“What does a website cost?” is the question at the start of almost every project — and the least useful one. It asks for a single number, and that number does not exist, because it depends on scope, on the state of your existing content and on how the site is run. Planning a budget works differently from comparing quotes: you look at three years, at two clearly separated pots, and you treat your own working time as a full budget line. This article shows which item belongs in which pot, where budgets typically run away during a project, where saving money pays off — and where it comes back to bite you.
A quote is not a budget
A quote answers one question: what does it cost to build the pages? A budget answers three. First, what does the build cost? Second, what does running the site cost, year after year, even when nobody orders anything new? Third, how much of your own working time does the website tie up in daily business — and what is that time worth in your company? Anyone asking only the first question ends up comparing quotes that contain different things, and is surprised in year two by invoices nobody had planned for.
The financial frame around this decision becomes visible in German mid-market digitalisation spending. In 2024, mid-market companies spent a combined 23.8 billion euros (KfW Research, KfW Digitalisation Report 2025) on digitalisation projects — down from 31.9 billion euros (KfW Research) the year before, a decline of 8.1 billion euros (KfW Research). The share of companies that completed digitalisation projects stands at 30 percent (KfW Research), five percentage points below the previous survey, which corresponds to just under 1.2 million (KfW Research) companies. In those figures the website is only one item among many — but it is the item customers see first.
Tasks live elsewhere, this is about money
Quoted price
The figure in the offer. It describes a defined scope at a point in time — and on its own says little about what the website costs across its useful life.
Three-year total
The build plus every recurring item plus your own working time. Only that sum can be compared with other operating expenses and weighed against the expected benefit.
Your own effort
Copy, photos, approvals, upkeep. This work appears in no quote but reliably occurs — which is why a budget records it as hours and as an amount, not as goodwill.
Pot one: what you pay once
The first pot holds everything tied to the build that does not recur afterwards. It is larger than most people assume, because it covers not only the technical work but every piece of preparation that makes a project possible at all. Leaving that preparation out of the plan does not remove it — it simply moves it into your own hours or into change requests.
- Concept and page structure: Which pages exist, in what order do they lead to an enquiry, which content belongs together? This work takes a few days and determines the effort of every step that follows.
- Copy: Every page needs content that describes your service. Written, edited or reworked from existing documents — the item exists even when the quote does not mention it.
- Photos: Your own shots of the team, the premises and the work. Shoot, selection, editing and rights clearance form a separate item that stock imagery does not replace.
- Building the pages: Implementing structure, design, content and forms, including checks on different devices.
- Legal pages and consent: Imprint, privacy policy, where applicable withdrawal terms and general terms, plus the consent solution for anything that loads third-party data.
- Migrating old content: Reviewing, discarding and transferring text, images, references and downloads from the previous site. The effort depends less on volume than on how orderly the old stock is.
- Redirects when moving: Every old address that is linked externally or listed in search results needs a target on the new site. Without that list, visibility you already had disappears.
Two of these items are routinely underestimated. The first is the legal pages: they are not a form you fill in once but depend on what actually happens on the site — which forms exist, which external content is loaded, who receives the data. What belongs in them is described in the article on imprint and privacy policy for a business website. The second is redirects: replacing an existing site without a clean mapping loses exactly the addresses that used to bring enquiries — the article on relaunching without losing rankings explains how that list is built.
The rule for the one-off pot
Pot two: what returns every year
The second pot contains everything that occurs while the website is online. Individually these items are small and, as a set, easy to plan — provided they appear on a list at all. In practice they are scattered: the domain on a card statement, the hosting on a direct debit, the mailboxes with the phone provider, the upkeep in nobody's calendar.
Domain
The address itself, due annually, plus any spelling variants and additional endings. A small item, but it has a due date and a contract partner — both worth knowing.
Hosting and certificate
Storage, delivery and the certificate for the encrypted connection. Billed monthly or annually depending on the setup, and strongly dependent on how the site is technically delivered.
Mailboxes
Business addresses on your own domain, usually charged per mailbox. The item grows with the team and is often booked against the phone bill rather than the website.
Maintenance and updates
Updates for the system and its extensions, checks after changes, restore points. The effort is directly tied to the number of extensions in use.
