How much does a website cost in 2026? A simple site on a ready-made template costs from a few hundred to around two thousand zloty (PLN, the Polish currency). A company website with its own design and a content management panel usually runs from a few thousand to well over ten thousand. An online store or a service with logins and integrations starts where the company website ends, and has no ceiling. On top of that comes the annual cost that few people ask about when ordering: the domain, hosting, updates and content changes.
The spread is so wide because the word "website" covers purchases that have little in common. Below we break the price down into its parts, show a sample calculation of hours, and explain what a quote has to contain so you can compare it with another one.
- With a website you mostly pay for time: the number of unique views, features and integrations, not the number of pages.
- A template is cheap at the start and expensive with every change that goes beyond it. Custom code is the other way round.
- Content and photos are a separate item that most enquiries leave out, and they can push the deadline back by weeks.
- A website keeps costing money after handover: domain, hosting, updates. Count a full year, not just the build.
- You can only compare two quotes once both spell out the scope, the number of revision rounds, code ownership and the hosting terms.
Indicative market price ranges for four types of website
The amounts below are the ranges seen in offers and projects on the Polish market in 2026. They are not the result of a study and they are not our price list, just a point of reference: a specific quote can fall outside them in either direction, depending on the scope. Amounts are net (excluding VAT), for the build only, without content and without annual costs.
| Type of website | Ready-made template, simple configuration | Custom design, code written for the project | Large scope, integrations, several languages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Landing page (one page, one action) | 500 - 2,000 PLN | 2,000 - 6,000 PLN | 6,000 - 15,000 PLN |
| Company website (several pages, CMS) | 1,500 - 4,000 PLN | 4,000 - 15,000 PLN | 15,000 - 50,000 PLN |
| Online store | 2,000 - 10,000 PLN | 10,000 - 40,000 PLN | 40,000 - 150,000 PLN |
| Platform with user accounts | rarely makes sense on a template | 15,000 - 60,000 PLN | 60,000 PLN and more |
The most important information in this table is not in the amounts but in the columns. The same "company website" can cost 2,000 or 30,000 PLN, and both quotes can be honest, because they describe a different amount of work. When you receive two offers that differ tenfold, it usually does not mean one of the developers is cheating. It means each of them quoted something different, because the enquiry did not say exactly what was to be built.
The "platform with user accounts" row is in the table to show where the line is. Once a website has logins, roles, recurring payments or a customer panel, it stops being a website in the everyday sense and is priced like software. A template saves nothing here, because the most expensive part of the work lies beyond the visual layer.
Our prices start at: Landing Page from 499 PLN, Company Website from 1,199 PLN, Online Stores & E-commerce from 1,699 PLN, Web Platforms from 899 PLN, Panels & Dashboards from 699 PLN. These are lower bounds for the simplest scope, not packages. There is more on how "from" turns into a specific amount in the section on our pricing below.
What you are really paying for: time, not the number of pages
A developer sells hours, even when they quote a flat fee. A flat fee is simply their estimate of the hours multiplied by their rate, plus a margin for the risk that something takes longer. That is why the question "how much does a five-page website cost?" has no answer: five pages built from the same blocks take a few hours, while five pages that each have a different layout, their own animation and a form take several days.
What counts is the number of unique views. A site with ten service pages that look the same and differ only in their text is, in practice, one view, designed and coded once and then filled with content. A site with three pages, each designed from scratch, needs three times as much design and code. So when you compare offers, do not ask "how many pages?" but "how many different layouts?".
The second item is features, meaning everything that reacts to the user. A contact form is an hour or two, with validation and spam protection. A price calculator, appointment booking, search with filters or a map with locations take anywhere from a few to several dozen hours each. Features are also the source of the biggest misunderstandings, because the client thinks of each one as a single bullet point, while the developer sees it as a small project of its own.
The third item is everything you cannot see: the content management panel, technical SEO, speed optimisation, deployment to the server, testing on phones. This is exactly where cheap offers most often cut corners, because the client does not check these things at handover. It shows later, when the site takes several seconds to load on a phone or every text change requires an email to the developer.
Template, website builder or custom code
There are three ways to build a website, and each has a different cost curve over time. The choice between them moves the price more than the choice of developer does.
| Approach | Cost at the start | Cost of changes after launch | When it makes sense |
|---|---|---|---|
| Online website builder (subscription) | lowest, often do-it-yourself | low, as long as you stay within what the builder can do | a business card site, testing an idea, no budget for a developer |
| Ready-made theme on a CMS, e.g. WordPress | low | grows with every change outside the theme, plus plugin updates | a typical company website with no unusual features |
| Custom code written for the project | higher | predictable, because you are not fighting someone else's template | unusual features, integrations, demanding speed requirements, further development |
A website builder is an honest choice when the site is meant to be a business card and you do not plan to develop it. You pay a subscription, and in return you never think about servers or updates. The problem appears when you want to leave: the content and design usually cannot be moved to another system, so after a few years you build the site again from scratch.
