Booking, pre-orders, payments and links to other systems take far more time than pages.
- Content. If you supply finished text and photos, the price drops. If someone has to write and shoot them, it rises.
- Languages. A second language is close to a second site's worth of content work.
Smaller factors:
- Motion and 3D. Tasteful scroll effects are cheap. Product configurators are not.
- Decision-makers. Five people approving each round slows everything.
- Deadline. A hard launch date in two weeks costs more than one in two months. See How long does it take to build a website?
What doesn't change the price much: colours, fonts, or calling it "premium".
How much does a website cost per year to run?
The build is a one-off. Running costs repeat. For a small site they are modest if you avoid upsells.
| Item | Typical cost per year | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Domain (.eu) | €5–€12 | Renewal prices across registrars, converted from dollars |
| Hosting | about €36–€264 | Roughly €3–€22 a month for shared and managed WordPress plans (our estimate) |
| Builder plan (instead of hosting) | €144–€600 | Wix in euros, includes hosting and SSL |
| SSL certificate | €0 | Free from Let's Encrypt; included by most hosts |
| Email (1 user) | about €75–€150 | Google Workspace Starter or Standard, $7 or $14 a month |
| Care plan (optional) | €150–€1,070+ | Updates, backups, small edits |
So, per month: a lean site costs about €5–€25. A builder site with email costs €20–€60. Add a care plan with a real person and you're at €50–€100.
Watch hosting renewals. Big hosts advertise low intro prices that jump on renewal. Line-by-line detail is in Website maintenance cost per month.
When €900 is enough, and when it isn't
Our Launch package starts at €900. That's enough for a lot of businesses. Not all.
€900 is usually enough if:
- You sell one main service, or from one location
- Five pages cover it: home, services, about, contact, plus one
- You can supply the text and photos, or we tighten what you have
- One language does the job
- The main action is a call, an email or a simple form
It isn't enough if:
- You need bookings, pre-orders or payments built in
- You need two languages
- You have more than five or six distinct pages
- Nobody has written the words yet
- You're really opening an online shop (ours start from €2,400)
If you outgrow €900, the next step is usually Growth or Scale at €1,900–€3,900, not an agency. That's our view from scoping these jobs, not a market statistic.
How to get a fixed quote you can hold someone to
Vague briefs get vague prices. A one-page brief gets a firm one.
- Write the goal in one sentence. "More table bookings on weekdays" beats "a modern website".
- List the pages. Even a rough list of five to twelve is enough.
- List the features. Booking, forms, pre-orders, newsletter, map, languages.
- Say who supplies words and photos. This swings the price more than anything else.
- Share two or three sites you like, and say why.
- Ask what happens after launch. Who hosts it? Who owns the domain and logins? What does a small edit cost?
- Get the scope in writing. Pages, features, feedback rounds, and what counts as extra.
If you want a template, How to brief a creative web agency walks through it.