Analytics
Figures on visits, enquiries and search terms — the basis for deciding on content in year two instead of guessing. How that turns into decisions is shown in the article on using search query data.
Ads, optional
Paid advertising is not part of the website budget but is readily mixed into it. It belongs on its own line with its own measurement, so the website is not held liable for ad spend.
That a business address of your own has long been standard is visible in the domain stock: the 18 millionth .de domain was registered in June 2026 (DENIC eG), after around 17.7 million (DENIC eG) at the end of 2025. Recurring contracts for digital services have become normal too — 54 percent (Federal Statistical Office, ICT usage in enterprises 2025) of companies with at least ten employees used paid cloud computing services in 2025. Knowing these items means planning them; not knowing them means paying them anyway. Which contracts sit behind address and mailbox is covered in the basics on domains and business email.
Recurring items have due dates — write them down
The item almost no quote contains
Your own working time is the most frequently overlooked item in a website budget — and in small companies often the largest one after the build. That time really is scarce is confirmed in practice: 72 percent (Bitkom, study report on digitalisation in the skilled trades 2025) of trade businesses say they are too busy in daily operations to engage more deeply with digitalisation. At the same time 69 percent (Bitkom) name high investment costs as an obstacle — the combination of little time and cost concerns is why upkeep slides and a larger catch-up item builds up later.
To make your own time visible in the budget, it needs an amount. Labour costs are a solid anchor: companies in German manufacturing and services paid an average of 45.00 euros (Federal Statistical Office) per hour worked in 2025, up 3.6 percent (Federal Statistical Office) on the previous year; the EU average was 34.90 euros (Federal Statistical Office). If you have calculated your own internal hourly rate, use that one — the figure here only serves to open the calculation at all.
The example calculation that settles a lot
The point of this calculation is not to inflate the value of your own work. It is to make two offers comparable that assume different amounts of in-house effort. A cheaper build that demands four hours of upkeep a month can cost more over three years than a higher build price with one hour. And the calculation shows which tasks are worth outsourcing or removing technically — for instance technical updates, which do not occur on the customer side at all when pages are delivered centrally.
Relative to their size, small companies spend above-average amounts on digitalisation and are therefore burdened more heavily by digitalisation costs than larger companies.
Orders of magnitude: what companies spend on digitalisation
A budget needs a yardstick, otherwise every figure looks either too high or too low. The KfW Mittelstand panel provides one. On average, digitally active mid-market companies spent around 25,000 euros (KfW Research) on digitalisation in 2024. The spread by size is considerable: companies with fewer than five employees averaged just under 10,000 euros (KfW Research), companies with 50 or more employees just under 189,000 euros (KfW Research) — 19 times (KfW Research) as much. Sector matters too: construction sits at just under 11,000 euros (KfW Research), manufacturing at just under 60,000 euros (KfW Research).
| Group | Average digitalisation spending 2024 | What it means for website planning |
|---|---|---|
| Mid-market overall | around 25,000 euros (KfW Research) | The average across all sizes and sectors. As guidance for a single company it is limited, because large firms pull the value upwards. |
| Fewer than 5 employees | just under 10,000 euros (KfW Research) | In this class the digital budget is shared between merchandise management, accounting, devices and the website. A four-figure annual frame for build and operation together is the realistic reading. |
| 50 or more employees | just under 189,000 euros (KfW Research) | Processes, interfaces and specialist applications dominate here. The website is a small part of the budget — and still often the part discussed for the shortest time. |
| Construction | just under 11,000 euros (KfW Research) | A figure that shows how tight digital budgets are in order-heavy trades. Separating the one-off build from running costs matters all the more. |
| Manufacturing | just under 60,000 euros (KfW Research) | The highest spending, largely for production and machinery. For the website that means competing internally with investments that directly create capacity. |
| Knowledge-based services | around 24,000 euros (KfW Research) | Here the website is frequently the central sales channel. A larger share of the digital budget on the website is easier to justify in this group. |
Two qualifications matter. First, these are figures for all digitalisation, not for websites — the website sits alongside merchandise management, accounting, point of sale, devices and software. Second, companies with fewer than five employees account for 5.5 billion euros (KfW Research), just under a quarter of mid-market digitalisation spending, although they make up 81 percent (KfW Research) of all mid-market companies. Small businesses do invest — in smaller steps and at less regular intervals.
