Professional website creation pricing

A showcase website of five to eight pages, with an original design, an architecture built for search rankings, a contact form and full legal compliance, costs between CHF 3,000 and CHF 8,000 when built by a professional. This price covers graphic design, development, copywriting, mobile testing and launch. At this budget level, you get a website you own, that you can evolve over time, and that shows up in Google results when a potential client searches for what you offer. The page on showcase website creation details the full process.

An e-commerce website with a product catalog, shopping cart, online payment and order management costs between CHF 6,000 and CHF 20,000 depending on the number of products, payment methods and integrations with your business software. The technical complexity is greater than a showcase site, which explains the price gap, and the legal requirements are stricter too: terms and conditions, return policies, compliance with Swiss and European distance-selling regulations. See e-commerce website creation for a detailed overview.

A custom-built website with specific features (client portal, online booking, automatic quote calculator, ERP or CRM connection, multiple languages with market-adapted content) can reach CHF 15,000 to CHF 30,000, sometimes more if the project involves complex development. These projects need a detailed brief, a longer design phase, and thorough testing before launch.

Off-the-shelf platforms like Squarespace, Wix or Jimdo cost between CHF 200 and CHF 600 per year, hosting and domain included. They let you build a website in a few days without writing a single line of code, which works for a self-employed professional getting started or a business testing its online presence before investing further. The trade-off is a design shared with thousands of other sites, limited SEO capabilities, and complete dependence on a platform that can change its terms or pricing without notice.

An experienced freelancer typically charges between CHF 3,000 and CHF 8,000 for a custom showcase website, with direct contact, strong responsiveness and often excellent value for money. The work is done by the person you're talking to, which simplifies communication and decisions. The freelancer's limitation shows up when the project requires multiple specialties at once (art direction, copywriting, complex development, advanced SEO), because a single provider can't master everything at the same level.

A web agency charges between CHF 5,000 and CHF 20,000 for a comparable-quality website, with a team that brings together a project manager, a designer and a developer. The premium over a freelancer is explained by the structure (office, coordination, insurance, documented processes) and by the capacity to handle larger projects with multiple stakeholders on the client side. The result isn't automatically better than a good freelancer's, but project management is more structured and service continuity is guaranteed even if a team member is unavailable.

Online platforms (Squarespace, Wix, Webflow) cost between CHF 200 and CHF 600 per year and work for a first website or a very tight budget. In exchange for this minimal price, you assemble the site yourself with prefabricated blocks, you handle the copywriting, SEO and updates without external help, and you accept that the design looks like thousands of other sites built with the same tool. This choice makes sense when the website isn't your main commercial channel and you prefer to invest your budget elsewhere.

The decision between these three options depends on what you expect from your site. If the site needs to generate clients and represent your business credibly, a freelancer or specialised agency produces a result that online platforms cannot match, because designing a site that converts visitors and ranks well requires expertise that prefabricated templates don't replace. For a project built entirely from scratch, see custom website creation.

The domain name costs between CHF 10 and CHF 30 per year for a standard extension (.ch, .com, .co.uk). Hosting ranges from CHF 10 to CHF 50 per month depending on the performance you need: an SME showcase site runs perfectly on a basic hosting plan at CHF 10 or 15 per month, while a high-traffic e-commerce site may require more capable hosting at CHF 30 to 50 per month.

Technical maintenance (security updates, backups, uptime monitoring, bug fixes) costs between CHF 50 and CHF 200 per month if you outsource it to your provider. This expense is often underestimated at creation time, but it's as important as servicing a company vehicle: a website that isn't kept up to date eventually develops security vulnerabilities, display errors or compatibility issues with recent browsers, all of which drive your visitors away. The article on website maintenance covers each aspect of this upkeep.

Search engine optimisation, if you want your site to climb in Google results rather than stagnate, requires an ongoing investment of roughly CHF 300 to CHF 800 per month for serious work: position tracking, new content creation, improving existing pages, link building. This budget isn't mandatory, as a well-built site can attract visitors without ongoing SEO support, but competition advances every month and a site that doesn't improve inevitably falls in the rankings.

The total recurring budget to maintain a professional website therefore sits between CHF 100 and CHF 400 per month for hosting and maintenance, or between CHF 400 and CHF 1,200 if you add regular SEO support. Compare these amounts to the number of clients your site brings in each month to evaluate whether the return on investment is positive. That is the only objective way to judge whether your website is an expense or an investment.