How much does a website cost? One-time and ongoing costs explained

How much does a website cost?

That depends on how your website is made. With a website builder, the testers at Stiftung Warentest paid €43 to €257 in the first year including a domain. For a custom-built website, the IHK Rhein-Neckar names as a guideline from around €1,000 for a simpler website and €5,000 to €7,000 for a more elaborate website with a shop solution. There is no single number, because the price also depends on what the website needs to do. It helps to separate two kinds of costs: one-time costs for building the site and ongoing costs for domain, hosting and maintenance. There are also three ways to get a website:

Way	One-time	Ongoing
Website builder (e.g., Wix or Jimdo)	No fee, but your own time	Subscription to the provider, hosting and technology included
Own installation (e.g., WordPress)	Software without license fees, set up by you or a service provider	Hosting, domain and maintenance
Custom build (freelancer, agency or us)	Fee, depending on scope	Hosting and maintenance if you hand them off

With a website builder you invest mostly time, with a custom build mostly money. Your own installation sits in between: the WordPress software has no license fees according to WordPress.org, but you still pay for hosting, domain and maintenance.

How much does a website cost with a website builder?

With a website builder you design your website yourself in the browser, and the provider supplies the technology and hosting. The German consumer organization Stiftung Warentest tested 16 website builders (issue 02/2024 of its magazine test, published on 24 January 2024). For its test case, a homepage with a shop, the testers booked the cheapest suitable plan each time. Their results on costs:

• First year: Costs ranged between €43 and €257, each including your own domain. According to a dpa news report, most website builders cost around €100 to €200 for a year.
• Second year: According to Stiftung Warentest, it often gets much more expensive in the second year. The extreme case was Strato: €43 in the first year and, according to the provider’s website, €360 in the second (prices as of December 2023).
• Starting for free: Many providers allow simple homepages for free. A custom domain and shop features cost extra.

The test is almost three years old, and current prices are on the providers’ own pages. The IHK Rhein-Neckar (Chamber of Industry and Commerce) names about €12 to €35 per month as a guideline, depending on the provider. On their price pages, these prices appear as of 2 October 2026:

• Jimdo: Start €12 and Grow €20 per month, with a 12-month contract term.
• Wix: Light €16.66 and Core €29.75 per month, with an annual subscription paid in full at purchase.

Both state their prices including VAT and add a domain for the first year or the first contract term. WordPress.com, by contrast, states its prices without taxes. So always check whether a price is net or gross.

What the prices do not show is your time. With all tested website builders, the testers needed less than an hour to create a first version of the homepage, but only with well-prepared content. You have to supply the text, images and structure yourself. On data protection, the testers rated the basic protection of personal data at 10 of the 16 providers as only satisfactory or sufficient.

How much does it cost to have a website built?

We did not find an official or independent price statistic for websites in our research (as of 2 October 2026). The Federal Statistical Office measures the prices of services as indices with a base year of 100, not as euro prices. That is why we do not give market averages. Guidance comes from the guideline values of the chambers of industry and commerce (IHK). The pages carry no date. The IHK Rhein-Neckar describes its figures as guideline values that are based on its own research and make no claim to completeness:

• IHK Rhein-Neckar: A simpler website by a freelancer (pure implementation, no expert advice) costs from around €1,000. By an agency with professional design, brand style advice and support, it costs from €2,000. A more elaborate website with up to ten subpages costs around €3,000 to €4,000, and with a shop solution €5,000 to €7,000.
• IHK for Munich and Upper Bavaria: Professionals build a simple website from around €1,000, and extensive work from €5,000.

A project price results from an hourly rate and the effort. As for hourly rates, freelancers in software and web development state an average of €91 per hour in the Freelancer-Kompass by freelancermap for 2026, and €89 in design, media and creative services. These are self-reported figures from platform users in German-speaking countries, not agency prices. How many hours a project takes depends on its scope.

How much does a website cost per month and per year?

The ongoing costs consist of four items:

• Domain: the address of your website, paid yearly. A .de domain costs €5.83 per year at Hetzner and €9.90 per year at all-inkl, each including VAT (as of 2 October 2026). STRATO advertises .de at €0.05 per month for twelve months, then €1 per month.
• Hosting: the storage space where the website lives. Hetzner Webhosting S costs up to €1.90 per month (10 GB, without domain), and the “Privat” plan from all-inkl €4.95 per month (including three domains). As a guideline, the IHK Region Stuttgart (as of January 2026) names around €9 to €15 per month for a simpler website and around €15 to €50 per month for a more elaborate one. With a website builder, hosting is included in the subscription.
• HTTPS: the encrypted connection, recognizable by the lock in the browser. Certificates from Let’s Encrypt are free, but hosting providers may charge a small fee for their effort. At all-inkl, the certificate costs €0.95 extra per month on the “Privat” plan.
• Maintenance: updates, security and changes to content. With a website builder, the provider takes care of the technology. If you run WordPress yourself, you have to keep WordPress, plugins and themes up to date. According to WordPress.org, that is the most important thing for security, and it is ongoing work. How fast that can matter was shown in July 2026: on 17 July, a security update was released for one critical and one high-severity vulnerability, with the recommendation to update immediately. The German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) warned about vulnerabilities in the WordPress core that allow malicious code to be executed remotely.

