You ask three companies for a website and get three quotes: 1,500 zł, 9,000 zł and 30,000 zł (about €350, €2,100 and €7,000). All three are for “a business website”, yet the gap is twentyfold. So how much does a website cost in 2026, and what are you paying for in each offer? That is worth knowing before you choose.
Below we break the price into its parts: design, content, features, SEO, hosting and domain, and maintenance. We also cover the traps in cheap offers and how to compare quotes that don’t seem to match.
How much does a website cost in 2026: rough price ranges
Price depends on scope, so every honest quote starts with questions about the website’s purpose. The table shows broad ranges on the Polish market. Treat them as a reference point, not a price list: the same “company website” can cost half or twice as much, depending on content and features.
| Type of website | Typical scope | Rough budget (net of VAT) |
|---|---|---|
| Brochure site or landing page | 1–3 pages, contact form, ready-made template | from about 2,000 to 6,000 zł (about €470–1,400) |
| WordPress company website | 5–15 pages, bespoke design, blog, basic SEO | about 6,000–15,000 zł (about €1,400–3,500) |
| Website with sales features | bookings, online payments, several language versions | about 12,000–40,000 zł (about €2,800–9,400) |
| Custom system or platform | client portal, subscriptions, integrations, business logic | from several tens of thousands of złoty |
The ranges are wide on purpose. One feature, such as a booking with a deposit payment, can push a project up a whole category. Decide what the website has to do first, then ask about price.
What drives the cost of a business website
A website’s cost is made up of several elements. Each can be done cheaply or carefully, and quotes usually differ because of which elements the provider included at all.
Visual design and page layout
An off-the-shelf theme is cheapest, but it looks like thousands of other sites and often loads lots of unnecessary code. A bespoke design costs more because it covers competitor research, wireframes, a mobile version and a layout that guides visitors towards contacting you or buying.
Ask how many page templates you get and how many revision rounds are included. Those two numbers say more than the word “bespoke”.
Check, too, that every page has a designed mobile version. Many customers will arrive on a phone, so layout, buttons and forms must work well on a small screen. That is real design and development work, and cheaper offers often leave it to the template.
Content: copy, photos and video
Copy is the most overlooked cost. Many offers assume you will supply it, and the site then waits weeks for service descriptions. SEO copywriting, a photo shoot or a short home page film are separate items worth pricing from the start.
Good content sells, while stock photos customers have seen on competitors’ sites create distance. On a tight budget, invest first in copy for the home page and service pages.
Features: bookings, payments and multiple languages
Every feature needs setting up, testing and maintaining. The most common add-ons are:
- online bookings with an availability calendar, date blocking and notifications,
- payments (Przelewy24, a Polish payment gateway, Stripe, and BLIK, Poland’s mobile payment system) with refunds and confirmations,
- multiple languages: translations, separate URLs per language and correct hreflang tags,
- integrations with a CRM, an email marketing tool or invoicing software,
- an AI assistant that answers customers’ questions around the clock.
An example from our work: in the booking system we built for DMD Arena Częstochowa, a sports and events venue, customers pick a date, arrange the hall on an interactive floor plan, choose equipment and catering, and see the price live. An enquiry holds the date for 72 hours, and staff get a panel with statuses and job sheets in PDF or Excel. That is a custom application and booking system, priced differently from a site with a contact form.
SEO from day one
A site without basic SEO can look good and attract nobody from Google. Look for specifics in the quote: keyphrases per page, unique titles and meta descriptions, heading structure, readable URLs, a sitemap, structured data and Google Search Console. Ongoing SEO after launch is a separate, recurring service.
Speed and code quality
A heavy theme with dozens of plugins loads slowly, especially on a phone. Optimisation takes developer time, so cheap offers skip it. On efektywnymarketing.pl in October 2026 we cut requests from 138 to about 45 and page weight from 2.8 MB to about 0.9 MB. The mobile PageSpeed score rose from 69 to 79, and First Contentful Paint (FCP) dropped from 3.8 s to 2.2 s.
WordPress website cost: the software is free, the work is not
WordPress is the most popular website platform. According to W3Techs, it runs 39.5% of all websites and 58.3% of sites with an identifiable content management system (data from 29 October 2026). That means many developers, many ready-made plugins and an easy switch to a new support company.
WordPress itself costs nothing. The cost of a WordPress website comes from:
- designing and implementing the theme (ready-made or custom),
- paid plugins and licences, e.g. for forms, backups, languages or a shop, usually renewed yearly,
- setting up security, backups and performance,
- training, so you can add content yourself.
Ask which licences are included, whose name they are in and what renewal costs after year one. A licence on the agency’s account can vanish when the partnership ends.
Hosting and domain: what you pay every year
Hosting is the server your site runs on, and the domain is its address. You pay for both yearly, whoever built the site. Both should be registered to your company and email address.
