How to price a website project

Pricing a website is hard because two different questions hide inside it. The first is what the project costs you to deliver. The second is what it is worth to the client. A good price respects the first and is set with the second in mind. This guide works through both with one example, then covers how to present the number so it gets accepted.

All amounts below are examples for a small studio or freelancer in Europe. Replace them with your own.

Step 1: know your floor

Your floor is the lowest day rate at which the business still works. Below it, every project makes you poorer. You need three numbers; the guide on how to set your freelance day rate works through each of them in more detail.

What the business must earn in a year. Add what you want to pay yourself before tax to what the business costs to run: software, hardware, insurance, an accountant, training, a workspace. Say you aim for €60,000 for yourself and the costs come to €12,000. The business needs €72,000.

How many days you can bill. Start from the working days in a year, take off holidays and bank holidays, then be honest about the time that is not billable: sales, proposals, admin, learning, the gaps between projects. Be conservative: once you count all of that, well under three quarters of your working days may be billable. If you work 230 days and assume 60% are billable, you have 138 billable days.

Your floor day rate. Divide the first by the second: €72,000 / 138 is about €522. Round it to €550 a day, or about €69 an hour on an eight-hour day.

This is not your price. It is the line you do not cross.

Step 2: estimate the work in days

Break the project into phases and estimate each one in days, not hours. Days are easier to estimate honestly and harder to haggle over. For a marketing site with around a dozen page templates:

Project management is real work. If you leave it out, you do it for free.

At €550 a day, 26 days is €14,300.

Step 3: add contingency

Every estimate is wrong; the question is by how much. Add a contingency for the unknowns you can already see: a client with many stakeholders, an old site to migrate, a CMS you have not used before. As a rule of thumb, 10% to 25% suits most small web projects: nearer 10% for a client and technology you know well, nearer 25% when either is new.

With 15% on top of €14,300 you get €16,445. Round it to €16,500. Round numbers read as considered; €16,445 reads as a calculation the client can argue with.

Do not show contingency as a separate line. It is part of your price, not a fund the client can claim back.

Step 4: check the price against the value

Now look at the same project from the client's side. What is the new website worth to them over the next two or three years?

• An online shop that converts better or takes fewer support calls.
• A B2B site that brings in a few more qualified leads a year, where one new client might be worth tens of thousands of euros.
• A team that can update its own pages instead of paying for every small change.

You will rarely get an exact figure, but you can ask: "If this works, what does it change for you in the next year?" If the answer is clearly worth many times your €16,500, you have room to price higher, or to include more. If the honest value is lower than your price, the project is too big for the problem. Suggest a smaller first phase rather than cutting your rate.

Value thinking is also why two similar websites can rightly have different prices. A site that supports a sales team of ten carries more risk and more upside than a portfolio for a solo consultant.

Fixed price, hourly or retainer?

Most website projects combine two of these: a fixed price for the build and a monthly plan afterwards. If the client wants a fixed price but the scope is still vague, sell a paid discovery phase first, then price the build once the scope is known. Our guide on proposals, quotes and estimates explains when a range is enough and when you need a firm number. To see one website priced both ways, with clauses for each, read fixed price vs time and materials for agencies.

Price the care plan separately

A website needs care after launch: updates, backups, monitoring, small changes. Price that as a monthly subscription, not as an afterthought. Two levels are usually enough:

You can offer a discount for a longer commitment, for example 10% off for 12 months. On Care Plus that is €315 instead of €350 a month, a saving of €420 over the year, and for you, a year of predictable revenue.

Turn extras into options

Some work is useful but not essential: a brand refresh, an SEO audit, extra languages, a photo shoot. Instead of including it (and raising the price) or leaving it out (and leaving money on the table), offer it as an option with its own price, for example an SEO audit at €1,200.

Options let the client build the project they want, and they make your main price feel less like a single take-it-or-leave-it number. There is more on this in good, better, best: pricing options in a proposal.

Present the price

How you show the number matters almost as much as the number.

• Call it an investment and tie it to the goal. Put the price after the challenge, approach and cases, not on page one.
• Show what is included next to the price. A number alone invites comparison with a cheaper quote; a number next to twelve templates, two feedback rounds and a launch plan invites comparison with the value.
• Separate one-off and monthly. "€16,500 for the website, then €150 or €350 a month for care" is clearer than a single blended total.
• Show VAT. If you charge VAT, show the amount excluding VAT, the VAT and the total. At the Dutch rate of 21%, €16,500 becomes €3,465 of VAT and €19,965 in total; use your own country's rate. Business clients usually think excluding VAT. For private clients, lead with the price including VAT, because that is what they will pay.
• Offer a way to pay. A deposit and milestones is normal. A small discount for paying upfront (say 5%, which takes €16,500 to €15,675) helps your cash flow and gives the client a reason to decide sooner.
• Set a validity date. Prices in a proposal should hold for a fixed period, usually 14 or 30 days.

Common mistakes

• Pricing from what a competitor charges. You do not know their costs, their margin or how much of their work they redo for free.
• Discounting the day rate to win the job. Reduce the scope instead. A lower rate stays with you on the next project.
• Forgetting the small things. Domain, licences, stock photos, plug-ins and third-party tools either go on the client's bill or into your price.
• Leaving out project management. Calls, emails and feedback rounds can take a real share of a project.
• No change process. Without one, every "small tweak" is free.

How Propozit helps

Propozit puts this pricing into a slide your client can use. The live demo shows it: a fixed-price rebuild with optional extras such as an SEO audit and a content writer for three months, two monthly care plans, VAT added on top at 21%, and totals that update as the client ticks options. It includes deals (pay upfront and save 5%, or spread the project over 3 months; commit to care for longer and save) and a rule that makes the SEO audit free with Care Plus, with a nudge that names the gift. See interactive pricing.

Hourly rates, hour bundles, yearly billing and other price types are in the Propozit price list today. In your own proposals you can price a project by the people on it, offer payment plans the client picks, such as 50/50 or monthly instalments, set an extra-work rate and pick the VAT rate per proposal. Propozit is in early access and free to start.