When someone asks for a website quote, the conversation almost always goes to design: how many pages, what colours, whether it can look like that other one. And design is the part whose cost is easiest to estimate. What actually wrecks quotes sits somewhere else.
Where the number comes from
A custom corporate site — Next.js, deployed to your own account, technical SEO done — starts at €2,500. A standalone landing page is less; a shop or an app with user accounts is considerably more.
That number doesn't come from a per-page rate. It comes from hours: working out what the site has to do, building the structure, writing the code, testing on a real phone, deploying and documenting it. A well-built five-page site is 35 to 50 hours. If someone offers it for €600, they aren't working fewer hours: they're using a template, and that's a different product with its own fair price.
The five things that move the quote
Languages. It isn't translation: it's that every URL has its counterpart, its hreflang tags, its sitemap entry and content that has to stay in sync. A second language doesn't add 20% to the work, it adds closer to 40%, and from the third onwards the cost lives in maintenance rather than in the build.
Integrations. A form that sends an email is half an hour. A form that creates a CRM record, pings Slack, checks the address isn't disposable and stores consent with a timestamp is something else.
Every system the site talks to is a point that can fail and has to be tested.
Who writes the copy. This is the line item that wrecks the most quotes and the one nobody budgets. If the copy arrives written, the site moves. If it has to be written, that's a job in itself — usually the slowest one, because it depends on decisions only the client can make. Decide this before starting, not halfway through.
How many review rounds there are. Two rounds is healthy. Six means it was never clear what was wanted, and someone pays for that. I close it in writing: two rounds included, the third is quoted. That isn't rigidity, it's what stops a one-month project becoming a four-month one.
Whether someone needs to edit it without touching code. This is the most requested and least budgeted item. For you to change a paragraph or publish an article, there has to be a content system, content types have to be modelled, and they have to be guarded so one mistake doesn't break the page. It's a cost decision, not a small extra: it can add a third to the project, and sometimes it isn't worth it if you'll touch the site twice a year.
What shouldn't cost you extra
That it's fast. That it works on a phone. That it has its metadata, sitemap and structured data. That it's usable with a keyboard and a screen reader. Those aren't add-ons: that's doing the job.
If they appear as a separate line, ask what the main line includes then.
The question that really sets the price
Not "how many pages" but what has to happen when someone arrives. A site that only has to exist so people can find you is one project. A site that has to get people to write to you is another, because then the path, the objections and the call to action have to be thought through, and that's strategy work before it's code.
When someone tells me "I want something simple" they usually mean the first. That's fine — but say so, because the quote changes.
How to get your own figure
Four answers give a reliable range: how many languages, what systems it has to talk to, who writes the copy, and whether you'll want to edit it yourself.
Send me those four and I'll give you a range the same day. What I actually deliver is in web development, and if what worries you is ending up tied to a tool, that has its own piece.