What a custom website really costs (and what to insist on)

The four ranges

Almost everything sold in Portugal lands in one of four places. What separates them is not the page count — it is how much human work goes in.

• €0 to €150 — you build it yourself on Wix or Squarespace. You pay the subscription and your own time. Fine if you have patience, some eye for design, and work that can be explained in a few lines.
• €300 to €800 — a freelancer setting up a bought theme. Fast, and the result looks like a thousand other pages. Enough when the site is just a business card.
• €800 to €3,000 — a site designed around your work: your photos, your words and the things you actually need (a portfolio, a lesson programme, quote requests). This is where most of the worthwhile market sits.
• €3,000 and up — an agency with a team. Makes sense with a real online shop, a link to your management software, or many languages and many products.

What actually pushes the price up

Four things, in order of weight. None of them is the number of pages, which is what everyone asks about first.

• Content. Good photos of your work and written copy save hours. Without them, someone has to produce them — and professional photography is a separate service, not something bundled into a website.
• Features. A contact page is an afternoon. Paid sign-ups, a shop, bookings with confirmation or a student area are projects in their own right, quoted separately.
• Languages. Every extra language is more content to write, review and keep current when your prices or dates change.
• Integrations. Connecting the site to your invoicing, your calendar or your stock is where time disappears, because it depends on software that belongs neither to you nor to whoever builds the site.

The costs nobody puts in the quote

The price of the site is one payment. Having a site is a small but real ongoing cost. Add these up before deciding.

• Domain: €10 to €40 a year, depending on the extension (.pt tends to cost more than .com).
• Hosting: free to €30/month. A portfolio or services site fits comfortably in the cheap tiers.
• Email on your own domain: €5 to €7 per mailbox per month. Optional, but an address with your name on it reads differently to someone writing to you for the first time.
• Changes: new work, dates, lesson prices. Either you pay by the hour, or you have a monthly plan, or you can change it yourself — and that third option saves the most money over time.

What to insist on, whoever you hire

This applies to me and to anyone else you ask for a quote. If any of these answers is «no», the low price gets expensive later — usually on the day you want to switch providers.

• The domain registered in your name (and with your tax number), with the transfer code handed over whenever you ask.
• Your words, your photos and your work stay yours. Whoever builds the site uses them; they do not keep them.
• If you leave, the site leaves with you: the code handed over in a form someone else can put online.
• Your Google Business Profile, social accounts and ad accounts in your name, with whoever works for you added as a manager — never the other way round.
• If you pay a monthly fee, backups with a stated term: how long they are kept and who restores them.
• The price of a change after delivery, in writing, before you sign.

How to compare three quotes that look nothing alike

Ask everyone the same four questions. The answers explain the price gap better than any PDF proposal.

• Can I change prices, dates and photos myself, or do I have to call you?
• How many rounds of changes are included, and what does the next one cost?
• How much do I pay each year just to keep the site online, even if I change nothing?
• If I want a new site in a few years, is that a new project or is it included?

How I do it, so you have something to compare

Sites start at €547. On the Independente plan you pay once and there is no monthly fee: domain, hosting and email sit in your own accounts, and each change after delivery costs €75 an hour. The monthly plans add a panel where you change hours, products, address and social links yourself, backups, and someone watching that the site stays online.

On every plan, the domain is in your name and with your tax number, your content is yours, and the code is handed over once paid. A shop or paid sign-ups do not fit in this price: they are quoted separately, once I understand what you sell.