The most common question potential clients ask me isn't "Can you build this?" — it's "What does this cost?" The honest answer is "it depends," but that's not a useful answer on its own. Here's what it actually depends on.

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What Actually Drives the Price

It's not the number of pages that sets the price — it's the complexity behind them. A five-page site with a custom booking system costs more than twenty pages of static content. The real cost drivers are: custom design vs. template, backend complexity (forms, databases, payments), multilingual support, and how much of the content upkeep you want to handle yourself.

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Why "Cheap" Often Gets Expensive

A €50 template looks tempting until you notice: it shares its design with a thousand other sites, any plugin update can break something, and in two years you're paying for a full rebuild because the system can't grow with you. The real cost of a template shows up in maintenance, not at checkout:

template-site.txt
Design:       shared with 1,000+ sites
Load time:    plugin-dependent
Growth:       hard to extend
Maintenance:  constant plugin updates
custom-build.txt
Design:       unique to your brand
Load time:    optimized from day one
Growth:       scales with your business
Maintenance:  lean, few dependencies
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What an Honest Estimate Actually Looks Like

A serious freelancer won't quote a fixed price before understanding your project — and you should be cautious of anyone who does, without asking questions first. What actually goes into an estimate: the feature scope, whether design starts from scratch or builds on existing systems, integrations with third parties (payment providers, CRM, newsletter tools), and the timeline.

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How to Prepare a Request That Gets a Real Answer Fast

The more concrete your request, the more precise the answer. It helps to bring: 2–3 websites you like (and why), a rough list of features you need, and whether there's a timeline or launch date. That saves both sides time.

There's no universal price list for websites worth the name — but there is a fair process for arriving at a number that fits your project. The fastest way there is a short conversation.