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There are three routes, and none is best in every situation. The deciding factor is not the budget but the time you can put into it and what happens in eighteen months when something needs changing.
Doing it yourself
Wix, Squarespace, Shopify and Webflow. The tools have become good. A methodical business owner spending their evenings on it for three weeks can produce a decent website and keep complete control.
Real cost: €150 to €400 per year in subscriptions, plus thirty to fifty hours of your time. If your time is worth €60 an hour, the total comes to around €2,500 to €3,500 in the first year, which nobody ever counts.
What you really gain: independence. You can change a price on a Sunday evening without asking anyone. Over time, that is an enormous advantage and the main reason to choose this route.
What you will not have: an outside perspective. Nobody will tell you that your homepage talks about you when it should address the customer’s problem. A self-built website almost always resembles the company’s organisation chart rather than a sales journey.
Who it suits: a new business, a tight budget, an owner comfortable with the tools and a website intended to reassure rather than acquire customers.
The freelancer
This offers the best value in the market when you find the right person. An experienced freelancer charges between €350 and €600 per day, and a carefully built business website takes six to fifteen days.
Real cost: €2,500 to €8,000 depending on ambition. You speak directly to the person building it, removing the information loss that comes with an intermediary. Decisions happen quickly.
The risk, and it is real, is availability. A freelancer can become ill, change career, take an employed role or get tied up with a large client for two months. You are left with a website nobody else knows.
Three precautions reduce that risk. Require standard tools throughout, not a homemade system. Require administrator access to everything from day one. And ask what happens if they are no longer available: a professional has an answer ready.
Who it suits: most small businesses and independent professionals. It is the default route, and a good one.
The agency
For the same scope, an agency costs between 20 and 60 per cent more than a freelancer. That difference is not unearned margin; it pays for three concrete things.
- Continuity. If someone leaves, someone else takes over. Your website does not depend on one person.
- Specialisation. A designer who designs, a developer who builds and someone who writes. A freelancer rarely excels at all three.
- Response time. A team can commit to replying within 24 or 48 hours; a person working alone cannot honestly make the same commitment.
The agency’s risk is the reverse: you are not always in contact with the person building the website, and a small request can take a week to pass through three people. Ask who your contact will be and whether they work on your project.
Who it suits: a business whose website is a serious acquisition channel, a project involving several disciplines, or an owner who simply has no time to manage a provider.
The three-year comparison
The build price is misleading. Here is the approximate total cost over three years for a business website, including hosting and changes.
- DIY: €500 to €1,200 in subscriptions, plus around 60 hours of your time over the period. Complete independence, variable results.
- Freelancer: €3,500 to €10,000. Good value, dependence on one person.
- Agency: €6,000 to €20,000. More expensive, more resilient, slower for small requests.
- All-inclusive subscription: €80 to €250 per month, or €2,900 to €9,000 over three years. Always check what you own at the end, often nothing.
- DIY
- 500 to 1,200 €
- All-inclusive subscription
- 2,900 to 9,000 €
- Freelancer
- 3,500 to 10,000 €
- Agency
- 6,000 to 20,000 €
Subscriptions only. Complete independence, variable results.
€80 to €250 per month. Check what you own at the end.
Best value, dependence on one person.
More expensive, more resilient over time.
For a business website. Time spent is not included in the DIY line: at €60 per hour, it adds around €3,600 over the period.
The real deciding question
It is not ‘how much budget do I have?’ It is: in eighteen months, when I want to change a page on a Tuesday morning, what happens?
If the answer is ‘I do it myself in ten minutes’, build it yourself or insist on a tool that lets you. If the answer is ‘I send a message and it is done that day’, you are buying a relationship, not a file, and that is what you should compare between quotes.
A website is never finished. Choose the route based on what happens after delivery, not what happens before.
Frequently asked questions
01Is a freelancer less reliable than an agency?
Not in quality, which is often higher because you speak directly to the builder. The risk is continuity: illness, a career change or unavailability. Reduce it by requiring standard tools and full administrator access from day one.
02How long does it take to build your own website?
Allow thirty to fifty hours for a decent result on Wix or Squarespace if you have never done it before, including writing the text, which often takes longer than the layout.
03Are all-inclusive €99-per-month packages worth it?
Sometimes, if you lack available cash and want to spread the cost. Check three things: the commitment period, what you own at the end and the total over the term, which often comes to two or three times the price of buying outright.
04Can I start on my own and move to a provider later?
Yes, and that is often the best sequence. You learn what you really need, making the later brief much more precise. Just keep the domain name registered in your name so you lose nothing when switching.
