What does a custom website cost? Honest answer: somewhere between €750 and €30,000, and that spread is not a dodge but the whole point. A one-pager for a sole trader and a platform site with a client portal for a wholesaler are both called a “website”, yet they are two completely different projects. We deliberately sit at the lower end of these ranges and deliver in roughly half the lead time the market quotes, because one team handles both the design and the build. What you pay depends on five things: the depth of the design, how much custom functionality it holds, who writes the content, which systems it connects to, and which CMS sits underneath. This article sits under our complete guide to having a custom website built and shows the real prices per type of site, plus the monthly costs and the 24-month total that most quotes leave out. For the build itself, see our website service.
What does a website cost per type?
The most useful way to look at prices is per type of site, not per agency. Below are four categories with the one-time investment, the lead time and the monthly costs we see in the Dutch market in 2026. These are realistic ranges for SMB projects, not teasers and not enterprise figures.
| Type of website | One-time investment | Lead time | Monthly costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simple site (one-pager, brochure, 1-5 pages, template) | €750 to €2,500 | 1 to 2 weeks | €15 to €40 |
| Professional business site (custom design, CMS, 8-15 pages) | €4,500 to €8,000 | 2 to 4 weeks | €40 to €120 |
| Custom platform site (unique design, integrations, portal, login) | €12,000 to €25,000 | 4 to 8 weeks | €80 to €250 |
| Webshop (product catalogue, payments, stock) | €8,000 to €30,000 | 4 to 7 weeks | €80 to €250 |
The monthly costs in this table cover hosting, domain and regular maintenance. They are deliberately low compared to what some agencies charge, because hosting in 2026 has simply become cheap. For the choice between an off-the-shelf template and a purpose-built site, read our WordPress vs custom vs headless comparison.
What determines the price of a website?
In nearly every website quote, the same five dials push the price up or down. Not the agency’s logo or the city they sit in, but these five.
- Design depth. An off-the-shelf template with your colours and logo costs almost nothing in design. A unique design that a designer draws screen by screen in Figma adds €1,500 to €6,000. See our web design service for what that buys you.
- Custom functionality. A contact form is standard in every package. A quote configurator, a member portal with login, or a search with filters adds €2,000 to €15,000 depending on complexity.
- Content. Who writes the copy and supplies the photos? If you do it, that saves money. If you have copy written and imagery sourced, count €600 to €3,000 extra for an SMB site.
- Integrations. A link to your accounting, CRM, stock system or mailing tool costs €750 to €4,000 per integration, depending on how well the API is documented.
- CMS. A simple CMS that lets you edit text yourself is often included. A headless CMS that cleanly separates content from the tech and scales with you is an investment up front that pays back later in load time and flexibility.
What does a website cost on average in the Netherlands?
The honest answer on the average cost of a website: most SMBs land between €4,500 and €8,000 for a professional business site. But the average is a misleading number, because the two ends sit so far apart. A sole trader with a one-pager pays €900; a wholesaler with a client portal pays €25,000. Both are “having a website built”.
What helps is thinking in terms of what your site has to do. Does it mainly need to show who you are and make you findable? Then you are in the simple or professional category. Does it have to handle something, like orders, requests, accounts or calculations? Then you are talking about a platform site or webshop, and the price moves toward custom. The Quantum Life platform is an example of that second category, where the site became a real application instead of a business card.
How much does a website cost per month?
The one-time build price is only half the story. Every site has running costs, and cheap quotes often hide those or only reveal them after launch. Below are the real monthly costs per type of site in 2026.
| Cost item | Simple site | Business site | Webshop / platform |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hosting | €5 to €15 | €15 to €50 | €40 to €150 |
| Domain name (per year, converted) | €1 to €2 | €1 to €2 | €1 to €2 |
| Maintenance and updates | €0 to €25 | €20 to €70 | €30 to €100 |
| Licences (CMS, plugins, tools) | €0 to €10 | €5 to €30 | €20 to €60 |
| Total per month | €15 to €40 | €40 to €120 | €80 to €250 |
Hosting is the item that gets overpriced most often. A fast, statically built SMB site runs fine on Cloudflare Pages or a light Hetzner server for €5 to €15 per month. If you pay €80 per month in “hosting” for a simple site, you are in fact paying for maintenance that is not labelled as such. So always ask exactly what falls under that line.
Template or custom: which is cheaper?
This is the question that causes most budget arguments. A template site is almost always cheaper in year one. The question is whether that still holds after two years. Below is an honest comparison of both routes over 24 months, for a comparable business site.
| Template site | Custom site | |
|---|---|---|
| Build cost | €750 to €2,500 | €4,500 to €8,000 |
| Design freedom | Limited to what the theme allows | Fully your own design |
| Load speed | Variable, often heavy | Faster, optimised to fit |
| Integrations | Plugins, limited and brittle | Custom, stable |
| Maintenance per month | €20 to €70 (plugin updates) | €20 to €60 |
| Lifespan before rebuild | 2 to 3 years | 4 to 6 years |
| TCO 24 months (indication) | €1,700 to €5,000 | €5,000 to €14,000 |
The template wins in the short term, that is true. But the hidden cost sits in lifespan and performance. A template site loaded up with plugins gets slow, and speed is no detail: Google uses Core Web Vitals as a ranking signal, and a slow site costs you visitors and positions. For the full picture of what a too-cheap choice costs later, read our hidden costs of cheap websites article.
