The hidden cost of cheap websites — and how to spot it before you sign

Every few weeks a business owner forwards us a quote from a competitor and asks the same question: "Why is theirs €500 and yours €4,000?"

It is a fair question and the honest answer is: a €500 website is a different product. Not a worse version of the same product — a categorically different one. This post is an attempt to explain what is actually in the box of the cheap option, and what you will end up paying for separately later.

What the cheap quote usually includes

• A free or low-cost template.
• A few hours of content placement.
• Hosting on a shared platform with monthly fees.

That is it. If the quote is under €1,000 and there is no breakdown, this is almost certainly the shape of it.

What it leaves out

In rough order of how much it will cost you to add back in:

1. Performance

Cheap templates load four to ten times more JavaScript than they need to. Google has been ranking on Core Web Vitals since 2021. Your competitor on a well-built site is two ranks above you on every relevant search — not because of magic SEO, just because their page renders in under a second.

The fix later: replatform. Cost: more than building it right the first time.

2. Conversion

Templates are designed to look like websites. They are not designed to convert the specific kind of visitor your specific business gets. The cheap site will look fine and convert at 0.4%. A purpose-built one converts at 2-4%.

The math is brutal. At 2,000 visitors a month, that is the difference between 8 leads and 60.

3. Accessibility

The template author was not thinking about your customer with low vision. Roughly 1 in 5 people has some visual impairment — that is 20% of your audience the cheap site is actively turning away. It is also a legal issue in an increasing number of jurisdictions.

4. SEO foundations

Proper title hierarchies, structured data, an actual sitemap, fast image formats, semantic HTML. None of this is in the box. Adding it later means re-doing about half the build.

A sane buyer's checklist

Before you sign any website contract, ask:

• "Can I see a Lighthouse report for a site you have already shipped?" (Numbers should be above 90 across all four categories, and you should expect a defensive answer if they are not.)
• "Will the source be in my own git account when we are done?" (If no, you do not actually own the website.)
• "What is your plan for performance on the slowest 5% of devices my customers use?" (A vague answer here is the tell.)

A €500 website is fine for a hobby. For a business that depends on its web presence, the cheap option is the expensive option with a delay.