The short answer
In France, in 2026, the ranges we see on the market are these: a professional brochure website goes for €1,500 to €8,000, a landing page for €800 to €2,500, an e-commerce site for €4,000 to €25,000, and a custom web application rarely starts below €15,000.
Below those floors, you are usually not buying a website: you are buying a template that someone fills in for you. Above them, you are paying either for genuine complexity (features, integrations, volume) or for an agency's overhead.
But that range does not answer the real question. A website is not a line of expense, it is a channel. The useful question is not "what does it cost" but "what does it return, and from when". A €2,000 site that generates no enquiries is infinitely more expensive than a €6,000 site that generates three a week.
The four types of provider, and what they charge
Self-service platforms: €0 to €600 per year
Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, Webflow used on your own. You pay a monthly subscription and you do the work yourself.
What you get: a site online quickly, a visual editor, hosting included.
What it really costs you: your time. Budget 20 to 60 hours for a presentable result if you have never done this before. And above all: the platform decides what you are allowed to do. Average performance, limited technical SEO, page structure constrained by the template, and total dependency — the day you leave, you leave with nothing.
Who it suits: testing an idea, a non-profit, a project with no immediate commercial stake.
Freelancers: €1,000 to €8,000
An independent developer or designer. This is the widest and most uneven segment of the market.
The top end (€4,000 to €8,000): an experienced professional who asks questions about your business before talking about colours, and who delivers a fast, well-structured site.
The bottom end (€1,000 to €2,500): often a WordPress template installed and filled in. That is not illegitimate in itself — you just need to know it, and pay the right price for it.
The real freelance risk: a single point of human failure. Holidays, illness, a career change, and nobody is looking after your site. Always ask who takes over.
Specialist studios and agencies: €3,000 to €30,000
A team: design, development, content, sometimes acquisition. This is where most serious business projects sit.
What you pay for beyond a freelancer: continuity, method, and normally real thinking about what the site is supposed to produce. A studio that also runs advertising will not design the same homepage as a studio that only does design — because it knows what happens after the click.
What to check: who actually works on your project, and whether the quote includes the launch or stops at file delivery.
Enterprise agencies: €30,000 and up
Elaborate art direction, governance, workshops, accessibility, multiple stakeholders. Relevant when you have a brand stake, several countries, or strong compliance constraints. Oversized for an SME that wants quote requests.
The summary table
| Provider | Brochure site | Typical timeline | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| DIY platform | €0 to €600/yr | Your spare time | Lock-in, performance, limited SEO |
| Freelancer | €1,000 to €8,000 | 3 to 8 weeks | Service continuity |
| Specialist studio | €3,000 to €30,000 | 4 to 10 weeks | Scope after delivery |
| Enterprise agency | €30,000 and up | 3 to 9 months | Cost of process |
The seven variables that move a quote
Two quotes for "a brochure website" can legitimately read €2,000 and €9,000. Here is what explains the gap.
1. The number of genuinely unique pages. Five pages with five different layouts is not five pages: it is five designs. A 20-page site built on 4 templates costs less than an 8-page site where every page is different.
2. Template or custom design. A purchased theme, then adapted, is a few days of work. A proper art direction, mockups, a coherent component system: several weeks. Both are defensible, as long as it is stated plainly.
3. Content. The single most underestimated item in every web project. Who writes the copy? Who supplies the photos? If the quote says "content provided by the client" and you have nothing, your project will run three months late — or ship with hollow copy that does not convert.
4. Features. A contact form is trivial. Booking synced to your calendar, a client portal, online payment, a connection to your CRM or your business software: every integration is a project with its own edge cases.
5. Multiple languages. A second language is not "the same site, translated". It is a URL architecture, technical tags, a search presence to build twice, and a translation pipeline to maintain. Budget 30 to 50% extra on the editorial side.
6. Technical SEO and performance. A fast site, correctly marked up, with structured data and green Core Web Vitals, does not happen by accident. It is explicit work, and it is what separates a site that exists from a site people find.
7. Acquisition. A site with no plan for bringing traffic is a shop with no street. It is the variable most quotes ignore entirely, and it is the one that determines whether your investment produces anything.
The five mistakes that cost the most
Mistake 1: the template dressed up as custom work
A premium theme bought for €60, presented and invoiced as an original creation. Using a theme is not a problem in itself — the problem is paying custom rates for it.
How to spot it: ask to see the mockups before development. A genuine custom project goes through a design phase. Also ask for three sites the provider has already delivered: if their structures are identical to yours, you know.
Mistake 2: the headline price with no maintenance
The €1,490 quote that mentions no hosting, no backups, no updates, no fixes. A website is living software: dependencies age, browsers change, vulnerabilities appear. Without maintenance, an unmonitored site becomes a liability within 12 to 18 months.