How to use these figures
The three-year calculation on one sheet
Now the plan can be assembled. The table below contains no prices but positions: it is the template you fill with your own amounts. The value lies in columns three and four — they show when an item falls due and what pushes it upwards during a project.
| Position | Pot | When due | What drives the amount up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Concept and page structure | one-off | before the build | Structural changes after sign-off, because they touch every following step |
| Copy | one-off | before the build | Text written during the build instead of being ready beforehand |
| Photos | one-off | before the build | Missing subjects, short-notice appointments, unclear usage rights |
| Building the pages | one-off | project phase | Special functions that were not part of the original scope |
| Legal pages and consent | one-off, then upkeep | before launch | External services that require consent, and later changes to them |
| Old content and redirects | one-off | when moving | Grown legacy content without order and a missing address list for the old site |
| Domain | ongoing | annually | Additional spellings and further endings |
| Hosting and certificate | ongoing | monthly or annually | Additional environments, larger data volumes, special requirements |
| Mailboxes | ongoing | monthly or annually | A growing number of addresses, larger mailboxes, archiving |
| Maintenance and updates | ongoing | continuous | Number of extensions in the system and how often they need updating |
| Your own upkeep time | ongoing | monthly | Number of changes, unclear responsibility, cumbersome editing |
| Analytics | ongoing | continuous | Extra reports and evaluations that nobody reads |
Once the amounts are in, calculate year one as the sum of the one-off pot and the ongoing pot, and years two and three from the ongoing pot alone. In our experience the ongoing share over three years frequently reaches the order of magnitude of the one-off build (project experience) — higher for sites with many extensions and heavy upkeep, lower for centrally delivered sites where only content is maintained. That is precisely why comparing two offers on the build price alone is so unreliable; the comparison of the different approaches makes the difference visible.
Where budgets run away
Budget overruns rarely come from one big mistake; they follow the same five patterns almost throughout. What those patterns share is that they start quietly and only become visible once the effort has already been spent. Knowing them means you can defuse them in advance — usually with an agreement rather than with money.
Late requests without a quote
An extra page here, a rearrangement there — small individually, a second project in total. Without a short written confirmation per change, both sides lack a basis at the end.
Missing photos
The most common reason projects stall for weeks. A photo session is plannable and affordable; a project waiting three months for images costs deadlines, attention and extra coordination.
Unclear approvals
When three people comment without an agreed order, contradictory change requests appear. One named person with decision authority and a deadline per round saves more money than any discount.
Special functions
Calculators, booking flows, customer areas, interfaces to merchandise systems. Each is a small project with its own maintenance — and therefore belongs in its own quote, not in a side note.
Rebuilding instead of restarting
Recreating the old site one to one looks thrifty and rarely is: you pay for implementing grown special cases nobody needs any more, and carry old weaknesses along.
Changes by shout
Requests arriving in parallel by phone, message and email create duplicate work and follow-up questions. A single collection point for changes is the cheapest building block in the whole project.
The sentence that saves budgets
The last point deserves its own remark, because it holds the most expensive misunderstanding. “Exactly like before, just more modern” sounds like the thriftiest route and often is not: a rebuild transfers every grown exception into a new system and makes implementation more expensive than a clear structure with fewer pages. Whether a new site is the right step at all, or whether a revision is enough, is covered in the article on when a new website is worth it.
Where saving money pays off
Saving is no flaw as long as it happens in the right place. The right place is where less effort creates no later repair. Four approaches work reliably in small companies — and one of them does not just save money but improves the result.
- Templates instead of bespoke design: A tested template brings structure, readability and mobile usability with it. Paying extra for a bespoke design is worth it when a genuine differentiator has to be visible — not as a default item.
- Your own photos instead of a production: Shots of real work, real rooms and real people look verifiable and cost little. Which subjects and rights to watch for is covered in the article on photos, image rights and suitable subjects.
- A few complete pages instead of many empty ones: Five finished pages beat fifteen half-finished ones. Which pages are genuinely needed is clarified in the overview of which pages a business website needs.
- Supply raw text yourself: Bullet points, process descriptions and typical customer questions from your business are worth more to the copywriting than any research — and shorten it considerably.