Example calculation with the prices of 2 October 2026: A .de domain at Hetzner (€5.83 per year) and Webhosting S (up to €1.90 per month, so up to €22.80 per year) cost no more than €28.63 per year together. That is the cheapest option among the examples mentioned and covers only the technical operation, without building and without maintenance.

Can you have a website without monthly costs?

Yes, but with limits:

• Free plan of a website builder: According to Stiftung Warentest, a custom domain is only available in paid plans. At Jimdo, the free website runs on an address of the provider (jimdosite.com) and is not ad-free. On free websites at WordPress.com, visitors see WordPress.com ads.
• Static website on free hosting: A static website consists of ready-made files without a database. Services such as Cloudflare and GitHub deliver such files for free: Cloudflare states that requests to static files are free and unlimited. Read the terms of use first, though: GitHub explicitly excludes Pages as a free host for online businesses.

In both cases something remains: the custom domain costs money every year, and the work of building and maintaining the site falls to you or to someone you pay.

What determines the price of a website?

• Scope: Every subpage needs text, images and upkeep. A single page with contact details is quicker to build than a site with several service pages and a blog.
• Text and images: If you provide them yourself, the effort goes down. If they first have to be written and sourced, it goes up.
• Features: A contact form is quick to add. Appointment booking, a members’ area or an online shop are separate tasks, often with ongoing fees.
• Languages: Every additional language means translated text and more pages that have to stay up to date.
• Visibility in search and AI: Google uses the mobile version of your page for indexing and ranking. According to Google, the Core Web Vitals, meaning loading time, responsiveness and a stable layout, feed into its ranking systems, but good scores do not guarantee a top spot. How you also get mentioned in AI answers is covered in our article on generative engine optimization.
• Accessibility: If your offer falls under the Accessibility Strengthening Act (see below), the website has to be accessible. That can increase the effort.
• Maintenance: How often content changes and who installs updates determines the ongoing costs.

What must every business website include?

Ask in every quote whether these points are included, otherwise they may cost extra later. This is orientation, not legal advice. If in doubt, a lawyer can help.

• Legal notice (Impressum): Anyone who runs a website for business purposes has to keep name, address and details for fast electronic contact, including an email address, easily recognizable, directly accessible and permanently available under § 5 of the German Digital Services Act (DDG). Depending on the business, a register number, supervisory authority or VAT ID are added.
• Privacy policy: Anyone who collects personal data has to inform visitors at the time of collection (Art. 13 GDPR). According to the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, even server log files with IP addresses are personal data. According to the Hamburg data protection authority, the information has to be easily accessible from every page.
• Cookies and tracking: Storing or reading information on visitors’ devices generally requires consent under § 25 of the German TDDDG, unless it is strictly necessary for the service the user explicitly asked for. According to the Hamburg data protection authority, user tracking for advertising or to improve the offering is usually not considered strictly necessary. According to the same authority, anyone who uses nothing that requires consent does not need a consent banner. This website sets no cookies and no tracking.
• Fonts and services from other servers: The Hamburg data protection authority counts externally loaded fonts, maps and videos as third-party content for which consent is generally required. So ask whether your provider embeds fonts locally.
• Accessibility: The Accessibility Strengthening Act (BFSG) has applied since 28 June 2025. Among other things, it covers e-commerce services for consumers, such as online shops. Micro-enterprises (fewer than ten employees and annual turnover or balance sheet total of up to 2 million euros) that offer services are exempt. According to the Federal Agency for Accessibility (Bundesfachstelle Barrierefreiheit), pure presentation sites that only inform or advertise are unlikely to be covered.

How do you recognize a fair quote?

A quote can only be compared if it breaks down what is in the price. Look out for these points:

1. Scope of work: The number of pages, text, images, features and languages are listed individually in the quote.
2. Ownership: Domain and content are registered in your name, and you receive all access credentials. With a website builder, ask whether you can take your content with you if you switch providers.
3. Ongoing costs: Hosting, maintenance, term and notice period appear in the quote with a price. With a website builder, ask for the price in the second year. Be wary of unsolicited offers: the IHK Potsdam warns about providers who call or visit companies and push a company website on them. After a free trial period, it says, this turns into a multi-year subscription costing more than €2,000 for a simple website-builder site.
4. Legal: Legal notice, privacy policy and, if needed, a consent solution are planned, and it is clear who writes them.
5. Net or gross: The quote states whether VAT is added. Under § 3 of the Price Indication Ordinance (PAngV), prices for consumers have to be total prices including VAT. Small businesses under § 19 of the German VAT Act (UStG) do not charge VAT.
6. Changes: You know how many rounds of revisions are included and what changes after launch cost.
7. No ranking guarantee: According to Google, nobody can guarantee the number 1 spot, and Google warns about providers who guarantee rankings.

How much does a website cost with us?

With us, prices start at €200, depending on scope. A website like this one would have cost around €1,000 with us. We discuss the exact price up front, and you get a quote before we start. We deliver the first version within 24 to 48 hours, because specialized AI agents work alongside us. We take care of hosting and maintenance, or we set everything up so that you can manage the site yourself. We are a small business under § 19 of the German VAT Act (UStG) and do not charge VAT. We work nationwide by video call, and in person in Hamburg as well.

You get text, images, design and technology from one source, and the website is prepared for Google and AI assistants from the start. You can read more on our page about websites with SEO & GEO. In a free intro call, we discuss what your website should do.