A ready-made WordPress theme is the most common choice for budgets of up to a few thousand zloty. It works well as long as the site looks and behaves the way the theme's author intended. Every request along the lines of "but here we want it different" means overriding someone else's code, which costs more than writing the same thing from scratch and can also fall apart when the theme is updated. You also have to add annual licences for paid plugins and regular updates, because a popular system is a popular target for attacks.
Custom code costs more at the start, because nothing is ready-made. It pays off when the site has unusual features, integrates with other systems or will be developed for years. Every later change is then priced on what actually needs doing, not on how far the template's limitations have to be worked around.
Seven things that push the quote up
The list below covers the items that most often separate a "from" price from the final quote. If any of them are part of your project, mention them in the enquiry straight away, because they will come up during quoting either way.
- The number of unique page layouts. Every new layout means a design for desktop and mobile, and its own code.
- Language versions. A second version is not just translating the text. You also need a language switcher, separate URLs, hreflang tags for search engines and duplicate content in the panel.
- A content management panel. A site without a panel is cheaper, but every text change needs a developer. A panel in which you edit only what you actually change has to be designed around your content.
- Integrations. A booking system, CRM, newsletter, payments, invoicing, price comparison sites. Every integration depends on the quality of the documentation on the other side and can be the most expensive item in the quote.
- Animations and custom effects. Simple transitions are cheap. Scroll-driven animated scenes, 3D elements and interactive visualisations take days of work each.
- Legal requirements and accessibility. Cookie consent, GDPR information obligations and, for some businesses, digital accessibility requirements under the Polish act in force since 28 June 2025, which implements the European Accessibility Act (microenterprises providing services are, as a rule, exempt from it).
- The deadline. A site needed within a week means moving other work or working outside normal hours. A shorter deadline almost always means a higher price or a narrower scope.
Each of these items has a matching question worth asking the developer. For language versions: who translates, and does the panel handle both languages? For integrations: has the developer worked with that particular system before, and does the system have a public API? For the deadline: what drops out of scope if the date is fixed? The answers tell you more about an offer than the price alone.
Notice what is not on this list: the number of pages with the same layout, the colour scheme, the industry. A law firm and a construction company with the same scope cost the same. The difference comes from the fact that a law firm usually wants more expert content and a construction company wants a gallery of completed projects; in other words, it comes from the scope, not the industry.
Before you send an enquiry, describe what should happen on the site, not what it should look like. "The customer chooses a service and a date and pays a deposit" makes it possible to price the work. "It should look like Apple's website" makes it possible to price nothing.
Sample calculation: a company website hour by hour
To show how a quote works, let us break down a typical scope. This is an example, not our offer and not a market average: the hours are realistic ranges for the scope described, and the rates are assumed purely for the sake of the example.
Scope of the example: a home page, an about page, three service pages built from one layout, a blog, a contact page with a form, a content management panel, one language version and a graphic design from scratch. Four unique layouts: home page, content page, blog post, contact.
| Stage | Hours |
|---|---|
| Agreeing the scope, sitemap, content list | 3 - 5 |
| Graphic design of four layouts for desktop and mobile | 16 - 24 |
| Coding the layouts and responsiveness | 24 - 36 |
| Content management panel, content model, blog | 8 - 14 |
| Form with validation, spam protection and email sending | 3 - 5 |
| Technical SEO: titles, descriptions, sitemap, structured data | 4 - 6 |
| Speed and image optimisation | 3 - 6 |
| Testing on devices and browsers | 6 - 10 |
| Deployment, domain, analytics | 3 - 5 |
| Total | 70 - 111 |
| Revision buffer, 15% | 11 - 17 |
| Total with buffer | 81 - 128 |
At 80 PLN an hour that comes to 6,480 to 10,240 PLN. At 150 PLN an hour it is 12,150 to 19,200 PLN. Both rates exist on the market, and the difference between the two variants is more than the cost of an entire simple template site. That is where the spread you see in offers comes from.
The most hours can be taken out in two places. The first is the graphic design: if the site is built from a ready-made, polished set of sections instead of a design from scratch, the 16-24 hours drop to a handful. The second is the number of layouts: when a blog post and a service page share one layout, a quarter of the design and code disappears. That is how quotes an order of magnitude lower come about, and there is nothing suspicious about them, as long as the developer says plainly what has been simplified.
