Introduction

You asked for three quotes for the new company website. They all arrived on time. The problem is that the first says €1,500, the second €8,000, and the third €25,000. And reading them closely, they seem to promise more or less the same thing.

This happens much more often than you might think. Asking "how much does a website cost?" is a bit like asking "how much does a house cost?": the honest answer is it depends. On the location, the square footage, the materials, who designs it, and what's inside. No one is surprised that a studio apartment and a villa have different prices, but with websites, the difference is less visible because from the outside, one homepage always looks like another homepage.

In this article, you won't find a price list. Instead, you'll find the variables that drive a quote up or down, the costs that usually don't appear in the proposal, and the questions to ask before signing. The promise is simple: by the end of the read, you'll know how to read a quote on your own and understand whether the figures on the table truly describe the same product.

Why are quotes for a website so different?

The short answer is that, very often, two quotes do not describe the same product. They use the same words ("responsive site", "SEO optimized", "modern design"), but behind those words there can be completely different hours of work, skills, and responsibilities.

The website market today is a ladder with many rungs. At the bottom are do-it-yourself website builders, like Wix or Squarespace: a monthly subscription, a visual editor, and lots of patience. Just above are template-built sites, often on WordPress, where a freelancer or a small web agency adapts a ready-made theme to the client's content. Over the last two years, vibe coding has also been added: artificial intelligence tools that generate a site starting from a written description. At the top are custom projects, where strategy, design, and development are built around a specific need.

None of these rungs is inherently wrong. The point is that each has a different cost because it does a different thing.

To get an idea of how common it is to start from a standard base, just look at the numbers: according to W3Techs, WordPress is used by about 41% of all websites in the world. A figure that tells two stories. The first: having a site on WordPress says nothing, in itself, about the quality of the project. The second: within the same technology, sites costing a few hundred euros coexist with platforms costing tens of thousands. The tool is the same; the work is not.

WordPress, however, is not the only path. Alongside it exist open-source CMSs that are less widespread but designed for different needs, such as Drupal: built to manage complex content, multilingual structures, and intricate permissions, it is the choice of many institutions, universities, and large organizations. It is also the CMS we work with most often at sixeleven. Here too, the same rule applies: technology matters, but on its own, it doesn't explain the price.

That's why comparing quotes solely by looking at the total at the bottom of the page is the fastest way to make the wrong choice.

What does the price of a website depend on?

Every quote, even one presented as a single figure, is the sum of five major line items. Understanding how much each weighs is the first step toward reading an offer with a critical eye.

Strategy. It is the phase you see the least of, and often the first to be cut. This is where you decide who the site speaks to, what it needs to achieve (leads, sales, reputation), and how it fits into the rest of your communications. A quote that starts directly with graphics, without a single line about objectives, is assuming you already know them. Or that they don't matter.

Design: template or custom. A template is an off-the-rack suit: you choose the size, hem the trousers, and it's ready. A custom design starts from brand identity and user behavior, moving through wireframes, prototypes, and revisions. The difference in cost is considerable, but so is the difference in results: a template-based site tends to look like thousands of others.

Development and functionality. This is the item that causes the price to fluctuate the most. A five-page showcase site is one project; an e-commerce platform with inventory management, payments, and shipping is a whole different world. Integrations with CRMs, ERPs, and marketing automation tools, private areas, and especially multilingual support all matter. For PANORAMA – Solutions for a Healthy Planet, for example, we developed a platform translated into 14 languages: each additional language means content to manage, URLs to structure, and checks to carry out. The choice of CMS also plays a role: Drupal, for instance, manages multilingual features directly in its core, whereas other platforms often require additional extensions. In any case, it's work you don't see, but pay for.

Content. Copy, photographs, videos, illustrations. Who produces them? Many quotes assume they will come from the client, ready and optimized. In reality, that is rare, and content is often the real bottleneck in web projects. When a site already exists, moreover, there is extra work: deciding what to bring into the new one, what to rewrite, and what to leave behind. We discuss this in the section dedicated to migration.

Technical SEO. This should not be confused with ongoing SEO activities. We are talking about the foundations: loading speed, URL structure, structured data, sitemaps. If the new site replaces an existing one, redirect management is added to these: a step that alone can make the difference between keeping the ranking achieved over the years and starting from scratch.

In summary, before looking at the total of a quote, it is worth asking:

• how much of the budget goes toward strategy?

• is the design based on a template or custom-made?

• which features are included, and which are excluded?

• who produces the content?

• is technical SEO included, including migration?

How much does migrating from the old site weigh?

Few quotes treat it as a line item on its own, yet for many companies it is the most delicate part of the project. Rarely does a site start from scratch: almost always, it replaces another, with years of content, indexed pages, and backlinks from other sites. All of this is an asset, and it must be transferred with care.

A well-executed migration touches at least three fronts:

• Content. Before moving everything, it is best to take an inventory: which pages still bring traffic, which need updating, and which can disappear. It's an opportunity to clean up, but also the moment when it's easiest to lose important pieces. If content is moving from one CMS to another, for example from WordPress to Drupal, technical import and verification work is also needed.

