Count on €1,500 to €5,000 for a professional showcase site, €4,000 to €15,000 for an e-commerce, and over €15,000 for a custom project. Those are the honest ranges of the Belgian market in 2025. Any quote clearly below hides a trade-off; any quote clearly above must justify itself line by line. This article details what these amounts cover, what they do not, and how to compare two offers without getting caught out.

The Belgian context gives the measure of the stakes. DNS Belgium counted more than 1.7 million .be domain names at the end of 2024. According to the FPS Economy, 33.16% of Belgian companies already sell through digital channels, and 62.39% of large companies. E-commerce represented 28.77% of the turnover of the country's companies in 2024, well above the European average of 19.12%.

In other words: your website is not a comfort expense, it is a production tool. The real question is not “how much does it cost,” but “what should every euro invested bring back.”

Price ranges by type of site

Price gaps are explained first of all by the nature of the project. Three broad families cover most of the needs of SMEs and the self-employed.

The showcase site: from €1,500 to €5,000

This is the format suited to most self-employed people, liberal professions and service SMEs: 4 to 8 pages presenting your activity, your services, your work and a contact form. Below €1,500, you generally get a standard template filled in hastily, with no thought given to your keywords or your visitors' journey. Between €1,500 and €5,000, the provider takes the time to structure the content, optimise basic SEO, adapt the design to your identity and test the site on mobile.

E-commerce: from €4,000 to €15,000

Selling online adds whole layers of complexity: product catalogue, stock management, secure payment, VAT calculation, delivery, terms of sale compliant with Belgian and European law. A serious e-commerce starts around €4,000 for a simple catalogue and climbs towards €10,000 to €15,000 as soon as you add product variants, several languages — an unavoidable reality of the Belgian market — or connections with your point-of-sale or invoicing software.

Custom builds: from €15,000

Customer portal, real-time booking, product configurator, connection to an ERP: as soon as the site must execute business logic specific to your company, you leave standard solutions behind. The budget then reflects weeks of bespoke development. To set the orders of magnitude: according to Acerta, the median hourly rate of a Belgian freelancer sits between €71 and €90a 200-hour project therefore mechanically reaches €15,000 to €18,000.

The hidden costs quotes do not show

The creation price is only the visible part. A website lives over time, and that is where the nasty surprises appear. Before signing, check who pays for what on these items:

• The domain name: €10 to €30 per year for a .be or a .com. Above all, check that it is registered in YOUR name, not the agency's; it is your asset, you must be able to leave with it.

• Hosting: €60 to €600 per year depending on the performance required. Low-end hosting is paid for in slowness, and slowness is paid for in lost visitors.

• Technical maintenance: security updates, backups, fixes. Count on €300 to €1,200 per year for a showcase site, more for an e-commerce. A site that is never maintained becomes a gateway for hacks.

• Content: texts, photos, translations. Many quotes assume you provide everything. If professional copywriting or photography are added, budget several hundred euros extra.

• Legal obligations: legal notices, a privacy policy compliant with the GDPR, a properly configured cookie banner. Included with good providers, billed as an extra by others.

• Changes: adding a page, modifying an offer, integrating a new tool. Ask for the hourly rate applied after delivery; it is what determines the real cost of the next three years.

A €2,500 site with €800 in recurring annual costs costs, over five years, more than €6,500. Comparing two quotes without including these lines is comparing two cars without looking at the fuel consumption.

Freelancer, agency or self-service platform: which to choose?

The same specification can receive answers ranging from single to triple depending on the type of provider. Each has its zone of relevance.

• The self-service platform (subscription of €10 to €40 per month): you build it yourself. Relevant for testing a nascent activity, provided you accept investing your evenings in it, and a result that shows.

• The freelancer: light structure, often gentler rates, direct relationship. The point to watch: availability over time and dependence on a single person.

• The agency: multidisciplinary team, strategy, design, technical, SEO, and continuity of service. The entry ticket is higher, but the responsibility is contractual and the result less uncertain.

The right reflex is not to look for the cheapest, but the best suited to the maturity of your project: a self-employed person starting out and an SME that generates its leads online do not have the same needs, nor the same justifiable budgets.

How to compare two quotes without getting it wrong

A website quote is judged on what it specifies, not on its amount. The questions that reveal a provider's seriousness:

• Does the quote detail the number of pages, the features and what counts as an extra?

• Is basic SEO included: heading structure, loading speed, tags, indexing on Google?

• Who owns the domain name, the design and the content at the end of the contract?

• Is the site designed for mobile from the start, and tested, not just “responsive on paper”?

• What exactly does the proposed maintenance cover, and at what price after the first year?

• Does the provider show verifiable work for companies comparable to yours?

A provider who answers these six questions precisely deserves your attention, whatever the price. This is exactly the transparency we apply in our offer for website creation in Belgium: each item is named, priced and justified before signing.

Frequently asked questions

Is a €500 website serious?

At that price, no one can fund more than a few hours of work. You get a generic template, with no content strategy or SEO. For an activity that depends on its online customers, the apparent saving is paid for in invisibility, and often in a complete redesign eighteen months later.

Why do two quotes vary from single to triple for the same project?

Because they do not describe the same work: real design hours, content included or not, SEO worked on or ignored, support after delivery. Demand the breakdown of items; it is the only way to compare comparable things.

How much does the annual maintenance of a website cost?

€300 to €1,200 per year for a showcase site, depending on the service level: updates, backups, security, small changes. For an e-commerce, count on more, because every hour of downtime costs sales.

Is it better to pay once or by monthly subscription?

The one-off payment suits you if you want to own your site and control your costs in the long term. The subscription smooths the investment but, added up over several years, it often exceeds the cost of a purchased site. The decisive point: check what happens to the site if you stop paying.

Priority action plan

1. Define the site's quantified objective before asking for a price: number of quote requests, bookings or sales expected per month.

2. List your real needs in pages and features, and distinguish the essential from the “can wait for phase 2.”

3. Request three quotes detailed item by item, including the recurring costs over three years.

4. Check the ownership of the domain, the design and the content in each written proposal.

5. Plan for a content budget (texts, photos, translations) from the start: it is what turns a beautiful site into a site that sells.

A professional website is reasoned like an investment: what it costs matters less than what it brings in and what it spares you. The ranges in this article give you the benchmarks of the Belgian market; your specification will do the rest. Companies that approach their project with a clear objective and precise questions almost always get a better site, and, paradoxically, a better price.

To situate your project within these ranges, our website creation in Belgium page details our packages item by item, with no hidden extra.