Use this table in your conversation with the developer. Ask for a quote broken down into similar stages. If a stage is missing from the offer altogether, for example testing or technical SEO, ask whether it is included somewhere else or simply not there.
Content and photos: the item most enquiries leave out
A web developer usually does not write copy or take photos unless they have explicitly priced it in. In many projects it is the content, not the code, that decides the delivery date: the site is ready, but it waits for weeks for the service descriptions, team photos and the details for the footer.
You have three options. You write the content yourself, which is cheap but takes time and usually several rounds, because copy for a website is written differently from an offer sent by email. You hire a copywriter, who on the Polish market most often charges by the number of characters or per page, in a range from a few dozen to a few hundred zloty per page, depending on the subject and their experience. Or you use content you already have, for example from a PDF offer, and have it rewritten for the web.
Photos work the same way. Stock photos are cheap, but customers recognise them instantly, and in businesses built on trust (a clinic, a law firm, a renovation contractor) a stranger's face on the site works against you. A photo shoot at your company costs from a few hundred to a few thousand zloty, and the photos last for years and also come in handy for your Google Business Profile and social media.
When you order a website, agree in writing who supplies the content and by when. If the content is to come from you and does not arrive on time, the delivery date moves, and that is fair. If the developer is to prepare it, it has to be a separate, priced item, not an assumption.
How much does a website cost to run per year
After launch a website generates fixed costs. Some are unavoidable (domain, server), some depend on the technology (licences, updates), and some on how often you change the content. Below are indicative annual market ranges, net, for a typical company website.
| Item | Indicative annual cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| .pl domain (Poland's country-code domain) | a few dozen to around 150 PLN | the first year is often promotional, so check the renewal price |
| Shared hosting | 100 - 600 PLN | enough for most company websites |
| VPS or cloud server | 300 - 2,000 PLN | online stores, platforms, higher traffic |
| SSL certificate | 0 PLN in most cases | almost every host now supports free certificates |
| Business email | from 0 to a few hundred PLN per mailbox | included in the hosting plan, or a separate service billed per mailbox |
| Licences for paid plugins and themes | 0 - 1,500 PLN | mainly applies to sites on off-the-shelf CMS platforms |
| Updates and technical maintenance | 0 PLN if you do it yourself, up to a few thousand PLN on a subscription | without updates a popular CMS becomes vulnerable to attacks |
| Content changes and small jobs | depends on your needs, usually billed by the hour | does not cover what you edit yourself in the panel |
For a simple company website on shared hosting, with content you edit yourself, the real annual cost stays within a few hundred zloty. For a WordPress site with paid plugins and a maintenance subscription, it is easy to go over two or three thousand zloty a year. Over three years that difference can be bigger than the difference in build price between a cheap offer and an expensive one.
Ask the developer what annual costs come with their solution. If they cannot list them, you will only find out at the first hosting invoice, or at the first break-in on a site that was never updated. What happens to a website in the first months after handover is covered separately in our post on monitoring and maintenance after launch.
The domain must be registered to you or your company, not to the developer. A domain registered to an agency means that when you change developers, you have to ask them for permission to transfer your own address.
Who builds the website: freelancer, software house or agency
The type of provider moves the price less than you might think, but it changes what you are paying for. Each of the three models has cases where it is the best choice.
A freelancer has the lowest overhead, because they do not pay for an office, salespeople or project managers. You talk directly to the person building the site. There is one risk, and it is a serious one: if that person falls ill, disappears or changes career, you are left with a site only they understand. Before you hire one, check that you will get access to the code and the server, not just a working website.
An interactive agency usually combines graphic design, content, campaigns and the website. You pay for the coordination and for having everything in one place. The conversation usually goes through an account manager who passes on what was agreed, which lengthens the path from your question to the developer. A good choice when the website is part of a larger brand campaign.
A software house focuses on code and functionality. It makes sense when the site has unusual features or integrations, or will grow into an online store or a platform. It is less cost-effective when what you mainly need is a visual identity and copy, and the site is a simple business card. We are a software house, so this description applies to us too: if the most important thing in your project is a brand campaign rather than the site's features, an agency may be the better choice.
How to compare two quotes for the same website
You can only compare two offers once they describe the same scope. The simplest way is to send every developer the same enquiry and ask for a reply in the same format. Below is a list of what every quote should contain. A missing item is not a reason to reject an offer, just a question to ask. We cover reading quotes in more depth, including for larger projects, in our post on how to read a software house quote.
- Scope broken down into elements: the number of layouts, the list of features, integrations, language versions.
