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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.
Real price ranges for a business website in 2026 — depending on whether you do it yourself, hire a freelancer, or go with an agency. The maintenance costs no one mentions. And what you can expect at each price level.
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 17-45/mo | Ready-made template, limited customisation |
| Freelancer | EUR 1,500-4,000 | EUR 0-80/mo | Custom site, quality varies by freelancer |
| Traditional agency | EUR 5,000-15,000 | EUR 50-300/mo | Fully bespoke, strategy, content, SEO |
| Astro4B (Astro site) | From EUR 2,400 | EUR 0/mo | High-performance site, CMS included, free hosting |
These ranges are based on 2026 market data. The “monthly cost” includes hosting, maintenance, and plugin licences — the line items that initial quotes do not always mention.
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 2,400 with EUR 0/mo costs EUR 2,436 over 3 years. 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 17 to 45/mo). Over 3 years, that is EUR 612 to 1,620
- 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.
A Wix Business site at EUR 27/mo costs EUR 972 over 3 years — for a site you do not own (it lives on Wix servers), that you cannot export, and whose SEO performance is structurally limited. That is not free — it is rent.
What to expect at each price level
Not all sites are equal. Here is what each price range should include:
Adapted template, content provided by you, no SEO strategy, no CMS or basic CMS. Sufficient for a minimal presence.
Custom design, responsive, CMS for autonomy, image optimisation, basic SEO (tags, structure). The standard for an SME.
Content strategy, professional copywriting, advanced technical SEO, animations, third-party integrations, tool training.
Fully bespoke, UX research, user testing, multilingual, e-commerce, web application. Complex projects only.
Be wary of a quote that does not mention maintenance costs, that bills hosting as “free for the first year” (it will be paid after), or that does not specify who owns the source code. A site you do not own is not an investment — it is a rental.
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:
- -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 5,964, 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”.
When you compare quotes, do not just look at the total. Compare: hosting included or not, maintenance included or not, CMS included or not, training included or not, code ownership, and above all — the 3-year cost (upfront price + monthly fees × 36).
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.