You wrote to three studios with the same idea. One came back at €2,500, one at €10,000, one at €25,000.
The natural conclusion is that someone is overcharging. Usually nobody is. The three studios have quoted three different products, because the brief left enough room for each of them to imagine something different.
This article explains where the difference comes from, what a cheap quote tends to leave out without saying so, and how to make quotes comparable before you sign anything.
The five things that move the price
1. How each studio read the brief
"A website with online booking" can mean a contact form that sends an email, or a real booking system with a calendar, confirmations, reminders, cancellations and payments. Both are honestly called "online booking". One takes a day, the other takes weeks.
When a brief is short, every studio fills in the gaps with its own assumptions. The cheapest quote usually assumes the simplest version of every feature. The most expensive one often assumes the most complete.
2. What's included and what's quietly outside
Some quotes include design, copywriting help, basic SEO setup, analytics, a content management system, testing, training and a month of support. Others include only the build, and everything else becomes an extra later.
Two quotes can describe the same pages and still differ by several thousand euros purely on what surrounds them.
3. Template or custom
A template gives you a finished design where you swap in your text and photos. It's fast and cheap, and for many businesses it's the right choice. A custom design is built around your brand and your customers, which takes more time and more decisions.
Neither is better by default. The question is whether looking different from your competitors and controlling exactly what the customer sees first is worth it for your business.
4. Who does the work
A freelancer, a small studio and a large agency will quote very differently for similar work. The difference is not only hourly rates. It's also project management, a designer and a developer being separate people, testing, and someone being available when something breaks.
You're paying partly for the work and partly for how reliably it gets delivered.
5. How much risk is priced in
A fixed price is a promise. Studios that give fixed prices build a buffer in for everything that could go wrong, because they carry that risk. Hourly or estimate-based quotes often look lower, because the risk stays with you.
A low estimate and a high fixed price can end up costing the same. The difference is who pays when the project runs long.
What a cheap quote often leaves out
This isn't an argument against cheap quotes. Sometimes the cheap one is exactly right. But these are the things we see missing most often, and they're worth asking about directly.
A way to edit the site yourself. Without a content management system, every price change or new photo means paying a developer. The site is cheap to build and expensive to live with.
Ownership. Check who owns the domain, the hosting account and the code. If the studio registers them under its own name, leaving later can be difficult.
Testing on real phones. Most of your visitors are on a phone. A site that looks fine on a designer's monitor can break on a three-year-old Android.
Speed. Pages that take five seconds to load lose visitors before anyone sees your offer. Performance work takes time, and it's the first thing cut in a tight budget.
Analytics. Without them you can't tell whether the site brings clients or whether your ads work.
Post-launch support. "Support included" can mean anything from a year of fixes to one reply by email. Ask what it means in hours and in weeks.
Handover. If the studio disappears, can another developer pick the project up? That depends on whether anything was documented.
And where an expensive quote can be padded
The opposite also happens. A high quote isn't always a careful one.
Watch for features you didn't ask for and don't need yet, heavy process on a small project, and custom work where a proven off-the-shelf tool would do the job. A good studio will tell you which parts you can postpone. If the quote has no suggestion like that, ask for one.
How to make quotes comparable
The single most useful thing you can do is send every studio the same short written brief. It doesn't need to be technical. Six points are enough:
What your business does and who your customers are
The one action a customer must be able to complete on the site
The pages or screens you know you need
Whether you need booking, payments or a connection to another system
Who will update the content after launch
Your budget range and your deadline
Then ask every studio to break its quote down by stage: discovery, design, development, testing, launch, support. Once quotes are split the same way, the differences stop being mysterious.
Eight questions to ask before you sign
What exactly is included, and what is explicitly not?
Who owns the domain, the hosting account and the code?
Can I update text, prices and photos myself?
How many rounds of changes are included in the design?
Will you test on real phones, and which ones?
What does support cost after launch, and what does it cover?
What happens to the price and the timeline if the scope changes?
Who will I actually talk to during the project?
If a studio can't answer these clearly, the number on the quote doesn't mean much yet.
Pick the quote you understand
The best quote is rarely the cheapest or the most expensive. It's the one where you understand what you're getting, what you're not, and what will happen after launch.
If you can explain the quote to someone else in two minutes, you're ready to decide. If you can't, ask more questions before you sign.
We build websites, web apps and mobile apps. If you already have quotes on the table, send them to us and we'll help you read them honestly, including when the right answer is the cheaper studio. The first call is free.