What a website should really cost

Website pricing is opaque because most of what you pay for is invisible. Two agencies can quote CHF 3,000 and CHF 18,000 for a five-page site and both be quoting honestly: they are selling different things under the same word.

The four things you are actually buying

• Design: how much of the layout is drawn for you versus adapted from a proven system.
• Words: whether someone writes your copy and structures your offer, or you send text over and hope.
• Build: the site itself, its speed, its structure, and whether you can edit it afterwards.
• Project overhead: meetings, revision rounds, account management, and the risk the agency carries when scope is open-ended.

The last one is the biggest hidden line in most quotes. An open-ended project with unlimited revisions has to be priced for the worst case, and you pay for that risk whether or not you use it. Fixed scope is what makes a fixed price possible.

Roughly what each band buys you

These are the bands we see quoted around Switzerland for a small-business site. Treat them as orientation, not a price list.

1. 1

   Under CHF 1,000

   A template with your logo dropped in, usually assembled by you or by a freelancer working fast. It can be entirely fine for a one-page presence. What you generally do not get is copy, page structure aimed at enquiries, or anyone accountable when it breaks in eight months.

2. 2

   CHF 1,500 – 5,000

   The realistic band for a small business site built by professionals on a proven system: several pages, written copy, SEO basics done properly, mobile handled, and a defined handover. This is where fixed-price offers live, and where most Swiss SMEs get the best return.

3. 3

   CHF 5,000 – 15,000

   Custom design work, more pages, integrations: booking, shop, CRM, multiple languages done properly rather than machine-translated. Justified when the website is a working part of your operation rather than a shop window.

4. 4

   Above CHF 15,000

   Bespoke design and development, brand work, or genuine technical complexity. Real projects need this. A five-page site for a local trade business does not.

The costs that show up later

The build price is not the whole number, and the items below are where 'cheap' sites get expensive. Ask about every one of them before you sign anything:

• Domain and hosting: small, ongoing, and it should be clear whose name they are registered in. Yours.
• Licences for themes, plugins or page builders, which renew annually.
• Text changes. Ask what a price change or a new team photo costs. If the answer is an hourly rate and a two-week queue, your site will quietly go out of date.
• Maintenance and updates, especially on plugin-heavy platforms where an un-updated site is a security problem.

Three questions that make any quote readable

Whoever you are talking to, these cut through the vagueness quickly: What exactly is included, page by page? What happens if I want a fourth revision, and is it billed? And who owns the domain, the hosting account and the files when we are finished?

A fair price is not the lowest one. It is the one where you know the number before the work starts, and it does not move.

That is the reasoning behind our own pricing: fixed scope, fixed price agreed before day one, third-party costs like domain and hosting shown separately at cost. You can dislike the number, but you will never be surprised by it.