More insights.
Subscribe to our newsletter.
Deep dives into design thinking, creative process, and the intersection of business and aesthetics.
They are just cheap on day one.
You can buy a website for €500. You can probably find someone on a freelancer marketplace to do it for €200. On the surface, it looks like a bargain. You get a URL, a logo, and a contact form. You tick the box marked "Digital Presence" and move on.
But in business, there is no such thing as a free lunch, and there is definitely no such thing as a high-performance €500 website.
That low price tag is a mirage. It is merely the down payment on a debt you will pay every single day in lost revenue, wasted time, and damaged reputation. The €500 website is not an asset; it is a liability masquerading as a bargain.
The real cost: Launch Price vs. Ownership Price
We need to distinguish between "Launch Price" (what you pay the invoice for) and "Ownership Price" (what the asset costs you over two years).
A cheap site has a low Launch Price but an astronomical Ownership Price.
The Build Cost: Small.
The Opportunity Cost: Massive. This is the revenue you lose because the site is slow, ugly, or broken.
The Rebuild Cost: Inevitable. Cheap sites usually break or become unmanageable within 18 months, forcing you to pay for the whole project again.
If you pay €500 for a site that loses you one €10,000 client, that website didn't cost €500. It cost €10,500.
The hidden invoice: where revenue leaks
The damage of a cheap website is rarely a catastrophic explosion. It is a slow, silent leak. You don't see the clients you lost. You don't see the enquiries that never happened.
Friction that kills enquiries Cheap builds rely on bloated themes and unoptimised servers. If your site takes 4 seconds to load on a mobile device, 30% of your visitors leave before they see your logo. If your contact form is clunky or asks for too much info, they abandon the process. These are silent exits.
The "Reputation Tax" There is a concept called "Cognitive Dissonance." If you are selling a premium service—say, a €50,000 consultancy package—but your website looks like a school project, the buyer’s brain sounds an alarm. They cannot reconcile your high price with your low-quality presentation. They lose trust before they ever speak to you. You are paying a "Reputation Tax" on every single lead.
Sales Drag A bad website creates work for your sales team. They have to work harder to prove credibility because the website has already undermined it. They spend the first ten minutes of the call digging themselves out of a hole.
Why cheap sites collapse within 18 months
Why do these sites fail so reliably? It comes down to engineering.
No Content Model Cheap sites are often "hard-coded" or built with visual page builders where the design and the content are glued together. If you want to change a headline, you might break the layout. If you want to change the footer date, you have to do it manually on 20 pages. The site becomes so fragile that you stop updating it.
Template Lock-In The developer likely used a rigid template to save time. This works fine until you need a feature the template doesn't support. Want to add a "Case Studies" section? You can't, because the template only supports "Blog Posts." You are locked in.
Plugin Sprawl To add features without writing code, the budget developer installs plugins. One for the slider, one for the form, one for the gallery. Soon, you have 30 plugins. They conflict. They break. They open security holes. The site slows to a crawl.
The minimum viable standard for a serious site
If you are a serious business, you need to set a baseline. Below this line, the project is not viable.
Performance Budget: The site must score 90+ on Core Web Vitals. Speed is not a luxury; it is a ranking factor.
Accessibility Baseline: It must pass WCAG AA standards. This protects you from legal risk and ensures the site works for everyone.
Modular Components: The site should be built with a "Design System" approach, where reusable blocks can be reordered without breaking the code.
A smarter budgeting framework
Stop budgeting for "pages." Budget for "outcomes."
Don't ask: "How much for a 5-page site?" Ask: "How much to build a platform that decreases our cost per lead by 20%?"
When you pay for "Good," you are buying:
Speed: Which improves SEO and conversion.
Clarity: Which shortens sales cycles.
Maintainability: Which means you don't have to rebuild the site in two years.
Ownership: You get a system you can actually control.
The buyer’s checklist that exposes shortcuts
If you are vetting an agency and the price seems too good to be true, ask these three questions. The answers will tell you everything.
"How will we add new services next year without redesigning the pages?" (If they say "we'll just clone a page," run. They haven't built a system.)
"How do you prove performance and accessibility are correct?" (Demand a Lighthouse audit or a specific report. If they don't know what that is, they are amateurs.)
"Who owns the system?" (Ensure you aren't renting a proprietary builder that you can never leave.)
