How much should a website actually cost? A UX designer explains.

Few questions cause more confusion in the small business world than this one. You ask three different agencies and get three completely different numbers. Someone on LinkedIn tells you a website should cost €500. A colleague paid €15,000. Both are telling the truth. The problem is that "a website" is not one thing, and the price you should pay depends entirely on what you actually need it to do.

This article breaks down what drives website costs in the Netherlands in 2025, what you should expect at each price point, and the question nobody asks but everyone should: what is the cost of getting this wrong?

The Dutch market in 2025: what prices actually look like

Based on market research across the Dutch web design industry, website costs in the Netherlands fall into broadly consistent ranges depending on scope and provider type.

What actually drives the price

Price in web design is primarily a function of four variables: scope, customisation, who you hire, and how much strategic thinking is included in the process.

Scope

More pages, more features, more integrations — more cost. A five-page business website with a contact form is a very different project from a fifteen-page site with a blog, a booking system, a CRM integration, and a multilingual setup. Both are "a website." Neither costs the same.

Template vs. custom design

A template-based site starts from a pre-built structure and costs less because much of the layout problem has already been solved. A custom design starts from your brand, your users, and your business goals. It takes longer, costs more, and tends to perform better in conversion because it was built for your specific audience rather than adapted from a generic one.

Who you hire

In the Netherlands, web designers in Amsterdam earn an average of around €35,000 per year, putting typical hourly rates around €20–€45 for employed designers and higher for experienced freelancers. Agencies add coordination, quality assurance, and team depth, but also overhead. A senior freelance UX/UI designer in the Netherlands will typically charge between €65 and €120 per hour depending on experience and specialisation.

Strategy and UX thinking

This is the variable most clients do not realise they are paying for, or not paying for. A website built without UX research, user journey mapping, or conversion strategy is cheaper upfront and more expensive over time. Research consistently shows that the cost of fixing UX problems after launch is roughly ten times higher than addressing them before or during the design phase. The strategic layer is not padding. It is the work that determines whether the finished site actually generates business.

"A website that costs €8,000 and converts 3% of its visitors is worth more than a €2,000 site that converts 0.5%. Focus on outcome, not invoice." Engaging UX Design

The costs people forget to budget for

The design and build fee is only part of the total investment. A realistic website budget in the Netherlands also includes domain registration (around €10–€20 per year), hosting (€5–€50 per month depending on spec), ongoing maintenance, and content updates. Dutch web agency 2manydots recommends reserving approximately 8% of annual revenue for website and digital marketing as a standing budget. For a business turning over €200,000 per year, that is €16,000 — a figure that covers design, ongoing optimisation, SEO, and content.

The question you should actually be asking

Most people approach website pricing by asking: what is the cheapest I can get this for? The more useful question is: what does this website need to generate in leads or revenue to pay for itself, and what investment level makes that achievable?

A €1,000 website that generates no leads is infinitely more expensive than a €3,500 website that brings in two new clients per month. The cost of a website is not what you pay for it. It is what it costs you when it does not work.