What does a website cost?
This question comes up before every conversation too — and is rarely answered up front. Here it is anyway: with researched price ranges, with what really drives the price, and with an honest floor and an honest ceiling instead of a round number pulled from thin air.
The short answer
A website in Germany usually costs between around €800 for a simple one-pager and well over €20,000 for a multilingual site with editorial content and its own guide section. For an ordinary business website with a handful of subpages, most projects land between €2,000 and €12,000. This is not a Digitalbucht price list but a researched market benchmark, as of August 2026 — the range is wide because "a website" can mean anything from a digital business card to a content hub.
Three rough tiers
Here too, the labels differ from provider to provider, but three recurring tiers stand out clearly.
| Tier | Price range (market research) | Typical scope |
|---|---|---|
| One-pager | approx. €800–4,000 | A single page, a fixed structure, usually no ongoing CMS work |
| Business website with several subpages | approx. €2,000–12,000 | 5 to 10 subpages: services, about, contact, usually with a simple CMS |
| Multilingual site with content and a guide section | approx. €5,000–25,000 | 10 to 30 pages, multilingual, editorial content, SEO build-out |
Basis: market research of German web design providers and industry portals (including KKM Media, Rheinspace), figures as of May/June 2026, sources checked 21 August 2026. These are not Digitalbucht prices — for that, scope and price are set in the first conversation.
These ranges are the prices of agencies and team set-ups: with their own project management, with coordination layers between design, copy and development, with office overhead and margin at every stage. Each of those layers adds cost — regardless of how much layout or how many lines of code actually get produced in the end.
Why one person can price this lower — structurally
Those layers in between are exactly what Digitalbucht does not have — not on principle, but because there is no one else who would have to fill them: whoever reads the enquiry also designs the layout and writes the code. No handover between sales, design and development where something gets lost or has to be re-aligned.
The reference for that is right in front of you: this website, built and maintained by one person, plus the two-brand system of Digitalbucht and Holzbucht — two real brands running in parallel, sharing the same design system with a different colour set each. Details are on the page Brand Identity and Website, One Source.
That includes what is not billed for afterwards here: complete documentation, access and records are part of the price, not an add-on — the domain, source code and content belong to you in full once the project is complete.
That is not a judgement on agencies — for large projects with many trades involved, say when photography, copy, shop integration and a campaign all run at once, a team has the advantage. For a single business website, it is a structural saving that arrives at equal or better quality.
What really drives the price
Design alone does not decide the price — the work around it does:
- Number of pages. Every extra subpage needs its own content, its own review, its own testing.
- Who writes the copy. Ready-made text saves time; having it written from scratch means paying for research and copywriting too.
- Who supplies the photos. Good photos you already own save a shoot; stock photos cost licence fees and rarely look like your actual business.
- Multiple languages. Every additional language means translation, a layout check, a second language switcher.
- Forms and data flow. A contact form that reliably arrives and handles data protection properly is more than a text field.
- A shop or not. An online shop brings payment integration, stock logic and its own legal text — a project in its own right alongside the website.
- Legal text and accessibility. A legal notice and a privacy policy belong on every site; since summer 2025 the German Accessibility Strengthening Act (BFSG) additionally requires accessible implementation for many businesses.
If you need an app alongside the website, the figures for that are on the page about what an app costs — the two are deliberately costed apart, because technically they have little in common.
What is almost always extra
Five items do not show up in most quotes but cost real money:
- Domain and hosting. Ongoing costs regardless of who builds the site — usually a low double- to low three-digit amount per year.
- Photos. An on-site shoot or licences for stock photos if there are no existing images to use.
- Copy. Without ready-made text, you pay for research and writing — or write it yourself, which costs time instead of money.
- Legal text. Filling in a correct legal notice and privacy policy is a duty of care, not a design by-product.
- Maintenance after launch. A CMS update, a broken link, a new subpage: a website is not finished after launch, it has just started — same as an app.
Website builder, off-the-shelf theme or hand-built — what the difference costs
Three routes lead to a website, and none of them is wrong by default. A website builder such as Wix or Squarespace costs almost nothing up front, but a monthly fee for as long as the site runs, and the design stays inside the template — for a simple presence with no particular ambition, that is a fair, affordable answer. At the low end there are even ready-made builder sites specifically for tradespeople from around €329 one-time, gross (a provider example, market research 2026) — for a business that is happy with a finished design, an honest answer, not the lesser one.
An off-the-shelf theme, for WordPress for instance, usually sits price-wise in between: more freedom than a pure builder, but the basic structure is still fixed and cannot be bent at will. A hand-built website costs more because every decision — layout, load time, accessibility — is made individually, but without a third-party theme that later gets in the way once a feature is missing. Which route fits depends on ambition, not budget alone.
Websites for trades and small businesses — what actually matters
For a tradesperson's or small business website, it is rarely the extras that decide, but a handful of simple things: is the site readable on a phone straight away, without zooming? Is the way to reach you clear, one click from a map? Are the services obvious in one sentence instead of disappearing into a wall of marketing text? Does an enquiry submitted through the form actually arrive — and not land in a spam folder? And does the page still load quickly when a customer is on a building site with barely any signal? Those are the questions that decide a trade business website in practice — not an elaborate animation.
Whoever builds the website also builds the technology behind it
Someone who only designs but does not build passes a website on to a developer after handover — with everything that can get lost in a handover. At Digitalbucht both come from one source: the evidence is two of the company's own brands, running at the same time, sharing the same design system with a different colour set each, plus a third, independent product brand. The full version, with all three brands as reference, is on the page about brand identity and website, one source. It is all built and maintained by the same person, based in Wülfrath, near Düsseldorf, working across the Rhineland and remotely — no handover chaos between a designer and a developer.
Digitalbucht is the sole proprietorship of Emil Deak, based in Wülfrath, Germany. No team, no agency, no layer in between — the reason for short paths, and equally the limit of what can run in parallel.
Frequently asked questions
What does a website cost for a small business?
For a business website with services, about and contact pages, researched market prices usually sit between €2,000 and €12,000 — see the three tiers above. Your own scope and price are set in the first conversation.
What does a website cost per year to run?
Domain and hosting together usually sit in the low to mid double digits per year, plus occasional maintenance — depending on whether a CMS is running or the site is static. Stated up front, not first appearing on an invoice.
How long does it take to have a website built?
A one-pager can be ready within days, a business website with several subpages usually within a few weeks. The details of the process are on the page How We Work & Pricing.
Is a website builder cheaper than a hand-built site?
Up front, yes — a builder costs almost nothing initially but carries a monthly fee. Over several years the difference often evens out, see the section above.
Who owns the website, domain and content in the end?
At Digitalbucht: you do. The domain, source code and content transfer fully to you once the project is complete — no lock-in to somebody else's system.
Next: Brand Identity and Website, One Source.
Last updated: august 2026
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