A website is the only salesperson who works 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Paying them minimum wage is a strategic error.
They are just cheap on day one.
You can buy a website for €500. You can probably find someone on a freelancer marketplace to do it for €200. On the surface, it looks like a bargain. You get a URL, a logo, and a contact form. You tick the box marked "Digital Presence" and move on.
But in business, there is no such thing as a free lunch, and there is definitely no such thing as a high-performance €500 website.
That low price tag is a mirage. It is merely the down payment on a debt you will pay every single day in lost revenue, wasted time, and damaged reputation. The €500 website is not an asset; it is a liability masquerading as a bargain.
The real cost: Launch Price vs. Ownership Price
We need to distinguish between "Launch Price" (what you pay the invoice for) and "Ownership Price" (what the asset costs you over two years).
A cheap site has a low Launch Price but an astronomical Ownership Price.
The Build Cost: Small.
The Opportunity Cost: Massive. This is the revenue you lose because the site is slow, ugly, or broken.
The Rebuild Cost: Inevitable. Cheap sites usually break or become unmanageable within 18 months, forcing you to pay for the whole project again.
If you pay €500 for a site that loses you one €10,000 client, that website didn't cost €500. It cost €10,500.
The hidden invoice: where revenue leaks
The damage of a cheap website is rarely a catastrophic explosion. It is a slow, silent leak. You don't see the clients you lost. You don't see the enquiries that never happened.
Friction that kills enquiries Cheap builds rely on bloated themes and unoptimised servers. If your site takes 4 seconds to load on a mobile device, 30% of your visitors leave before they see your logo. If your contact form is clunky or asks for too much info, they abandon the process. These are silent exits.
The "Reputation Tax" There is a concept called "Cognitive Dissonance." If you are selling a premium service—say, a €50,000 consultancy package—but your website looks like a school project, the buyer’s brain sounds an alarm. They cannot reconcile your high price with your low-quality presentation. They lose trust before they ever speak to you. You are paying a "Reputation Tax" on every single lead.
Sales Drag A bad website creates work for your sales team. They have to work harder to prove credibility because the website has already undermined it. They spend the first ten minutes of the call digging themselves out of a hole.
Why cheap sites collapse within 18 months
Why do these sites fail so reliably? It comes down to engineering.
No Content Model Cheap sites are often "hard-coded" or built with visual page builders where the design and the content are glued together. If you want to change a headline, you might break the layout. If you want to change the footer date, you have to do it manually on 20 pages. The site becomes so fragile that you stop updating it.
Template Lock-In The developer likely used a rigid template to save time. This works fine until you need a feature the template doesn't support. Want to add a "Case Studies" section? You can't, because the template only supports "Blog Posts." You are locked in.
Plugin Sprawl To add features without writing code, the budget developer installs plugins. One for the slider, one for the form, one for the gallery. Soon, you have 30 plugins. They conflict. They break. They open security holes. The site slows to a crawl.
The minimum viable standard for a serious site
If you are a serious business, you need to set a baseline. Below this line, the project is not viable.
Performance Budget: The site must score 90+ on Core Web Vitals. Speed is not a luxury; it is a ranking factor.
Accessibility Baseline: It must pass WCAG AA standards. This protects you from legal risk and ensures the site works for everyone.
Modular Components: The site should be built with a "Design System" approach, where reusable blocks can be reordered without breaking the code.
A smarter budgeting framework
Stop budgeting for "pages." Budget for "outcomes."
Don't ask: "How much for a 5-page site?" Ask: "How much to build a platform that decreases our cost per lead by 20%?"
When you pay for "Good," you are buying:
Speed: Which improves SEO and conversion.
Clarity: Which shortens sales cycles.
Maintainability: Which means you don't have to rebuild the site in two years.
Ownership: You get a system you can actually control.
The buyer’s checklist that exposes shortcuts
If you are vetting an agency and the price seems too good to be true, ask these three questions. The answers will tell you everything.
"How will we add new services next year without redesigning the pages?" (If they say "we'll just clone a page," run. They haven't built a system.)
"How do you prove performance and accessibility are correct?" (Demand a Lighthouse audit or a specific report. If they don't know what that is, they are amateurs.)
"Who owns the system?" (Ensure you aren't renting a proprietary builder that you can never leave.)