• Rankings. Every old URL must have a destination on the new site via 301 redirects. Without this mapping, the pages Google knew become 404 errors, and organic traffic built over years can drop sharply.

• Data and integrations. Registered users, orders, forms, links to CRMs and management software: everything the old site collected must continue to work, in compliance with privacy regulations.

The advice is simple: if you already have a website, ask explicitly how the migration will be handled. If it's not mentioned in the quote, it probably isn't included.

What costs do not appear in the quote?

A website is not an object you buy and place on a shelf. It's more like a car: after purchase, there's servicing, insurance, road tax. Many quotes, especially the cheapest ones, stop at the day of launch. Everything that comes after remains off the sheet, but not off the balance sheet.

Hosting and domain. Shared hosting for a few euros a month might be enough for a showcase site with little traffic; an e-commerce or multilingual platform needs dedicated resources, backups, and monitoring.

Maintenance and updates. The CMS, plugins, and libraries must be updated regularly. Failing to do so means accumulating what is known in the trade as technical debt: small delays that, combined, make every future intervention slower and more expensive.

Security. This is the direct consequence of the previous point. An unupdated site is a vulnerable site, and a cyberattack costs much more than a maintenance contract: downtime, compromised data, and a reputation to rebuild.

Compliance: privacy and cookies. Here the risk becomes tangible in economic terms as well. The cookie banner is not an aesthetic requirement: for installing cookies without user consent, the most frequently cited penalties under the Italian Privacy Authority guidelines range from €10,000 to €120,000. A poorly configured banner, which loads tracking tools before consent is given, is one of the most common mistakes on rushed websites.

Compliance: accessibility. This is the most significant development in recent years, and also the least known. Since June 28, 2025, under the European Accessibility Act transposed in Italy by Legislative Decree 82/2022, digital accessibility is a fully operational legal obligation for many consumer-facing services, starting with e-commerce. Exempt from this are microenterprises, meaning those with fewer than 10 employees and an annual turnover or balance sheet total not exceeding €2 million. For everyone else, an inaccessible site is not just a missed opportunity: it is a risk. In Italy, oversight falls to AgID, which can go as far as ordering the suspension of the non-compliant service.

The point is not to scare, but to remember that accessibility and privacy are designed from the beginning. Adding them later, once the site is finished, almost always costs more. That is why a quote that doesn't even mention them deserves an extra question.

Can a cheap website cost more?

Yes, and it happens more often than you might think. Not because a cheap site is necessarily poorly made, but because the initial savings are paid for in less visible ways: lost visitors, damaged credibility, premature redesigns.

Speed. This is perhaps the most well-known case. A Google study (published by DoubleClick in 2016 and cited by Think with Google in 2017) estimated that 53% of mobile visits were abandoned if a page took longer than three seconds to load. That figure is a few years old, and phones have become faster in the meantime. But user expectations have grown in tandem, and the principle remains: a slow site loses people before even showing what it has to offer. Templates weighed down by dozens of plugins, unoptimized images, and undersized hosting are the most common causes.

Then there is a second effect, less visible but just as concrete: speed also impacts SEO. Google measures page experience through Core Web Vitals—metrics evaluating loading times, responsiveness, and visual stability—and considers them ranking signals. A slow site, therefore, risks losing visitors twice: those who abandon the page and those who don't find it at all because it ended up lower in the search results.

Credibility. Here it helps to clear things up, because it is one of the most frequently cited data points in the industry. The statistic that 75% of users judge a company's credibility by the design of its website is often presented as recent, sometimes dated 2023. In reality, it originates from research by the Stanford Web Credibility Project, led by B.J. Fogg in the early 2000s. In the 2002 study, out of more than 2,400 comments regarding 100 sites, almost half (46.1%) concerned visual appearance.

Is a twenty-year-old data point still valid? Probably yes, in essence: the researchers explained the phenomenon through a very human mechanism, whereby what appears polished is perceived as trustworthy. But citing it with its date is a matter of honesty, and also of authority. Anyone reading a quote (or an article) has the right to know where the numbers come from.

The rebuild. This is the most underestimated cost, and it has to do with scalability: a website's ability to grow alongside the company. A scalable site can evolve over time, adding sections, languages, features, and integrations without having to tear down what is already there. And it can handle traffic volumes much higher than the initial ones, whether from a successful campaign, a seasonal peak, or simply a growing business.

A site built without strategy, on a foundation not meant to grow, often reaches its limit after two or three years. At that point, every new feature costs more than expected, performance drops just as traffic increases, and the only solution becomes rebuilding everything from scratch. The final bill exceeds that of a project well thought out from the start.

Template, custom site, or vibe coding: what makes sense?

The honest answer, even coming from an agency, is that you don't always need a custom website.

A well-chosen and well-configured template is the right solution for many realities: a professional who needs a clean online presence, a small business with just a few services to explain, a project that needs to launch quickly. The same partly applies to vibe coding: AI tools that generate sites and applications from a description are great for prototypes, MVPs, and initial drafts to show a team or an investor.