- The number of revision rounds or a time buffer for revisions, meaning what happens when you want to change something after seeing the design.
- A timeline with stages, not just an end date. Stages show when you will see the first results.
- A payment schedule tied to the stages.
- Rights to the code and the design: whether they pass to you in full or you get a licence to use them.
- Hosting and domain: where the site will live, who they are registered to, what they cost per year.
- What happens after handover: the warranty period, response to bugs, the cost of further changes.
- Who supplies the content and photos.
Once the offers are side by side, compare the scope first, then the terms, and the price last. An offer that is a third more expensive but includes testing, technical SEO and three months of bug response often works out cheaper than one where you have to buy each of those things separately after the site is delivered.
Be especially careful about code ownership when comparing. An offer that is a few hundred zloty cheaper but leaves the code as the developer's property means you will pay them for every future change, or rebuild the site from scratch. Hosting "included in the price" on the developer's server with no access for you works the same way: it is convenient until you want to change developers.
Warning signs in offers
A low price is not a problem in itself. The problem is offers that are cheap because they hide something. These are the signs that come up most often.
A price with no scope. An offer like "company website 1,500 PLN" without a list of what it includes leaves everything to be negotiated along the way. Anything you ask for later may turn out to be "out of scope".
No access to progress before the end. If throughout the project you see nothing but reassurances and get the first result at handover, revisions become expensive, because they concern things that are already finished. A test version of the site at a separate address, available from the first weeks, solves this.
A template sold as a bespoke design. Search for the theme name you find in the site's code, or compare the developer's portfolio with popular themes. A template is nothing bad, but it should be named and priced as a template.
A deadline too short for the scope described. A site with a custom design, a panel and integrations in three days means one of those elements will be missing or assembled from ready-made blocks. Ask what exactly will be built in that time.
No mention of what happens after handover. The first bugs usually appear in the first weeks, when the site gets real traffic. An offer that ends at "site delivered" does not say who will fix them or for how much.
How we price websites at VulCode
We have no fixed price list and no packages. We only publish "from" prices: Landing Page from 499 PLN, Company Website from 1,199 PLN, Panels & Dashboards from 699 PLN, Web Platforms from 899 PLN, Online Stores & E-commerce from 1,699 PLN, Mobile Apps from 749 PLN, Desktop Apps from 999 PLN, Integrations & Automation from 299 PLN. For a general outline of a project we give a price range, and a specific amount once the scope, deadline and requirements are agreed.
Quotes are free, and we reply to enquiries within an hour. You talk to the person who writes the code, so a question about whether a feature is simple or complicated gets an answer straight away, without being passed along. We usually split payment into three equal parts: a deposit at the start, the second part halfway through the project and the third on delivery.
The price includes a revision buffer equal to 15% of the project time, the same item you see in the sample calculation above. During the work you have access to the repository and a test version of the site, so you see progress as it happens, not only at handover. We sign an NDA on request.
After delivery you get full rights to the code and documentation that lets another developer take over the project. We deliver websites that score 95+ in PageSpeed Insights (how we measure that is shown in our post on Core Web Vitals in practice), and monitoring is free, usually for 90 days. We have been operating since 2020, have written over 5 million lines of code and contribute to dozens of open source projects. The scope of each service is described on the landing page, company website, online store and platform pages.
We also have ready-made platforms available on subscription. When your scope matches something that is already running, the subscription costs pennies relative to the value you get, compared with building the same thing from scratch. Ask about it when you request a quote.
What to prepare before you ask for a quote
The more specifics in your enquiry, the narrower the price range in the reply. You do not need a specification. It is enough to answer the questions below in your own words, and we will ask about the rest.
what the visitor should do: call, send a form, buy, book an appointment.
search engines, ads, referrals, social media. This changes the structure of the site.
even as bullet points, marking which ones look similar.
everything that reacts to the user: forms, calculators, bookings, payments, login.
the systems the site needs to connect to, by name if you know them.
what you have ready, what is missing, who will prepare it.
even a rough budget lets us propose a scope that fits within it, instead of a quote that exceeds it.
two or three sites you like, with a note on what exactly is good about them.
Points two and six are the ones most often missing. Knowing where the traffic will come from decides whether the site needs separate pages for search engines or a single page for a campaign. Knowing about the content decides the deadline more than the code does. If you do not know the answer to one of the questions, say so; that is information too.
With an enquiry like that, quoting stops being guesswork, and comparing offers from several developers starts to make sense, because everyone is pricing the same thing. If you would like us to quote your website, send a description through the contact form. We will reply within an hour, with a price range or with a list of questions without which any figure would just be a guess.
