It’s the first question almost everyone asks us. Fair enough. A website is a real investment, and the prices you see online are all over the place. One company says €800. Another says €25,000. Both might be telling the truth.
The difference is rarely the design. It’s everything around it. The research before anyone opens a design file. The setup nobody sees. The thinking about who your customers are and what will convince them to pick up the phone.
So here’s how it actually breaks down. What a website costs in Ireland in 2026, and what a proper quote should actually include.
The short answer
Across the Irish market, you’ll typically see something like this:
- DIY or template builders: a few hundred euro a year. You do the work.
- A bespoke marketing site from an agency: roughly €6,000–€15,000.
- An online shop: roughly €8,000–€25,000, depending on products and integrations.
- Custom builds with bookings, calculators or customer areas: €20,000 and up.
Treat those as ballparks, not quotes. Two websites at the same price can be completely different investments. What matters is what’s included.
What a proper quote should cover
Here’s what goes into a website that actually brings in business. Most people don’t realise half of it exists until something goes wrong. When you’re comparing quotes, check each one against this list.
1. Strategy
Before anything else, someone should ask what the website is for. More enquiries? Online bookings? Sales outside your area? Recruitment? The answer shapes every decision after it. Without a strategy, you get a website that looks nice and does very little.
2. Keyword research
What are your customers actually typing into Google? Often it’s not what you call your services internally. A garden room company might call it a “modular studio”. Customers search “garden office”. Keyword research finds the real words people use, how many search for them, and how hard they are to rank for. Your pages get built around that demand, not guesswork. It’s also the starting point for SEO.
3. Understanding your customer
Who’s coming to your site, and what’s on their mind? What are they worried about? What have they read in reviews, about you and your competitors? What makes them trust a business, and what puts them off? Consumer sentiment shapes the words, the images and the proof that go on every page. Get it wrong and even a beautiful site falls flat.
4. What they’re looking for on the site
Every visitor arrives with a question. How much does it cost? Do you cover my area? How long will it take? Can I see examples? A good site answers those questions quickly, in the order people ask them. That means planning the structure and the journey through the site before any design starts.
5. Convincing them, at every stage
Not everyone who visits is ready to buy. Some are just starting to look. Others are comparing you with two competitors. A few are ready to book today.
- Top of the funnel: people researching the problem. They need helpful guides and answers, not a hard sell.
- Middle of the funnel: people weighing up options. They need case studies, reviews, clear pricing signals and reasons to choose you.
- Bottom of the funnel: people ready to act. They need a clear, easy next step and nothing in the way.
A site built for all three stages catches people early and is still there when they’re ready. A site built only for the last stage misses most of them.
6. The enquiry process
What happens when someone fills in your form? Where does it go? Who sees it? How fast? Can they book a call or a time slot directly? Small details here make a big difference. A form with too many fields loses people. A form that lands in an inbox nobody checks loses even more.
7. Sales follow-up
The website’s job doesn’t end at the enquiry. Does the lead go straight into your CRM? Does the customer get a confirmation that sounds like a person? Is there a follow-up if nobody replies? Can you see which enquiries turned into sales, and where they came from? This is where a lot of businesses quietly lose money they’ve already spent to win.
8. Foundational setup
The things you’ll never see but will definitely notice if they’re missing. Analytics and conversion tracking, so you know what’s working. Google Search Console. Your Google Business Profile connected and consistent. Structured data, so search engines and AI assistants understand your business. Redirects from your old site, so you don’t lose the Google rankings you’ve built. We’ve seen businesses lose half their traffic overnight because nobody set those up.
9. Hosting
Where your site lives affects how fast it loads, how often it goes down, and how well it ranks. Cheap shared hosting can make a good site feel slow. Ask where it’ll be hosted, what it costs each year, and who looks after it.
10. Security
Websites get attacked every day, mostly by automated bots looking for an easy way in. Security updates, backups, SSL and protection on your forms aren’t optional extras. Ask who’s responsible for them after launch, and what happens if something goes wrong.
11. Speed and accessibility
A slow site loses visitors before it’s even loaded, and Google ranks it lower. A site that’s hard to use with a screen reader or on a small phone shuts people out. Both should be checked before launch, not fixed afterwards.
12. Content and photography
Somebody has to write the words and supply the images. Good copy and real photos do more for enquiries than almost anything else on the page. If they’re not in the quote, budget for them separately.
13. Life after launch
What does it cost to make a change once the site is live, and how long does it take? A lot of web companies make most of their money on support. Every small change becomes a ticket, and every ticket becomes an invoice. We’d rather your team could make everyday changes themselves, with us there for the bigger jobs. Whoever you go with, ask the question up front. Our website care page covers what ongoing upkeep should look like.
Why the cheapest quote is rarely the cheapest
When you line up three quotes, it’s tempting to go with the lowest. But a quote that leaves out half of the list above isn’t cheaper. It’s just incomplete.
The missing pieces show up later. No keyword research, so nobody finds the site. No tracking, so you can’t tell what’s working. No enquiry process, so leads go cold. Then you’re paying again to fix it, or rebuilding a few years early.
A good quote should be specific. It should say what’s included, what isn’t, and how you’ll know it’s working. If an agency can’t explain how each part of their price brings in business, keep looking.
What else affects the price
How many page types, not how many pages. A site with 40 blog posts isn’t 40 times the work. A site with eight different page layouts is.
Selling online. Checkout, stock, shipping and payments add real work. On a platform like Shopify much of it comes built in. We’ve written a plain guide to Shopify in Ireland if you’re weighing it up.
Integrations. Booking systems, CRMs, quote calculators, stock feeds. When we built the new Modern Tyres site, customers needed to go from a reg number to a booked fitting at one of 80 depots in a few minutes. That’s a very different build to a simple marketing site, and it’s priced like one.
The platform. WordPress, Shopify and custom code all cost differently to build and to run. We compare all three, side by side, on our website design and build page.
Questions to ask before you sign
- Is there a strategy phase, and what comes out of it?
- Is keyword research included?
- How will the site speak to people at each stage, from researching to ready to buy?
- What happens to an enquiry after someone hits send?
- What’s included in the setup: tracking, Search Console, redirects, structured data?
- Where is it hosted, and who looks after security and backups?
- What does a change cost after launch, and how long does it take?
- How will we measure whether it’s working?
Can you get help paying for it?
Possibly. Small Irish businesses can apply for the Trading Online Voucher through their Local Enterprise Office, which covers up to half of eligible costs to a ceiling of €2,500. We’ve put together a guide to the Trading Online Voucher and other grants with the current rules.
The bottom line
A website should pay for itself in enquiries, bookings or sales. Price matters, but what you get back matters more. Shomera’s site now gets 56% of its visits from organic search. That’s the kind of return worth budgeting for, and it comes from the work most quotes leave out.
Tell us what you’re working on. We’ll scope it properly, cover everything on this list, and come back with a clear quote. Get in touch.