Our rule of thumb: a template is fine if your site is mainly a business card and you are happy to rebuild in two years. Choose custom the moment your site has to pull in traffic through Google, needs integrations, or needs a feature no off-the-shelf theme offers. If you are torn between the two, that is usually the very signal that you sit in the business-site category.
What does a webshop cost?
A webshop is a category of its own, because it adds functionality a normal site does not have: a product catalogue, a basket, payments, stock management and often a link to your accounting or a courier. That is why the floor sits higher and the spread is wider.
| Type of webshop | One-time investment | Lead time |
|---|---|---|
| Small shop (up to 50 products, standard payments) | €8,000 to €12,000 | 3 to 5 weeks |
| Mid-size shop (catalogue, filters, accounts, integrations) | €12,000 to €20,000 | 4 to 6 weeks |
| Custom webshop (own logic, B2B pricing, stock sync) | €20,000 to €30,000 | 5 to 7 weeks |
The biggest cost driver in a webshop is rarely the design, but the logic underneath: B2B pricing per customer, tiered discounts, stock that has to stay in sync with your warehouse, or a link to a courier. For an anonymous e-commerce client we built exactly that kind of custom flow, see the anonymous e-com case. If you have a simple shop with a few products, you sit at the low end and a standardised approach is fine.
What is the total cost over 24 months?
The build price is what you sign; the TCO is what you actually pay. Below is a worked example for a professional business site of €6,000 in build cost, run across two years. That shows where your money goes after launch.
| Cost item | Year 1 | Year 2 | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-time build cost | €6,000 | €0 | Design, build, content, delivery |
| Hosting + domain | €360 | €360 | Light server plus domain name |
| Maintenance and updates | €600 | €720 | Small changes, security updates |
| Licences and tools | €180 | €240 | CMS, forms, analytics |
| Further development (optional) | €1,000 | €1,500 | New pages, A/B tests, SEO |
| Total | €8,140 | €2,820 | 24-month TCO: €10,960 |
The build cost here is about 74 percent of year one and almost nothing in year two. Anyone comparing on the build quote alone misses the running costs that, over two years, add up to half the build price again. A well-built site keeps those running costs low; a too-cheaply built site drives them up with plugin updates that break and hosting that scales with problems.
Why is a cheap website sometimes false economy?
A €500 site exists, but you pay the difference back somewhere else. Usually in one of four forms: a slow site that loses visitors, a design that looks like every other site and so builds no trust, a CMS you cannot edit anything in yourself, or a rebuild after eighteen months because the foundation does not scale. Those are not invented risks, but the patterns we see most often with clients who have us build their second site.
According to figures from the HTTP Archive Web Almanac, a large share of the web runs on heavily loaded, slow pages, and that is exactly where the most gain is to be had. A site that loads in 1 second versus 4 seconds makes a direct difference to conversion and to your position in Google. Google’s own Search Central documentation is clear that page experience feeds into ranking. For the full overview of those hidden costs, see the hidden costs of cheap websites article.
How do I know which type of site I need?
Run through these five questions and within a few minutes you know which price bracket you sit in and what a realistic quote looks like.
- Does my site mainly need to show who I am? Yes, with a few pages? Then you sit in the simple or professional category, €750 to €8,000.
- Do I need to be found through Google for my services? Yes? Then you need a custom design and solid tech, not a template. Count on the professional category or higher.
- Does my site need to handle something: requests, accounts, calculations? Yes? Then it is a platform site, €12,000-plus.
- Do I sell products online with payments and stock? Yes? Then it is a webshop, €8,000-plus depending on the logic.
- Does my site need to connect to my accounting, CRM or stock system? Yes? Add €750 to €4,000 per integration to your build budget.
For a good example of a professional business site that is also visually distinctive, see the De Bungelaer case or the site we built for Peters Bouwadvies. Both sit in the professional to platform category, and neither is a standard template.
What is the first step?
- Write down what your site has to do, not how it should look. One page is enough. Which visitors, and what action do you want them to take?
- Run through the five questions above so you know which price bracket you sit in before you request quotes.
- Ask every quote split out: design, build, content, integrations and monthly costs separately. That way you compare apples with apples.
Book a free intake call. In thirty minutes we look at what your site needs to do, give an honest price indication and tell you whether a template or custom is the right choice for you. For the full decision path, read our complete custom website guide and our WordPress vs custom vs headless comparison to see where your case fits.
