What does a website cost in 2026?
Somewhere between €500 and six figures. That answer is useless, so we did the maths for you: per type of website, including the costs after launch and what you get in return.
Updated 11 min read
The short answer
Search for what a website costs and you’ll find prices from €500 to six figures. All of them are right, and that’s exactly why they’re no use to you. The price depends on three things: what kind of site you need, who builds it and what keeps running after launch.
The biggest difference is the part you don’t see: the technology underneath. A good site is built for conversion, so visitors call, book or buy. It’s secure, without a pile of plugins to keep updated. And it can grow into a web app: your own admin portal where you connect your tools, like your calendar, accounting and payments, and automate recurring work. Here’s what that costs in practice.
| DIY, with a website builder | By the hour, freelancer or agency | Custom-built at Forwarddd | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Online business card, 1 to 3 pages | €144 to €216 a year, plus your own time | €1,000 to €2,300 one-off | Your own design, fast and easy to find. €950 one-off + €50 a month |
| Business website, 5 to 8 pages | €216 to €384 a year, plus your own time | €2,600 to €6,800 one-off | Custom-built for conversion, with an admin portal. €950 one-off + €50 a month |
| Webshop, up to 100 products | €288 to €384 a year, plus fees per payment | €5,600 to €12,400 one-off | Your own webshop with iDEAL, no cut of your revenue. €1,950 one-off + €149 a month |
| Web app or customer portal | Not suitable | €5,200 to €37,600 one-off | Your own portal with logins, integrations and automation. From €1,450 one-off + from €95 a month |
What you’re actually paying for
Having a website built is mostly buying time. In the Netherlands, people who work by the hour charge about €86 an hour on average, based on the rates on Freelance.nl3Freelance.nl, 2025Wat betalen opdrachtgevers écht: een analyse van 40.000 opdrachten (Uurtarieven Update 2025)Open the source. For freelance software developers, the average is €944Knab, 2026Wat verdient een software developer (zzp)? Bekijk uurtarief en winst in 2026Open the source. Agencies often charge more, because they also pay for account managers and offices. Five things decide how many hours go into it:
- The number of pages, and the types of pages. Ten pages with the same layout are done faster than five pages that are all different.
- What the site needs to do. A form is quick to build. Online booking, a webshop, logins or a connection to your accounting software takes days.
- The design. Adapting an existing theme is faster than a design of your own. But your own design stands out, and fits your brand exactly.
- Copy and images. Do you supply everything yourself, or does it need to be written and found? That can easily make a difference of a few hours per page.
- Who builds it, and with what. Experience and modern tools make the difference between a week and a month.
The three routes, honestly compared
1. Build it yourself with a website builder
Wix, Squarespace and Shopify are the best known. With Squarespace, on an annual plan, you pay €12 a month for Basic, €18 for Core and €32 for Plus1Squarespace, 2026Squarespace pricing (machine-readable pricing file)Open the source. Wix charges $17 to $159 a month5Wix.com, 2026Wix premium plans (Wix Blog)Open the source. For a webshop, Shopify Basic costs €24 a month on an annual plan, plus 2% and €0.25 per online card payment through Shopify Payments2Shopify, 2026Shopify pricing (Belgium)Open the source.
The upside: you’re online fast and the technical side is taken care of. The downside: you do all the work yourself, your site looks like a template thousands of others use too, you’re tied to the platform and you pay for as long as the site exists. Connecting it to your own systems is often difficult or impossible.
2. WordPress through a freelancer or agency
This is the most common route. You pay for the hours to build the site, and after that for hosting, maintenance and often licenses for premium plugins. Two popular examples: Yoast SEO Premium costs $118.80 a year6Yoast BV, 2025Yoast SEO plugin for WordPressOpen the source, and WP Rocket, for speed, costs $5 to $25 a month7WP Media, 2026WP Rocket pricingOpen the source. The average WordPress site runs several plugins like these.