The right question: "What happens in month 2, and what does it cost?"
Mistake 3: the brochure site with no acquisition
The most common and most expensive mistake of all. You invest €5,000, the site looks great, everyone is happy at delivery — and six months later it gets 40 visits a month, half of them you and your team.
A website does not generate traffic on its own. Organic search takes 6 to 12 months to produce results on competitive queries. Between going live and that moment, you need either advertising, or outbound, or the willingness to accept six months of silence. That is a decision to make before signing, not after. If this interests you, our article on Google Ads on a small budget explains how to get started without overspending.
Mistake 4: the site you do not own
Domain name registered to the provider, source code out of reach, admin access refused, hosting locked down. You do not rent your website, you must own it.
Insist in writing on: the domain in your name, full admin access, ownership of code and content, and a documented exit process.
Mistake 5: the quote that never mentions conversion
If a quote lists pages, colours and technologies but never a measurable objective — number of enquiries, cost per contact, conversion rate — then nobody is committed to an outcome. You are buying a deliverable, not a channel.
Our price list, in the open
We would rather publish our prices than make you fill in a form to get them. These are starting points, not fixed packages: the final price depends on the seven variables above.
| Service | From | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Landing page | €990 | One page built to convert, form with phone number, tracking installed |
| Brochure website | €2,500 | Custom design, essential pages, technical SEO, performance, contact form |
| Website + acquisition | €6,500 | The brochure site, plus setup and management of Google Ads or Meta Ads |
| E-commerce | €5,000 | Catalogue, payment, checkout funnel, conversion tracking |
| Maintenance | €150/month | Hosting, backups, updates, fixes, small improvements |
One note on the "Website + acquisition" line, because it is the heart of how we work: we do not deliver a site and then leave you to look for traffic. Our process — Build, Launch, Grow — treats going live as the middle of the project, not the end. Across the advertising budgets we manage, around €10M to date for more than 40 clients, we see an average return on ad spend of 3.4×. That figure is not a contractual promise: it is a historical average, and your sector, your margin and your offer will move the result.
The real calculation: what your site has to return
Here is how we reason with clients before talking budget. Take a purely illustrative example: a tradesperson whose average job yields €1,200 in margin, and who wins one quote out of four.
- One won client = €1,200 in margin
- So it takes 4 quote requests per client
- A €6,500 website + acquisition pays for itself as soon as it brings 6 clients, meaning 24 quote requests
- At 4 requests a month, the investment is repaid in 6 months — and everything after that is net gain
Redo that calculation with your real numbers. Three figures are enough: your margin per client, your close rate on enquiries, and how many enquiries you get today. If you do not know the third one, that is already a diagnosis — it means nothing is being measured. Our guide to calculating your ROAS applies the same logic on the advertising side.
That shift in reasoning changes everything. "I don't have €6,500 for a website" and "I don't have €6,500 for a channel that could bring me 6 clients" are not the same sentence.
What a serious quote must contain
Before signing anything, check that these eight points are written down:
- The exact scope: how many pages, how many distinct layouts
- Who produces the content: copy, photos, translations, and by when
- The design: custom or adapted theme, with or without approved mockups
- The performance target: a commitment on speed and Core Web Vitals
- Technical SEO: tags, structured data, sitemap, indexing
- Tracking: which conversions are measured, and in which tool
- Life after delivery: maintenance, hosting, response time when something breaks
- Ownership: domain, code, content, access, exit process
A provider who answers those eight points clearly will make you more money than a provider who is 20% cheaper.
Setting your budget with three questions
Do I already have demand? If your phone rings and you simply lack credibility, a well-built brochure site is enough. If nobody knows you, a site alone will not fix anything: you need the acquisition budget at the same time.
What is a client worth to me? The higher the value, the more rational the investment. A €15,000 client justifies an €8,000 site. A €60 client requires volume thinking, which means acquisition and a funnel.
Can I survive six months with no results? If not, you are not just buying a website: you are buying a website plus a paid channel. The price changes, and that is normal.
In summary
A website costs between €1,000 and €30,000 depending on complexity and provider, and that range is almost useless on its own. What matters: refusing to pay custom rates for a template, budgeting maintenance from day one, demanding ownership of everything, and above all never separating the question of the site from the question of traffic.
The best site you can buy is not the prettiest one. It is the one where, six months after launch, you can say how many clients it brought you.
Want a figure for your actual project? Describe it in a few minutes and we will come back to you with a reasoned estimate in under 24 hours. Describe your project — or see the details of our web design and development offer.