What a small business website actually costs in Ireland
Ask three people what a website costs and you will get three answers an order of magnitude apart. That is not because somebody is trying it on. It is because “a website” describes everything from a one-page brochure to a booking system, and the quotes are answering different questions.
What actually drives the price
Almost all of the cost sits in four things.
How many pages, and how different they are. Ten pages that share one layout is a small job. Five pages that each need their own design is a bigger one. It is the number of distinct designs that costs money, not the page count.
Whether anything has to work, as opposed to just display. A page that lists your services is display. Taking bookings, taking payments, checking availability, or letting customers log in are all systems, and systems are where budgets go.
Who writes it and who photographs it. Design quotes often quietly assume you are supplying the words and the pictures. If you are not, that work still has to happen and somebody has to be paid for it. This is the single most common reason a project stalls halfway.
What happens after launch. A site is not finished at launch, it is just started. Either you are paying for monthly maintenance or you are accumulating a problem.
The brackets you will commonly see
Very roughly, and with every caveat attached, the Irish market tends to fall into three bands. A few hundred euro usually means a template with your logo dropped into it. Somewhere in the low thousands is where genuinely custom design for a small business tends to sit. Anything with real functionality behind it, a shop, a booking system, integrations with software you already use, climbs from there.
None of those numbers mean much on their own. What matters is what is inside them.
How to compare two quotes properly
Ask both quotes the same five questions and the difference usually becomes obvious.
- Who owns the domain and the hosting account when this is over? The answer should be you, in your name.
- Is the site built on something I can move elsewhere, or is it locked to your platform?
- Who writes the words and supplies the photos?
- What happens if I want a change in six months, and what does that cost?
- What is included in the price after launch, and for how long?
A cheap quote that leaves you unable to move your own website is not cheap. A more expensive one that hands you full control of everything might be the better value, and the only way to tell is to ask.
The one that catches people
Watch for monthly pricing that never ends and never builds equity. Some low upfront offers are effectively a rental: stop paying and the site disappears, because you never owned it. That can be a perfectly reasonable arrangement if you know that is what it is. It is a bad surprise if you do not.
Our own pricing is on the services page, and we are happy to explain any of it.