Those plugins are also the biggest risk. In 2025, 11,334 new security vulnerabilities were found in the WordPress ecosystem, 91% of them in plugins8Patchstack, 2026State of WordPress Security in 2026Open the source. So updates aren’t a luxury. They’re maintenance that someone has to do, and someone has to pay for. WordPress or custom-built? covers when WordPress really is the best choice.
3. Custom-built
A site built from scratch for your business, with no theme and no pile of plugins. That used to be for big budgets only. With our own proven framework and the experience to know what works, we now build it for a fraction of that: usually a custom business website within 3 to 7 days, once the copy and photos are in. What you get in return: speed, security and exactly the features you need, and nothing you don’t.
The costs that only show up after launch
This is where quotes differ the most, and where most of the surprises are. A site that’s online costs money every year:
- Hosting and domain. The place where your site runs, and your address on the internet.
- Updates and security. Updating software, themes and plugins, making backups, keeping an eye on whether everything still works.
- Licenses. Premium plugins, apps in your website builder, fonts or stock photos.
- Business email. Mailboxes from Google or Microsoft start at about €7 per person per month.
- Costs per order. For webshops: payment fees, and on some platforms a percentage of your sales.
- Changes. A new page, a new price, an extra form. Can you do it yourself, or do you pay every time?
Worked example: a business website over three years
Take a six-page business website in one language. This is how the three routes compare over three years, in what you get and what it costs:
| What you get | One-off | Per year | Over 3 years | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DIY, with Squarespace Core | A template you fill in and maintain yourself | €0, plus 20 to 50 hours of your own time | €216 | €648, plus your own time |
| WordPress through a freelancer | A theme with plugins that someone has to keep updating | €2,750 to €5,500 | €300 to €900 | €3,650 to €8,200 |
| Forwarddd Foundations | Your own design, built for conversion, with an admin portal. Hosting, security and support included | €950 | €600 | €2,750 |
When you compare, don’t just look at the total at the bottom: look at what the site brings in. A fast site that turns visitors into customers pays for itself.
Cheap can end up costing more: speed is revenue
A slow site doesn’t show up on your invoice, but it does show up in your sales. In a study Deloitte and 55 did for Google, a mobile site that loaded 0.1 seconds faster brought in 8.4% more conversions in retail and 10.1% more for travel companies11web.dev, 2020Milliseconds make millionsOpen the source. Vodafone improved the load time of its main content by 31% and then sold 8% more12web.dev, 2021Vodafone: A 31% improvement in LCP increased sales by 8%Open the source.
48%
of all websites pass the Core Web Vitals, Google’s speed standards, on mobile. That means the rest are too slow or shift around too much13HTTP Archive, 2026Performance | 2025 | The Web Almanac by HTTP Archive (Chapter 7)Open the source.
Google sets the bar at main content that loads in under 2.5 seconds, a response to a click within 200 milliseconds and a page that doesn’t jump around14web.dev, 2020Web Vitals; Interaction to Next Paint (INP)Open the source. When you ask for a quote, simply ask how fast the site will be, and whether that gets measured.
How to compare quotes
Two quotes of €1,500 can be for very different things. Put them side by side with these questions:
- What’s included? How many pages, languages, forms and features. And what does everything that isn’t included cost?
- Who owns it? Once you’ve paid, do you own the site and the domain? Are the accounts in your name?
- What does it cost per year? Hosting, maintenance, licenses and changes. Ask for a total over three years.
- What does maintenance cover? Updates, backups, security, and how fast someone responds when something goes wrong.
- Will people find you? Are the basics for SEO and AI search in place, such as Search Console, structured data and speed?
- Is the site accessible? Especially for webshops, that’s been a legal requirement since 2025.
- Who is your point of contact? The person who builds it, or an account manager who passes things on?
What it costs at Forwarddd
We work with fixed prices, so you know where you stand up front. All prices are excluding VAT.
