Why website quotes range from 300 to 5,000 euros
You sent the same description to three people and got back three quotes that differ by a factor of ten. Nobody made an arithmetic error; they simply did not quote for the same thing.
This is probably the most frustrating part of commissioning a website. For most services quotes land within twenty or thirty percent of each other; here the spread can be tenfold. The reason is not that somebody is trying to overcharge you, but that the phrase "a website" covers products which have almost nothing in common beyond the name. Here is what those quotes look like from the inside, and what to do to make them comparable.
The same sentence, three different products
When you write "I need a website for my business", one person hears installing a ready-made template with your logo and text. Another hears a site arranged around your content, with a design somebody actually draws. A third hears a project that starts by working out who your customers are and builds the structure around that.
All three are legitimate answers. All three end with something that opens in a browser and has your logo in the top left. The difference is how many hours of work sit inside, and that accounts for almost the entire price range. Before comparing numbers, you need to know which of those three products each quote is for.
What a cheap quote usually leaves out
A quote of two or three hundred euros almost always means a template. That is not bad in itself: for a small business needing a presence with a contact and a description of the service, a template can be an entirely sensible choice. The problem starts when you expect something else and do not ask.
What is most often not in that price: the copy, because you are expected to supply it finished, photo editing, technical SEO beyond the basics, customisation beyond colours and a logo, and any support after handover. None of that is hidden if you ask. It becomes hidden when you assume it is included.
What an expensive quote includes that you may not need
At the other end, a quote of several thousand usually covers things the cheap one does not even mention: research, several rounds of design, copywriting, a content editing system of its own, integrations with tools you already use, and support for an agreed period. For a company whose site brings in enquiries every day, that is justified.
For a small business with five pages of content, often it is not. An expensive quote is no more a scam than a cheap one is automatically bad; it is aimed at a different problem. It is worth asking which line items you can drop and what you lose by dropping them. Anyone serious will answer specifically rather than defend the package as a single block.
The costs that arrive after handover
Part of the difference between quotes is not the build at all but what follows it. Domain and hosting are an annual cost paid to a provider, typically ten to fifty euros for a domain and fifty to two hundred for hosting. Some quotes fold the first year in and therefore look more expensive; others do not mention it and therefore look cheaper.
Then comes maintenance. WordPress needs regular updates, and every content change you cannot make yourself is something somebody bills for. A quote that says nothing about what happens after handover is not cheaper, just incomplete. Ask who holds the domain, who holds the hosting, and what a text change costs six months from now.
How to make quotes comparable
The only way to make quotes comparable is to send everyone the same concrete brief. Not "I need a website", but a list of the pages you expect, who will change the content, whether it needs several languages, whether your text and photography are ready, and the date it has to be live.
With that brief, the differences stop being a mystery and become information: one included copywriting, another did not, one budgeted two rounds of revisions, another left it open. Then you are choosing on what you actually need rather than on who wrote the smaller number.
Five questions to ask every quote
- Is this a template adaptation or a design made for me, and how many rounds of revisions are included
- Who writes the copy and who edits the photographs
- Can I change the content myself after handover, and if so through what
- Whose name are the domain and hosting in, and what do they cost annually
- What is billed after handover, and at what rate
When the cheapest quote is the right answer
More often than people assume. If what you need is a presence with a contact, a description of your service and a few photographs, and you have no intention of changing the content weekly, a template for a few hundred euros will do the job. An expensive site will not bring you customers a cheap one would have missed. The difference only starts paying for itself when the site has a concrete job: generating enquiries, selling, or carrying content that keeps growing. If you are not sure which of those two situations you are in, that is the question to answer before comparing any numbers.