A business owner asked me recently why I charge what I charge when “someone on Fiverr can build a website for €200.”
It’s a fair question. Here’s the honest answer.
What a Cheap Website Actually Costs Over Three Years
Let’s take a typical small business WordPress site built on a premium theme, with a few plugins for forms, SEO, and caching. The developer charges €800. Seems like a deal.
Here’s the 3-year bill nobody shows you upfront:
| Item | Annual Cost |
|---|---|
| Hosting (shared) | €120 |
| Premium theme renewal | €50 |
| Security plugin | €90 |
| Form plugin | €70 |
| SEO plugin | €100 |
| Backup plugin | €60 |
| Developer for updates | €300–600 |
| Annual total | €790–1,090 |
Over three years, that “€800 website” costs you €3,170–4,070 in ongoing fees. And that’s assuming nothing goes wrong.
It always goes wrong.
WordPress sites are the most targeted CMS on the internet. A 2023 Sucuri report found that 96% of infected websites in their sample were running WordPress. That’s not a knock on WordPress specifically — it’s a consequence of market share — but a poorly maintained WordPress install is a liability, not an asset.
One breach can cost you: emergency developer time, data breach notifications (legally required in the EU under GDPR), loss of Google rankings, and customer trust that takes months to rebuild.
What “Slow Website” Costs in Real Conversions
Google research has consistently shown that for every one-second delay in mobile page load time, conversions drop by 20%. Let that sink in.
If your site generates €5,000/month in leads or sales and it loads in 4 seconds instead of 2, you’re leaving roughly €1,000/month on the table. That’s €12,000/year from a slow website.
A €200 Fiverr site isn’t going to score well on Core Web Vitals. It’s going to be a bloated WordPress theme with 47 plugins, each adding its own JavaScript to every page load.
This isn’t theoretical. I’ve audited sites that were scoring 35 on Google PageSpeed. After a rebuild in Astro with optimized assets and zero unnecessary JavaScript: score went to 98. The client reported a 40% increase in contact form submissions within 60 days.
Website as Expense vs. Website as Asset
Here’s the mental model shift that changes everything.
An expense goes down in value over time. A template site built by the cheapest bidder is an expense. It ages badly, requires constant patching, doesn’t reflect your brand accurately, and slows your business down.
An asset builds value. A properly engineered website improves SEO over time as it accumulates content and backlinks. It converts better as it’s refined based on real user behavior. It costs less to maintain because it was built correctly the first time.
A business owner who spends €4,000 on a well-built site with good SEO foundations and strong performance might spend €600/year maintaining it. Over three years: €5,800. The “cheap” site at €800 plus ongoing costs runs €3,170–4,070 — and probably needs a full rebuild at year two because the developer who built it is no longer reachable.
What to Look for When Hiring a Developer
Red flags:
- “I can have it done in a week” for any project of meaningful complexity
- Portfolio that’s all the same theme with different colors
- No questions about your business goals, target audience, or existing traffic
- Can’t explain why they’re recommending a particular technical approach
- No discussion of performance, SEO, or accessibility
- Price with no discovery phase
Green flags:
- Asks what success looks like for you before quoting a price
- Can show performance scores (Lighthouse, Core Web Vitals) on their own site and previous work
- Talks about maintenance costs upfront, not as an afterthought
- Has a process: discovery, design review, development, testing, handoff
- Provides documentation and a brief training session after launch
- Will still be reachable in six months
The discovery phase matters more than most business owners realize. A developer who jumps straight to building without understanding the business is building something for themselves, not for you.
The Closing Argument
The conversation isn’t really about price. It’s about what you’re optimizing for.
If you need something up in a week for a one-time event, a €200 Squarespace build might be exactly right. I’m not arguing against affordable solutions for limited use cases.
But if your website is a primary channel for leads, sales, or credibility — and for most businesses it is — then the cost of getting it wrong is much higher than the cost of getting it right.
The question to ask isn’t “how much does it cost to build?” It’s “what does it cost me if it doesn’t perform?”
That reframe changes every conversation.