How Much Does a Good Website Cost, and Why Cheap Often Ends Up More Expensive
500 zloty for a website sounds great, right up until you need to rebuild it a year later. Here is what actually goes into the price of a good website and what you get for it.
"A friend of mine will build me a website for 500 zloty."
I hear this regularly. And usually the same client comes back a year later asking to have it rebuilt from scratch, because the friend has disappeared, the site breaks on mobile, and nobody remembers the hosting password anymore.
Here's what actually goes into the price of a good website, and where people end up paying for it twice.
What Makes Up the Price of a Website
1. Design (UX/UI)
Before a single line of code gets written, someone has to decide:
- What does the site look like on desktop and on mobile?
- What's the hierarchy of information on the page?
- Where do the call-to-action buttons go?
- What typography, colors, and spacing?
Cheap websites skip this step entirely. They grab a ready-made template and paste your logo on it. The result: a site that looks like hundreds of others, because it's a template.
Cost of a proper design: 500 to 2000 zloty, depending on scope. Often bundled into the overall project price.
2. Development
This is where the price range is widest.
| Approach | Cost | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Website builder (Wix, Squarespace) | 0-100 zl/month | A template, limited control, ads |
| WordPress + a ready theme | 1000-2500 zl | Flexibility, but growing technical debt |
| Custom code (Angular, Next.js) | 2000-6000 zl | Full control, performance, security |
| Agency with an account manager | 8000-30000 zl | Expensive, often the same thing as above plus overhead |
3. Content
The most commonly overlooked line item in a quote. Who writes the copy? Who takes the photos?
If you provide the content yourself, there's no extra cost, but it takes real time on your part. A copywriter costs 800 to 3000 zloty for a business website. Stock photos: 0 to 300 zloty. A proper photo shoot: 500 to 2000 zloty.
4. On-page SEO
Basic search engine optimization, meta tags, headings, URL structure, speed. This should be built in as standard, not sold as a premium add-on.
I include it as standard. In cheap offers it's often a separate line item, or missing entirely.
5. Maintenance and hosting
Often the hidden costs:
- Hosting: 15 to 80 zloty/month (depending on quality)
- Domain: 50 to 150 zloty/year
- SSL certificate: 0 zloty (Let's Encrypt), be wary of any offer where SSL costs extra
- WordPress and plugin updates: 0 to 300 zloty/month if you do it yourself versus paying for managed support
Where You Actually Lose Money
The 500 zloty website that needs rewriting a year later
A friend built a site on a free template. It works, it looks okay-ish. A year later:
- It doesn't render properly on newer iPhones
- Google PageSpeed score: 28/100
- Changing a piece of text means asking the friend for a favor
- The friend has since moved abroad
Cost of the "savings": 500 zloty upfront, plus 2500 zloty to rebuild it, plus several months of poor visibility in Google.
A bloated WordPress site with 40 plugins
Every plugin is a potential security hole and a potential conflict during updates. Roughly one in three updates breaks something on the site. Either you pay for monitoring and fixes, or the site goes down and you have no idea until a customer tells you.
An agency with a long-term contract and lock-in
A 12-month contract, your site hosted on their servers, no access to the actual code. A year in, you want to switch providers, and now you have to rebuild the entire site from scratch.
How to Budget for Your Own Project
Simple questions to answer before talking to a developer:
- How many pages do you actually need? (Home, About, Services, Blog, Contact = 5)
- Will your team be editing content themselves? If yes, you need a CMS
- What's the actual goal of the site? A phone call? A form submission? A booking? An online sale?
- What's your monthly budget for upkeep?
Based on these answers, a good developer will tell you what actually makes sense, not the most expensive option, the right one.
My Own Pricing Ranges
To be concrete about it:
A brochure-style site (up to 5 pages, no CMS): 1500 to 2500 zloty Who it's for: freelancers, small clinics, small service businesses that don't need a blog.
A business site with a CMS (up to 10 pages, blog, editable content): 2500 to 4000 zloty Who it's for: businesses that regularly update their offering or run a blog.
A web app or client portal: 4000 to 10000+ zloty Who it's for: SaaS products, booking systems, client dashboards, online stores.
Every quote is worked out individually. I don't give a number before we've talked, because "a business website" can mean completely different projects depending on who's asking.
If you're wondering what your own specific project should actually cost, book a free call. 15 minutes, no obligation, a straight answer.