- Foundations: €950 one-off + €50 a month. A modern custom website, up to 8 pages in 2 languages, with an admin area. Usually live within 3 to 7 days.
- Pro: €1,495 one-off + €95 a month. More pages, an admin area built around your business and connections to your tools.
- Pro with webshop: €1,950 one-off + €149 a month. Up to 100 products and 500 orders a month, with iDEAL and credit card payments.
- Commerce: from €4,950 one-off + from €249 a month. A complete webshop with up to 500 products.
- Web app or customer portal: from €1,450 one-off + from €95 a month. A portal or tool with logins. The monthly fee depends on the size of your database, the integrations and the built-in AI.
- Custom: usually from €9,500 one-off + €495 a month. Large webshops with more than 500 products or 1,500 orders a month.
You pay for the build in two parts: half at the start, half when the site goes live. The monthly fee runs for twelve months, and after that you can cancel it monthly. Once you’ve paid, your website and domain are yours. All the details are on our pricing page, and if you’re in the area, read more about web design in Rotterdam.
Frequently asked questions
If you pay by the hour, a simple site of a few pages usually costs €1,000 to €2,300, at an average freelance rate of €86 to €94 an hour3Freelance.nl, 2025Wat betalen opdrachtgevers écht: een analyse van 40.000 opdrachten (Uurtarieven Update 2025)Open the source. With a website builder, you pay €144 to €216 a year and build it yourself1Squarespace, 2026Squarespace pricing (machine-readable pricing file)Open the source. At Forwarddd, a website of up to 8 pages costs €950 one-off plus €50 a month.
Because they often don’t offer the same thing. The differences are in the number of pages and features, a design of your own or a theme, who writes the copy, and above all in what is or isn’t included after launch, such as hosting, maintenance and changes.
For hosting, domain, updates and small changes, expect anything from a few tens of euros to a hundred euros a month, depending on the site. A website builder costs €12 to €32 a month on an annual plan1Squarespace, 2026Squarespace pricing (machine-readable pricing file)Open the source. At Forwarddd it’s €50 a month for a business website, including hosting, maintenance and support.
In the short term, yes, if you don’t count your own time. Over a few years, and with the hours you put in yourself, the difference gets smaller. And if you later want integrations, features of your own or more speed, you’ll run into the limits of the platform.
If you pay by the hour, a small webshop with up to 100 products easily costs €5,600 to €12,400. With Shopify Basic you pay €24 a month plus fees per payment2Shopify, 2026Shopify pricing (Belgium)Open the source. At Forwarddd, a small webshop costs €1,950 one-off plus €149 a month, with no percentage of your sales. More on our custom webshops.
Our prices are excluding VAT, as is usual for business services. With every quote, check whether the amounts include or exclude VAT, so you’re comparing like with like.
Sources
- 1Squarespace, 2026Squarespace pricing (machine-readable pricing file)
- 2Shopify, 2026Shopify pricing (Belgium)
- 3Freelance.nl, 2025Wat betalen opdrachtgevers écht: een analyse van 40.000 opdrachten (Uurtarieven Update 2025)
- 4Knab, 2026Wat verdient een software developer (zzp)? Bekijk uurtarief en winst in 2026
- 5Wix.com, 2026Wix premium plans (Wix Blog)
- 6Yoast BV, 2025Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress
- 7WP Media, 2026WP Rocket pricing
- 8Patchstack, 2026State of WordPress Security in 2026
- 9Rijksoverheid, 2025Producten en diensten toegankelijker voor mensen met beperking
- 10WebAIM, 2026The WebAIM Million – The 2026 report on the accessibility of the top 1,000,000 home pages
- 11web.dev, 2020Milliseconds make millions
- 12web.dev, 2021Vodafone: A 31% improvement in LCP increased sales by 8%
- 13HTTP Archive, 2026Performance | 2025 | The Web Almanac by HTTP Archive (Chapter 7)
- 14web.dev, 2020Web Vitals; Interaction to Next Paint (INP)