With a domain, check the renewal price, not just year one. For example, at OVHcloud registering a .pl domain costs 16.69 zł net for the first year, and renewal costs 58.99 zł net a year (as of October 2026). Many registrars and hosts use low introductory prices the same way.
Don’t pick hosting on price alone. For a business site, look for:
- fast NVMe drives and a current version of PHP,
- automatic backups you can restore with one click,
- an SSL certificate included in the price,
- servers in Poland or elsewhere in Europe, if your customers are in Poland,
- technical support that replies within hours, not days.
Fun fact. The world’s first website went live at CERN at the end of 1990, and you can still visit it at info.cern.ch. It was plain text with links: it described the World Wide Web project, explained hypertext and showed how to set up your own server. In 1993 CERN released the web software royalty-free, which opened the way to the websites we build today (source: CERN, A short history of the Web).
How much does a website cost per year: maintenance
Launching a site is a one-off expense, while maintenance lasts as long as it is live. WordPress, the theme and plugins get regular updates, often with security fixes. A site nobody updates becomes an easy target for automated attacks.
A small business site’s yearly maintenance budget usually covers:
- hosting: typically about 200 to 800 zł a year (about €50–190), depending on the plan,
- domain: from a few dozen to about 150 zł a year for popular extensions,
- paid plugin and theme licences: from nothing to a few hundred złoty a year,
- technical support: updates, backups, monitoring and small fixes, usually from about 100 to a few hundred złoty a month,
- new content: posts, pages and photos, if you don’t produce them yourself.
In total, a simple site costs roughly 1,000 to 5,000 zł a year to maintain (about €240–1,200). A site with bookings, payments or several languages needs more attention, because an integration can break after a change by the payment or calendar provider. These are broad market ranges, and the exact cost depends on the level of support.
The traps in cheap offers
A low price can be fair for a small scope. Trouble starts when an offer looks complete and costs surface after launch. Warning signs:
- The domain or hosting is in the provider’s name. If you switch providers, you may lose your address or your email inboxes.
- No administrator access. You get an editor account, and every change is a paid job.
- A subscription site builder instead of your own website. You pay monthly, and if you cancel, the site disappears and can’t be moved.
- The demo template plus your logo. The site loads several megabytes of unnecessary scripts and runs slowly on a phone.
- Pirated copies of paid plugins. They don’t get updates and may contain malicious code.
- “SEO included” with no details. Installing an SEO plugin optimises nothing by itself. Ask for a list of what will be done.
- No contract and no transfer of rights. Without a copyright clause for the design and code, you don’t formally own the site.
A cheap site often comes back as a cost: a rebuild after a year, enquiries lost to slow loading or a clean-up after a hack.
How to compare website quotes
Quotes from different companies rarely cover the same thing. To compare them fairly, bring them to a common scope:
- Write a short brief: who your customer is, what they should do on the site and which features are essential.
- Ask each provider for an itemised quote: design, content, features, SEO, build, training.
- Check how many pages and language versions the price covers, and who writes the copy.
- Ask about post-launch costs: hosting, domain, licences, support. Work out the total over 2–3 years.
- Make sure the domain, hosting and accounts (Google, payments) will be registered to your company.
- View the provider’s past work on your phone and test it in PageSpeed Insights.
- Ask about the timeline, revision rounds and the bug warranty after launch.
Total cost often reverses the ranking. A site 3,000 zł cheaper at the start can cost more after two years through a builder subscription or charges for every change. See sites with bookings, payments and an AI assistant in our work. The Willa pod Smrekiem guesthouse site, for example, takes bookings directly, with no portal commission.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a simple website for a small business cost?
A simple brochure site on a template costs roughly 2,000 to 6,000 zł net (about €470–1,400). A bespoke company site with a dozen or so pages usually costs from several thousand to around fifteen thousand złoty, depending on pages, content and features.
How long does it take to build a website?
A simple site takes 2–4 weeks, a bespoke company site 4–8 weeks. Schedules usually slip while waiting for copy and photos, so prepare them early or have them produced.
Can I build a site myself with a website builder and save money?
You can, if you need a simple brochure site and have the time. Remember the subscription you pay as long as the site is live, the limited SEO and how hard it is to move to another provider.
Is website maintenance compulsory?
You must pay for hosting and the domain to keep the site running. Technical support is optional, but a WordPress site without updates becomes vulnerable to attacks. Without a support plan, at least schedule regular updates and backups.
Does a multilingual website cost twice as much?
Usually not. Design and build happen once, and the extra cost is translation, language set-up and SEO for each market. Professional translation is usually the biggest item.
Summary
How much does a website cost? You can only answer sensibly once you know what the site must do. Price design, content, features and SEO separately, count the total cost with maintenance over several years, and make sure the domain, hosting and logins belong to you.
We build WordPress websites that lead customers to an enquiry, booking or purchase, and when needed we add booking systems, payments and an AI assistant. Describe your project and we will send an itemised quote. Or call +48 794 505 965 or +48 22 602 25 32, or use the contact form.
