# How Much Does a Website Cost? A Line-by-Line Estimate

> An agency-built website costs whatever the hours add up to. At an assumed $150 an hour, a small site on a customised theme comes to about $9,000, a 15-page business site with its own design about $25,000, and an online shop with an inventory integration about $52,500. Hosting, licences and maintenance add a yearly cost on top.

- URL: https://agenturbewertung.de/en/proposals-and-pricing/how-much-does-a-website-cost/
- Language: en
- Updated: 2026-10-19
- Publisher: Agenturbewertung (OnlineBuilders LLC, https://onlinebuilders.biz)

Asking what a website costs is a bit like asking what a car costs. The honest range runs from a builder subscription at a few dollars a month to a six-figure project with a custom design system, three system integrations and a team working on it for half a year. Price lists don't help much. What does help is a calculation you can follow and adjust.

Nearly every agency quote boils down to estimated hours multiplied by a rate. Know the building blocks and you can judge any quote. You'll also see where an agency has been too tight or too generous.

## Three worked estimates

These are models, not market averages. They use a rate of $150 an hour, a deliberately round figure that sits between the offshore band of $25 to $49 that Clutch lists for design agencies and the onshore US calculation in our guide to [agency hourly rates](https://agenturbewertung.de/en/proposals-and-pricing/agency-hourly-rates/). Swap in the rates from your own proposals.

**Worked estimates: three typical website projects**

| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Small site, 6 pages, customised theme | 9,000 $ |
| Business site, 15 pages, custom design | 25,350 $ |
| Shop, 200 products, inventory integration | 52,500 $ |

Model at $150 per hour. Hours are estimates for illustration, not survey averages.

The middle option is the most common project for small and mid-sized companies. Here is how it breaks down:

**15-page business website: hours per building block**

- Workshop, concept, site structure: 16 h
- Design: homepage plus three templates, two revision rounds: 32 h
- Build in a CMS, responsive: 60 h
- Content entry (copy and images supplied by client): 15 h
- Forms, consent banner, technical SEO basics: 12 h
- Testing across devices and browsers, fixes: 12 h
- Project management, about 15%: 22 h
- **169 hours × $150: $25,350**

Assumptions for the example: client supplies copy and photos, one language, no integrations.

Use the table as a checklist. Missing a block entirely? Ask why. Ask too when a block is twice the size shown here. There is often a good reason, but you should know what it is.

## Five things that move the price

The gap between the small site and the shop isn't page count. It's requirements. These five factors change the hours more than anything else.

**Content.** Will you supply finished copy and images, or should the agency produce them? At three to four hours per page for concept and copy, 15 pages add 45 to 60 hours. Photography comes on top. This is the most common reason quotes differ wildly.

**Custom design.** Adjusting a bought theme's colours and fonts takes a few hours. A bespoke design with a reusable design system takes many times that.

**Integrations.** Every connection to another system is a small project of its own: email platform, CRM, booking tool, inventory system. Plugins for common tools take a few hours. Custom integrations can take days or weeks, depending on how well the other system is documented. Estimate generously here.

**Languages.** A second language doesn't double the cost, but it adds work in content entry and testing. Translation itself is a separate line.

**Migration.** Relaunching a site with 300 old URLs that must be kept or redirected is more work than starting fresh. Redirects are missing from many proposals even though search engines depend on them.

## One project, two prices

Take the middle estimate. Supply the copy yourself and it stays at 169 hours. Have the agency write all 15 pages at three and a half hours each, and roughly 52 hours are added: $25,350 becomes $33,150.

Both quotes are correct. They describe different projects, which is exactly what happens when a brief says nothing about content. Side by side, the $7,800 difference looks like one agency being pricier. It isn't.

The reverse matters too. Planning to write the copy yourself? Be honest about whether your team will actually deliver it. Missing copy is one of the most common reasons a finished build sits unpublished for weeks while the agency waits and the timeline slides.

## Legal requirements that cost money

Some requirements aren't optional. Privacy notices and, in many jurisdictions, a cookie consent mechanism for analytics and marketing tools are standard on business sites.

For anyone selling to consumers in the EU, accessibility is now a legal question. The [European Accessibility Act](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2019/882/oj) requires certain consumer services, including e-commerce, to be accessible, and member states have applied it since 28 June 2025. Microenterprises providing services are exempt. If you are not, plan accessibility from day one; retrofitting costs more.

## Agency, freelancer or website builder?

An agency isn't always the right answer. Here is a fair comparison:

| Route | Good for | Limits |
|---|---|---|
| Website builder | Simple sites, few pages, no integrations | Platform lock-in, your own time for setup and upkeep |
| Freelancer | Well-defined projects in one discipline | Single point of failure; design and code rarely from one person |
| Agency | Several disciplines, integrations, ongoing support | Higher rates because of overheads |

For a café or a plumber with five pages, a builder is often sensible. Once integrations or a shop enter the picture, the calculation flips.

## Running costs after launch

Launch day starts the running costs, and they recur every year:

- **Domain:** from a few dollars to a few tens of dollars a year, depending on the extension.
- **Hosting:** anything from shared hosting to managed servers with monitoring.
- **Licences:** premium plugins, themes, fonts, consent tools, often billed annually.
- **Maintenance:** CMS and plugin updates, server software upgrades, backups, security checks.

Maintenance is usually the biggest item and the one most often forgotten. Any CMS that stops receiving updates becomes a security risk within months. Our guide to the [website maintenance contract](https://agenturbewertung.de/en/working-together/website-maintenance-contract/) covers what it should include. Rather hand hosting and operations to the same partner? Look at providers that specialise in it, such as [managed hosting from OnlineBuilders](https://onlinebuilders.biz/solutions/hosting).

## Getting to a realistic number

Take the building-block table and adjust the hours to your project: supply or commission content, theme or custom design, zero or three integrations. Multiply by the rate range you are seeing in proposals and add 15% contingency. The result isn't a truth, but it's a range you can put in your brief.

That range belongs in the [agency brief template](https://agenturbewertung.de/en/choosing-an-agency/agency-brief-template/). When proposals arrive, [how to compare agency proposals](https://agenturbewertung.de/en/proposals-and-pricing/compare-agency-proposals/) shows how to line them up. Whether to agree a fixed price or pay for time is covered in [fixed price vs time and materials](https://agenturbewertung.de/en/proposals-and-pricing/fixed-price-vs-time-and-materials/).

Next step: write one sentence for each of the five price drivers describing what you need. That alone lets an agency tighten its quote by thousands.

## FAQ

### Why do quotes for the same website vary so much?

Each agency fills the gaps in your brief with its own assumptions, mostly about content, design and integrations. One includes copywriting, another doesn't. A clear brief with an out-of-scope list narrows the spread considerably.

### Is a website builder cheaper than an agency?

Upfront, yes: you pay a subscription. In return you invest your own time in setup and upkeep, and you are tied to the platform. For a simple site with no integrations, a builder is often the sensible choice.

### Does my website have to be accessible?

If you sell online to consumers in the EU, the European Accessibility Act has applied to e-commerce services since 28 June 2025, with an exemption for microenterprises providing services. Other countries have their own rules. Building accessibility in from the start costs far less than retrofitting it.

### What does a website cost per year to run?

Domain, hosting, licences and maintenance together range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars a year, depending on size. Maintenance is usually the largest item, not hosting.

Photo: Green Chameleon craftedbygc, CC0 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Designer_sketching_Wireframes_(Unsplash).jpg)