As we wrote in our article on vibe coding, standard solutions work great until you ask them to adapt to specific needs. The problem is not the standard itself: it's when the standard becomes the load-bearing structure of a project that needs to grow.

Some signs indicating it's time to consider a custom solution:

• the site must integrate with management software, CRMs, or other business systems;

• you need features that no plugin truly covers, or that require ten of them;

• the brand has a strong identity that a pre-packaged theme would end up flattening;

• the project is designed to last and evolve over time;

• sensitive data, payments, or strict accessibility requirements are involved.

If none of these points apply to you, a template might be the smartest choice. And a serious agency should be the first to tell you so.

How do you compare quotes for a website?

To compare two quotes, you first have to make them comparable. The simplest way is to stop looking at the total and start asking questions. Here are six that, in our experience, almost always bring out the real differences.

1. What is included, exactly? Number of pages, languages, features, revision rounds. If an item is described vaguely ("complete website", "SEO included"), ask for details.

2. Who produces the content? Are copy, photos, and videos your responsibility or the agency's? And who adapts them for the web and SEO?

3. Will I own the site? Domain, code, CMS and hosting access credentials must be registered in your name. Some subscription-based solutions leave you without a site once cancelled.

4. Who handles maintenance, and under what conditions? Is it provided after going live? What does it cover, how much does it cost, and what are the response times?

5. Does the project comply with privacy and accessibility? Ask how cookie consent is handled and what WCAG compliance level the site aims for.

6. What happens if I want to change providers tomorrow? A well-documented project built on widely used technologies can change hands seamlessly. A proprietary or improvised one cannot.

Open source or proprietary?

The last question opens up an issue worth exploring, as it impacts the cost of the site throughout its life. The technologies used to build a site roughly fall into two families.

Open-source technologies, such as Drupal and WordPress, have public code developed and verified by an international community.

• Pros: no licensing costs, full site ownership, freedom to switch providers, wide availability of developers and extensions, constant security updates.

• Cons: responsibility for updates, security, and hosting remains with whoever manages the site, requiring technical expertise to do it well. A neglected open-source site ages quickly.

Proprietary technologies include website builders, SaaS platforms, and CMSs developed in-house by certain agencies.

• Pros: hosting, updates, and support are often included, setup is fast, and day-to-day technical management is less demanding.

• Cons: recurring fees, customization limited to what the platform allows, and above all, the risk of vendor lock-in: changing providers may mean rebuilding the site from scratch, and exporting content and data completely isn't always possible.

There is no universally right choice. For a project destined to grow and endure, however, the freedom to change course is a value that must be weighed alongside the price.

If an agency clearly answers all six, that's already a good sign. If any are left unanswered, that is the real price difference you are looking for.

How we build a quote at sixeleven

We won't tell you why to choose us: we are more interested in sharing how we think, so you can use the same benchmark with others as well.

For us, a quote doesn't start from a price list, but from a conversation. Before writing down a number, we try to understand what the site is for, who it speaks to, and what needs to happen when someone lands on it. Only then do we translate these answers into concrete activities: strategy, design, development, content, technical SEO, accessibility.

Each line item in the quote describes a precise task, along with the estimated time to do it. What isn't included, we write down, because we believe that is the simplest form of transparency. And when a template is enough, we say so.

FAQ

How much does a corporate website cost on average? There is no useful average, because very different products live under the same label: a template-based site, an e-commerce platform, a multilingual portal. Rather than a benchmark figure, it's better to understand which of the five variables (strategy, design, development, content, technical SEO) carry weight in your project and ask for quotes that describe them item by item.

How long does it take to build a website? It depends on the complexity and, often, the availability of content. A template-based site can be online in a few weeks; a custom project generally takes a few months across strategy, design, development, and testing. The most frequent bottleneck is not development, but the approval of copy and images.

Is it better to use WordPress, Drupal, or custom development from scratch? WordPress is the most widespread platform: easy to manage and suitable for many corporate websites, especially those of low-to-medium complexity. Drupal is better suited for structured projects with lots of content, multiple languages, diverse roles and permissions, or integrations with other systems. Both are open source and can host completely custom sites. Development from scratch makes sense when very specific logic is required that no CMS covers. The choice depends on the project, not the trend.

So, how much does a website really cost?

As much as is needed to do what it has to do, and do it well. It sounds like a non-answer, but it is the only honest one.

If you've made it this far, you now know that behind a figure there are five major line items, that some costs only arrive after launch, and that privacy and accessibility are not details to be sorted out later. Above all, you know that the right question isn't "which quote costs less?", but "which quote truly describes what I need?".

Then there is an item that no external quote can ever include: internal costs. A new website also requires time on your end: someone to oversee the project and make decisions, gather and approve text and images, involve colleagues, learn to use the new CMS, and, after launch, keep the content updated. These are hours of work that appear on no invoice, but weigh on the real budget just as much as the others. Accounting for them from the start helps you make a truly thorough assessment—and choose a partner who knows how to lighten that load.