ITEN
Let’s talk
← Back to the Lab
Guide · WebsitesNovember 20266 min read

How much does a professional website cost?

It's the question I get asked most often. The honest answer is: it depends on what you put inside. Here I give you the real price ranges and what drives them up — using a real project as an example, the AIBA association website bridging Italy and Australia.

How much does a professional website cost?

“How much does a website cost?” is like asking how much a house costs: it depends on whether we're talking about a studio flat or a villa. But an honest answer can be given, and I'll give it to you right now — then I'll explain what it really depends on, using a real project as a benchmark.

How much, in brief

In my work there are three fairly stable price bands:

  • Brochure website (a few pages, polished presence): typically €2,000–€4,000.
  • Professional website with automations (multiple languages, forms, integrations, blog): around €5,000–€15,000.
  • Web app or custom platform (members area, back-office, complex logic): from €15,000 upwards.

Be wary of anyone who throws a number at you before knowing what you actually need: the right figure only emerges once the goal is understood. Let's look at the four things that genuinely push it up.

AIBA — the site pages
The AIBA website: a professional bilingual project used here as an example

1. How many languages the site speaks

A site in two languages does not cost “double”, but it is not free either. AIBA lives between Italy and Australia: Italian and English carry equal weight — they are not translations of each other. That means natively written content, per-language SEO structure and twice the editorial care. It is the same work that, in e-commerce form, I did on BeBud. Every additional language shifts the price upward.

2. The level of design and identity

An off-the-shelf theme and a bespoke identity live on completely different pricing planets. For AIBA I defined the palette (midnight blue, gold, the kangaroo symbol), the typography and a coherent language running from logo to letterhead. That “looks serious at first glance” does not happen by accident: it is design work, and it is a cost line item.

AIBA — the brand palette
The bespoke palette and identity: one of the factors that shapes the price

3. Features: forms, members areas, integrations

A site that displays information costs little; a site that doesthings costs more. Members, events, restricted areas, forms that connect to a back-office system: every feature is code to build and maintain. In AIBA the “institutional” layer coexists with sections that actually work — and that is where the quote grows, honestly.

4. Who builds it (and who maintains it afterwards)

The price is not just the “delivered site”: it also covers speed, SEO, security and the fact that in a year's time it can still be updated. A well-built site costs more upfront and far less over time. That is why, for the same number of pages, two quotes can be worlds apart: you are buying different things.

AIBA — the mobile version
Fast and clean on mobile too: quality that affects both cost and outcome

Want to see what the project I used as an example looks like under the hood? There is the AIBA case study (live site), or explore the other work in the Lab.

See the AIBA project