A website is the only salesperson who works 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Paying them minimum wage is a strategic error.
They are just cheap on day one.
You can buy a website for €500. You can probably find someone on a freelancer marketplace to do it for €200. On the surface, it looks like a bargain. You get a URL, a logo, and a contact form. You tick the box marked "Digital Presence" and move on.
But in business, there is no such thing as a free lunch, and there is definitely no such thing as a high-performance €500 website.
That low price tag is a mirage. It is merely the down payment on a debt you will pay every single day in lost revenue, wasted time, and damaged reputation. The €500 website is not an asset; it is a liability masquerading as a bargain.
The real cost: Launch Price vs. Ownership Price
We need to distinguish between "Launch Price" (what you pay the invoice for) and "Ownership Price" (what the asset costs you over two years).
A cheap site has a low Launch Price but an astronomical Ownership Price.
The Build Cost: Small.
The Opportunity Cost: Massive. This is the revenue you lose because the site is slow, ugly, or broken.
The Rebuild Cost: Inevitable. Cheap sites usually break or become unmanageable within 18 months, forcing you to pay for the whole project again.
If you pay €500 for a site that loses you one €10,000 client, that website didn't cost €500. It cost €10,500.
The hidden invoice: where revenue leaks
The damage of a cheap website is rarely a catastrophic explosion. It is a slow, silent leak. You don't see the clients you lost. You don't see the enquiries that never happened.
Friction that kills enquiries Cheap builds rely on bloated themes and unoptimised servers. If your site takes 4 seconds to load on a mobile device, 30% of your visitors leave before they see your logo. If your contact form is clunky or asks for too much info, they abandon the process. These are silent exits.
The "Reputation Tax" There is a concept called "Cognitive Dissonance." If you are selling a premium service—say, a €50,000 consultancy package—but your website looks like a school project, the buyer’s brain sounds an alarm. They cannot reconcile your high price with your low-quality presentation. They lose trust before they ever speak to you. You are paying a "Reputation Tax" on every single lead.
Sales Drag A bad website creates work for your sales team. They have to work harder to prove credibility because the website has already undermined it. They spend the first ten minutes of the call digging themselves out of a hole.
Why cheap sites collapse within 18 months
Why do these sites fail so reliably? It comes down to engineering.
No Content Model Cheap sites are often "hard-coded" or built with visual page builders where the design and the content are glued together. If you want to change a headline, you might break the layout. If you want to change the footer date, you have to do it manually on 20 pages. The site becomes so fragile that you stop updating it.
Template Lock-In The developer likely used a rigid template to save time. This works fine until you need a feature the template doesn't support. Want to add a "Case Studies" section? You can't, because the template only supports "Blog Posts." You are locked in.
Plugin Sprawl To add features without writing code, the budget developer installs plugins. One for the slider, one for the form, one for the gallery. Soon, you have 30 plugins. They conflict. They break. They open security holes. The site slows to a crawl.
The minimum viable standard for a serious site
If you are a serious business, you need to set a baseline. Below this line, the project is not viable.
Performance Budget: The site must score 90+ on Core Web Vitals. Speed is not a luxury; it is a ranking factor.
Accessibility Baseline: It must pass WCAG AA standards. This protects you from legal risk and ensures the site works for everyone.
Modular Components: The site should be built with a "Design System" approach, where reusable blocks can be reordered without breaking the code.
A smarter budgeting framework
Stop budgeting for "pages." Budget for "outcomes."
Don't ask: "How much for a 5-page site?" Ask: "How much to build a platform that decreases our cost per lead by 20%?"
When you pay for "Good," you are buying:
Speed: Which improves SEO and conversion.
Clarity: Which shortens sales cycles.
Maintainability: Which means you don't have to rebuild the site in two years.
Ownership: You get a system you can actually control.
The buyer’s checklist that exposes shortcuts
If you are vetting an agency and the price seems too good to be true, ask these three questions. The answers will tell you everything.
"How will we add new services next year without redesigning the pages?" (If they say "we'll just clone a page," run. They haven't built a system.)
"How do you prove performance and accessibility are correct?" (Demand a Lighthouse audit or a specific report. If they don't know what that is, they are amateurs.)
"Who owns the system?" (Ensure you aren't renting a proprietary builder that you can never leave.)
A website is the only salesperson who works 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Paying them minimum wage is a strategic error.