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“How much does a website cost?” — the most googled question in the industry. And the question no one answers honestly.
The usual replies: “it depends”, “between 500 and 50,000 euros”, “request a quote”. That is not information — it is avoidance.
We are laying out the numbers. Real ones. With the hidden costs that quotes never mention.
The three ways to build a site#
There are three approaches, each with its own advantages and trade-offs:
1. Do it yourself (DIY) With Wix, Squarespace, or WordPress.com. You pick a template, fill in the content, and publish.
2. A freelancer An independent developer or designer who builds your site custom or semi-custom.
3. An agency A full team (design, development, content, SEO) that handles the project end to end.
The price depends mainly on which of these three options you choose — not on the intrinsic complexity of your site.
Real prices in 2026#
| Approach | Upfront cost | Monthly cost | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| DIY (Wix, Squarespace) | EUR 0 | EUR 15-30/mo | Ready-made template, limited customisation |
| Freelancer | EUR 800-2,600 | EUR 0-80/mo | Custom site, quality varies by freelancer |
| Traditional agency | EUR 1,750-5,000 | EUR 50-300/mo | Fully bespoke, strategy, content, SEO |
| Astro4B (Astro site) | From EUR 1,480 | EUR 0/mo | High-performance site, CMS included, free hosting |
These ranges come from a survey of 103 published French prices carried out in June 2026 (open-licence barometer, data.gouv.fr), cross-checked against the benchmarks published by France Num, the French government digital service. These are advertised prices, not signed quotes: a real project can land outside them in either direction. The “monthly cost” includes hosting, maintenance, and plugin licences — the line items that initial quotes do not always mention. If you already run a WordPress site, the trade-off is different: it is the cost of keeping it, against the cost of migrating to Astro.
What the upfront price hides#
The price you are quoted for building a site is just the beginning. Recurring costs are what add up:
| Recurring item | WordPress (traditional) | Astro site |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | EUR 5-30/mo | EUR 0/mo (Cloudflare Pages) |
| Technical maintenance | EUR 30-80/mo | EUR 0/mo (no server) |
| Premium plugins | EUR 40-80/mo (EUR 500-1,000/yr) | EUR 0/mo |
| SSL certificate | EUR 0-10/mo | EUR 0/mo (Cloudflare included) |
| Security (Wordfence, etc.) | EUR 8-25/mo | EUR 0/mo (no attack surface) |
| Annual total | EUR 1,000-2,700/yr | EUR 12/yr (domain only) |
A WordPress site at EUR 3,000 with EUR 150/mo maintenance costs EUR 8,400 over 3 years. An Astro site at EUR 1,480 with EUR 0/mo costs EUR 1,516 over 3 years, domain included. The difference funds a second site.
3-year calculation, 2026 market data.
Why DIY is not free#
Wix and Squarespace have zero upfront cost. That is true. But:
- The monthly subscription is mandatory (EUR 15 to 30/mo). Over 3 years, that is EUR 540 to 1,080
- A custom domain is only included the first year
- Bandwidth is limited on some plans
- SEO is limited by the platform (no full control over HTML, metadata, structure)
- You are locked in — exporting a Wix site to another host is nearly impossible
DIY works for a personal project or an MVP. For a professional site that needs to convert and rank well, the limitations become apparent quickly.
What to expect at each price level#
Not all sites are equal. Here is what each price range should include:
- Under EUR 800
Adapted template, content provided by you, no SEO strategy, no CMS or basic CMS. Sufficient for a minimal presence.
- EUR 800-2,600
Custom design, responsive, CMS for autonomy, image optimisation, basic SEO (tags, structure). The standard for a small or mid-sized business.
- EUR 2,600-5,000
Content strategy, professional copywriting, advanced technical SEO, animations, third-party integrations, tool training.
- Above EUR 5,000
Fully bespoke, UX research, user testing, multilingual, e-commerce, web application. Complex projects only.
How long it takes#
The timeline you are quoted is almost never the one you live through. Not out of dishonesty: the clock does not start where you think it does.
When an agency says “six weeks”, it means six weeks from complete content delivery and a signed order. Not from your first call. In between sits the month it takes you to write your copy and gather your photographs.
| Approach | Content ready | Content still to write |
|---|---|---|
| Freelancer, brochure site | 2 to 4 weeks | 4 to 8 weeks |
| Agency, 5-10 page brochure site | 4 to 5 weeks | 7 to 8 weeks |
| Agency, redesign at equal scope | 6 weeks | 8 to 12 weeks |
| Astro4B | 2 to 4 weeks | 2 to 4 weeks (migration included) |
These benchmarks come from project schedules published by French agencies (timelines by project type, 2026 prices and timelines). Our own figure is the same in both columns because carrying over your existing content is part of the job: we start from the site you have, not from a blank page.
Content is the bottleneck, not the build. Three weeks separate the two columns for exactly the same technical work. It is the one variable you control before you even pick a supplier.
What to ask before you sign. A single deadline with no intermediate milestone is an intention, not a commitment. Ask for the dates of design sign-off, acceptance testing and go-live. A supplier who cannot set them does not know when they will deliver.
One more thing quotes leave out: going live is not the finish line. Allow 2 to 4 months after launch before search rankings produce readable results. The site is ready in three weeks; its position in Google is not. For a redesign, the full schedule is here.
The cost of slowness (that no quote mentions)#
The price of a site is not just what you pay to build and maintain it. It’s also what you lose if the site is slow — and the causes of that slowness are architectural far more often than circumstantial:
- -7% conversions per additional second of load time (Deloitte / Google, Milliseconds Make Millions, 2020)
- +32% bounce probability when load time goes from 1 to 3 seconds (Google Data, 2017)
- 53% of mobile visitors abandon a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load (same Google / SOASTA source)
A concrete calculation. A site with 10,000 visits per month and a 2% conversion rate generates 200 conversions. If the site loads in 4 seconds instead of one, the -7%/s loss applied over 3 extra seconds means roughly 42 fewer conversions per month — 504 per year. At EUR 50 per conversion, that’s EUR 25,200 in lost revenue annually. The 3-year cost gap between a WordPress site and an Astro site (EUR 6,884, see table above) becomes a rounding error next to that.
How we set our prices#
At Astro4B, prices are published. No “on request”, no “it depends”, no range from 500 to 50,000. Here is why we can do that:
- No hosting costs to pass on — Cloudflare Pages is free
- No paid plugins — everything is custom code
- No server maintenance — no server
- One framework, not ten — Astro for everyone, not a different CMS per project
The configurator gives you a price based on the number of pages, features, and languages. The displayed price is the final price. No surprise, no “we will see as we go”.
What we cannot do at these prices#
In the interest of transparency. Here is what is not in our base prices:
- E-commerce — a product catalogue with online payment requires a dedicated tool (Shopify, Snipcart) and a higher budget
- Web application — an interactive tool (dashboard, client portal, booking system) is a development project, not a business site
- Content writing — we provide the structure, guidelines, and CMS; copywriting is optional
- Professional photography — we optimise your images, but we do not take them
If your needs go beyond a business site, we tell you. We do not inflate a quote to “fit in” features that would justify a full project.
Want a price for your project? The configurator gives you an estimate in 2 minutes. No contact form, no waiting, no “we will call you back”. A price, options, and the transparency we all wish we found in a quote.