- Add functions later: Booking, customer areas or calculators can be retrofitted once the core site brings enquiries. Before that they are a bet on usage nobody has measured.
- One provider instead of four contracts: Sourcing domain, delivery, mailbox and analytics from four places means four base fees and four contacts to coordinate.
Which route fits which business — template, guided project or an AI-supported build — depends less on price than on available in-house time and on how complex the services are. The differences are described in the comparison of the ways a website can come into being. For a first impression of finished sites, the demos are the quickest route.
Where saving money gets expensive later
Four items are poorly suited to saving, because their absence only shows when the correction costs a multiple. What they share is that they look inconspicuous in a quote and, in the worst case, affect the business rather than just the website.
Legal pages
Imprint and privacy policy have to match what actually happens on the site. A copied template that names services which do not exist, or omits ones that are loaded, creates a risk that little effort would avoid.
Accessibility
Accessibility retrofitted later costs more than accessibility designed in, because colours, structure and operability then affect every page. What the German Accessibility Strengthening Act requires is described in the article on the BFSG.
Loading time
A slow site does not cost an invoice, it costs enquiries. It can be improved later, but the causes often lie in how the site is delivered — a decision taken at the very beginning.
Backup and restore
A backup that has not yet been restored is an assumption. The test takes an hour a year; its absence can mean rebuilding all content from scratch.
On the legal side the situation is clear enough for a budget decision. The German Accessibility Strengthening Act has applied since 28 June 2025 (BFSG) and covers certain digital services offered to consumers; micro-enterprises with fewer than ten employees and at most two million euros in annual turnover or balance sheet total are exempt for services (BFSG, section 3). Fines can reach 100,000 euros (BFSG, section 37), although in practice deadlines and remediation come first. For planning that means: check whether the exemption applies — and treat the requirements as a quality feature anyway, because they improve usability for everyone.
On the technical side a sober look at self-assessment helps. Small and medium-sized companies meet on average only about 56 percent (BSI, The State of IT Security in Germany 2025) of the basic IT security requirements, while 91 percent (BSI) rate their own security as good. That gap is why backups and updates belong in a budget even though they produce no visible benefit; how to keep the attack surface small is described in the article on the attack surface of a website. The same logic applies to loading time: the delivery model determines effort and outcome, as the article on PageSpeed and static delivery shows.
Public funding: check yes, budget only after approval
There are funding schemes for digitalisation projects from the federal government, the states and the chambers of commerce; their scope, conditions and terms change regularly, and not every programme covers website projects. The KfW digitalisation report notes that funding currently focuses mainly on advanced innovation, while support for moving digital solutions into broad application is more limited (KfW Research). For small businesses that means the route runs via the responsible state development bank and the local chamber of commerce or chamber of skilled crafts — that is where the current state of play is known, and where you learn whether a specific project qualifies.
Two rules that save trouble
From budget to decision
At the end of the planning there is no price but a basis for a decision: two pots, three years, one line for your own time. With that sheet you can examine any quote, because every position can be assigned — and because gaps become obvious immediately. The following questions are the shortest route from a quote to a reliable annual figure.
- Which items from the one-off pot are included — and which are explicitly not?
- What does operation cost in years two and three if nothing new is commissioned?
- Who maintains content, with how many hours a month, and what is that time worth internally?
- Are domain, delivery, certificate, mailboxes and analytics included or commissioned separately?
- How are change requests after sign-off handled and how are they invoiced?
- What happens to content and addresses if the provider or the system is changed later?
This is exactly where XICflow starts. The plans are published openly, and delivery, certificate, domain connection and visitor analytics are included in the running price; legal pages are created for each site and maintained with it. That keeps the ongoing pot a known quantity instead of a collection of separate invoices — and your own upkeep time stays limited to content, because technical updates run centrally. What is included in detail is set out under features and in the overview of plans and pricing. If you would like to walk through your three-year calculation together, contact is the shortest way there.
And then comes the least spectacular part of this exercise. A budget that works in year one is not yet a good budget. It is good when it holds up in year three, because the recurring items were known and your own time was counted. What the matching routine looks like day to day is set out in the upkeep plan for small businesses — this article has simply put amounts against it.
Sources and studies