How much does a website cost in 2026?
It's always the first question, and the honest answer is "it depends" — but it depends on specific things, and those can be listed.
01What actually drives the price
Websites aren't priced by the square metre. Four things matter: how many genuinely different pages there are, how far the design goes, how much content has to be produced, and which features fall outside the ordinary.
Page count matters less than people think. Ten pages built on the same template cost barely more than three. It's the distinct templates that take time: a home page, a service page, an article, a product page.
Design is the most elastic item. Dressing up an existing theme and drawing every screen from scratch with proper motion are not the same craft, nor the same budget.
02The line items everyone forgets
The words. Almost nobody has them ready, and "we'll send you the text" is the number one cause of delay on a web project. Having them written is a real line item.
The photos. A beautiful site filled with stock images looks like every other site. A photo session changes everything, and it isn't included by default.
Life after launch. A website is software: it needs updates, backups and monitoring. Either you do it or someone does it for you — decide at the start.
03Why the price range is so wide
A few hundred euros and several tens of thousands don't buy the same product. The first is a template you fill in yourself. The second is a one-off, built to convert, then measured and corrected after launch.
So the useful question isn't "what does a website cost", it's "what should this website bring in". A site that produces two qualified quotes a month doesn't justify the same budget as an online business card.
04The cheap-website trap
A rushed website is paid for twice: once to build it, once to rebuild it, usually eighteen months later. In between, it sends the wrong signal to every visitor.
The telltale signs: no questions about your business before the quote, a timeline counted in days, and no way to know who will actually do the work.
05How we price at Kalen
We start from the objective, not the page count. Thirty minutes on a call is enough to know what the site has to produce, and therefore to frame a realistic budget.
The quote is itemised: design, build, content, launch, follow-up. You can see what each line costs, and you can remove lines.
Frequently asked questions
Do you have to pay a monthly fee for a website?
Hosting and the domain name are recurring costs, from a few tens of euros a year to a few tens a month depending on the site. Maintenance is a choice: it covers updates, backups and security. Without it, a website eventually breaks or gets hacked.
How long does it take to build a website?
Development is rarely the bottleneck. What stretches a project is content and rounds of approval. A prepared project moves twice as fast as one launched in the dark.
Do I own my website?
With us, yes: the domain, the hosting and the code are yours. Always ask the question — some providers rent you the site and switch it off when the contract ends.