I get asked what a website costs almost every week, and the honest answer — "it depends" — is useless on its own. So here it is broken into actual numbers.
I've seen the full spread: sites knocked together on a page builder for a few hundred złoty at eleven at night, and projects north of 100,000 PLN with a full design and development team. Every price has its own logic. The question worth asking isn't "how much" but "what am I getting for it, and what happens in year two."
All figures below are in Polish złoty, since that's what I quote in. Divide by roughly four for a rough figure in euros.
The price bands
Brochure site — 1,000 to 8,000 PLN
For a small business, a sole trader, a professional who needs a credible presence and a way to be contacted. A handful of pages, contact details, a gallery, a form. At this level you should still expect:
- a responsive layout that works properly on phones
- SSL
- the search basics — titles, descriptions, sensible structure
- a simple way to edit your own content
- hosting for the first year
Typical: a hairdresser who needs to show services and a phone number. A consultant, a translator, a graphic designer. What matters most here is that it looks professional and loads fast.
Mid-range — 8,000 to 20,000 PLN
This is where a website turns into a business tool rather than a formality. Companies that want to rank, that have more than a few services, or that run a small shop. On top of the above:
- proper search work — keyword research, content and structure optimisation
- a content management setup you can actually use
- a blog, which is what earns you long-tail search traffic
- more involved forms and integrations
- support for three to twelve months after launch
You buy a site at this level for three to five years, not to replace next year.
Premium — 20,000 to 50,000+ PLN
Genuinely substantial work:
- a full design process, no templates
- real business logic in the application itself
- integrations with ERP, logistics, payment systems
- larger data models
- testing and QA
- documentation
- twelve months or more of support
Typical: a shop with thousands of products, a franchise portal, a booking system taking payments.
What actually drives the number
Prices vary this much because several independent variables feed into them. These are the ones I genuinely weigh when quoting.
1. How complex the functionality is. There's a chasm between a contact button and a working shop. Payments, stock, shipping rules — that's a different animal from a page that lists four services and waits for a message.
2. Integrations. If the site has to talk to a CRM, Mailchimp, a payment gateway or your accounting system, every one of those connections adds time, testing and a new thing that can break.
3. Page count and content volume. Five pages is not a hundred-article blog. Those articles have to be migrated, formatted and optimised, and somebody has to decide how new ones get added later.
4. Design quality. This is the real gap between a template and something built around your brand. I've seen the same theme on ten companies' sites in one region — every competitor a clone of the last one.
5. Search work. Do you want to be found by people who don't know you exist yet, or is this a card you hand to people who already do? Those are different budgets.
6. Who's doing the work. A developer six months in and a studio ten years in charge different rates. Higher isn't automatically better — but the cheapest quote in the pile is rarely the bargain it looks like.
7. Animations and effects. Custom animations, effects, transitions, complex widgets — all of that makes for a wow effect. At the same time, you need to know which solutions won't negatively impact performance and therefore search visibility.
The costs nobody quotes you
This is where it gets uncomfortable. Most conversations about price stop at the cost of building the thing and skip what comes after.
Domain and hosting — 160 to 400 PLN a year. The floor. A .pl domain is just under 60 PLN a year. Hosting runs from around 100 PLN a year for shared hosting behind a brochure site, up to 300-350 PLN for something that can take real traffic. A shop or a substantial site costs more.
SSL certificate — 0 to 500 PLN a year. Good news: most decent hosting includes Let's Encrypt free. Occasionally e-commerce needs something paid.
Software updates — 500 to 10,000 PLN a year. Nobody wants to hear it, but sites have to be updated. WordPress, plugins, JavaScript libraries — all of it ages fast, and neglected updates are the most common route into a site. I've written up what that actually looks like when it happens.
Ongoing fixes — 500 to 3,000 PLN a year. A link breaks. Form submissions start landing in spam instead of your inbox. The site suddenly slows down. These need someone in the code. On a quiet brochure site that's a few hours a year; on a shop with integrations, considerably more. If you'd rather have a predictable monthly figure than occasional invoices, that's exactly what ongoing technical support is for.
Keeping content current. If the blog goes stale, your search visibility follows. That's 0 PLN if you write it yourself, or 500–1,500 PLN a month if you hire someone. Worth assuming content takes longer than the build — for most companies it's the content, not the code, that delays launch. I've written a guide to preparing it.
Why the cheapest option usually costs more
The lowest quote is rarely cheaper over a few years. Usually it just moves the cost later.
The sequence is predictable. A site goes up for a few hundred złoty on an off-the-shelf theme. For the first year it works and nobody complains. Then small things start: the form stops sending, the menu breaks on phones, and the person who built it stops answering email. It turns out you don't have access to the admin panel, because the account was opened under someone else's address. Or the content lives inside a closed platform with no way to export it.
That's when the costs nobody quoted arrive:
- recovering control of the domain and hosting, sometimes from someone who won't pick up the phone
- retyping the content by hand, because there's no export
- rebuilding from scratch — paying a second time for the same thing
- the months where the site technically worked but brought in nobody
The point isn't that cheap always means bad. It's that a few questions matter regardless of budget: who will own the domain, will you get access to the admin panel and the code, and what happens if the developer disappears. I've gone through those in detail in how to choose a website developer.
A cheap site you fully control is fine. A cheap site you don't own is a problem you've postponed.
Estimating your own budget
Answer these and you'll be close:
- How many pages do you genuinely need? (brochure = 3–7, mid = 10–20, large = 30+)
- Will you be selling online?
- Do you need to be found by people who don't know you yet?
- How soon does it need to be live?
- Do you already have the content written?
- Will you edit the site yourself, or pay someone each time?
Those answers usually settle whether you're talking about a few thousand, a dozen or so, or several tens of thousands.
In short
A simple brochure site for a sole trader: 1,000–8,000 PLN up front, then domain, hosting, maintenance and updates. A shop or a substantial service site: 8,000–20,000 PLN. A large shop, portal or application: 20,000 PLN and up.
The best decisions don't come from the people hunting the lowest price. They come from the people who know exactly what they're paying for.
If you're planning a site and want a realistic budget for it, get in touch. I'll tell you what it should cost in your case — no obligation, including if you end up hiring somebody else.