How much does a website for a small business cost?
Almost nobody publishes the price of a website. Here is what one actually costs, what a fixed price covers, and why hourly quotes end up costing you more.
Search “how much does a website cost” and you get the same answer a hundred times over: “it depends”. Then a contact form.
It does depend, of course. But “it depends” is also a comfortable way to avoid committing to a number until you know what someone is willing to pay. So, to the point: a website for a bar, a shop or a neighbourhood workshop costs €490 + VAT. Fixed, in writing, before anything starts.
Why does almost nobody publish a price?
Because publishing a number forces you to define the work. If I say €490, I have to know exactly what is included: how many pages, how many languages, how many rounds of changes. If I say “it depends”, I can decide later, once you have told me you have a budget.
Looking at the competition in Barcelona, the pattern is consistent: some hide the price behind a form, and those who publish anything write “from €650”, “from €750”, “from €990”. That “from” is doing all the work.
What does a fixed price of €490 include?
- A design made for the business, not a template with your logo on top.
- All three language versions: Catalan, Spanish and English.
- Ready for Google and for AI assistants: structured data, a sitemap and an
llms.txtfile. - A WhatsApp button and click-to-call.
- The domain in your name, and the site published and working.
- One round of changes before going live.
- A visit to photograph your place.
What is not included is written down too: professional photographer, online shop, booking system and monthly maintenance.
Are there monthly fees or maintenance costs?
No. You pay once and the site is yours.
This is where most people get a surprise months later. A lot of “cheap web design” is cheap because the real price is in the subscription: €30, €50, €90 a month for years, and the day you stop paying the site disappears, because it was never yours.
The only recurring cost here is the domain, around €10–15 a year, in your name. Hosting, in most cases, costs nothing.
And if the project runs long?
That is my problem, not yours. That is the point of a fixed price: whoever does the estimating carries the risk of having estimated badly.
An hourly quote does the opposite. You get an indicative figure, the project gets complicated — it always gets complicated — and the invoice grows. The client ends up paying for somebody else’s miscalculation.
What about an agency?
An agency with an office, salespeople and a project manager cannot work for €490, and should not pretend otherwise. Their €2,000 makes sense for a company with a marketing department and needs that do not fit on a landing page.
For a neighbourhood bar, that quote is not expensive — it is simply not meant for them.
How you pay
50% to start and 50% on delivery, before the site goes live. You see your finished website before paying the second half. And a proper invoice, always.
Want to see the result before deciding? Two Barcelona businesses have theirs online, and you can open them: frankfurtkinor.cat and www.freetimeworkshop.com.