What does it cost to have a website built?

Those figures are indicative, based on Dutch price overviews from 2026, and usually exclude VAT. What you pay depends on who builds the site, how custom the design needs to be, and what still comes after launch. This article is about a business site, not a webshop or a complex web app: those usually cost more.

What drives the price

• Who builds it: you yourself, a freelancer or an agency.
• Whether the design is custom, or built on an existing template.
• How many pages you need, and whether extra features come with it.
• Who supplies the texts and photos.
• Who looks after the site afterwards, and how you make changes.

Building it yourself

If you build the site yourself with a website builder such as Wix or Squarespace, you don't pay a build fee, but you do pay a subscription. Common plans are roughly between €12 and €80 per month, depending on the builder, the plan, and whether you pay yearly or monthly. VAT often comes on top.

The real cost is your own time: you design, write and maintain the site yourself. That fits if you have those evenings, and you enjoy it. If you don't have that time, cheap still ends up expensive.

A freelancer

A freelancer often charges €800 to €1,500 one-off for a simple site, and €1,500 to €5,000 for a more complete one. Starting makers sometimes sit lower, around €500 to €1,500. The price usually covers the build, not always the writing, and rarely the years of maintenance afterwards. For a change you often email again, and you pay per job or by the hour.

An agency

An agency often charges €2,000 to €4,000 for a simple site, and €4,000 to €8,000 for a professional custom site. More extensive custom work often starts around €8,000 and can go much higher. An agency easily charges €5,000 or more; we say the same on our pricing. You usually get a team and a tighter process, and you pay for that. Changes after launch often go through an extra job.

You'll also see starting prices from a few hundred euros. Those are often simple sites on an existing template, not a custom design.

What you still pay afterwards

The build is one-off. Costs continue after that. Hosting for an ordinary business site is often between €10 and €50 per month. Maintenance and updates, if you outsource them, often sit between €25 and €200 per month, depending on what's included. A domain name usually costs €10 to €20 per year.

With WordPress, licences for themes and plugins sometimes add to that, as do updates someone has to keep up with. How that differs from mcp-cms is on mcp-cms and WordPress.

And then there's your own time, or the hourly rate of someone you hire for one sentence. That's the line that most often goes missing from quotes.

Where mcp-cms fits

The hard part of many websites isn't only what they cost, but what they ask of you afterwards. Logging into a system you hardly ever see. Waiting until your web developer has time. Spending evenings on a website builder.

With mcp-cms you type or say what should change, and it's there in a few seconds. No complicated CMS, no manual, no calling your web developer. Read all the benefits here.

You pay one fixed price: €2,750 one-off for design and build, excl. VAT. That includes a one-hour intro call, a custom design with two feedback rounds, your texts and photos, up to four page designs, your own AI editor (plus a connection to Claude and ChatGPT), and going live on your own domain within three weeks, with a walkthrough.

After that you pay €49 per month, excl. VAT, for hosting and the editor. Security, updates and maintenance are included, you change the site as often as you like, and you can cancel any month.

Rather have us make a change? A small job costs €59. We design a new page or section for €395, or you create it yourself with the editor. A bigger overhaul gets a fixed price up front.

Your texts, photos, design and the frontend code of your site stay yours, and your domain name stays in your name. If you cancel, hosting and the editor stop. You can take your site with you.