“How much will a website cost me?” is the first question we hear from every client — and the one most agencies answer most vaguely. So this article is an attempt at an honest answer: with real ranges, with the hidden costs nobody mentions upfront, and with one uncomfortable question at the end — whether you need a new website at all, or something else.
Why prices differ by a factor of ten
Many different things are sold under the name “website”. The ranges on the Bulgarian market in 2026 look roughly like this:
| Type of site | Indicative price | Who it’s for |
|---|---|---|
| Ready-made template (WordPress etc.) | €300–800 | A business card: who you are, what you do, contacts |
| Custom small-business site | €800–2,500 | Individual design, bilingual content, SEO fundamentals |
| Online shop | €2,500–6,000+ | Products, payments, shipping, integrations |
| Web application / portal | €5,000+ | Custom functionality, user accounts |
The differences come from three things: custom design vs. template, volume of content and languages, and integrations (payments, bookings, accounting software, CRM). Everything else is packaging.
The hidden costs you only think about later
The build price is one-off — but a website lives with monthly costs you should know about from day one:
- Domain: €10–20 per year.
- Hosting: from €5–10/month for a small site to €30–50/month for a shop. (An SSL certificate is free these days — if someone charges you for it separately, that’s a red flag.)
- Maintenance: updates, backups, small changes — €20–80/month depending on volume. A site without maintenance is a site that slowly breaks.
- Content: the most underestimated cost. Texts and photos don’t appear “by themselves” — either you write them (time), or someone else does (money).
The red flags of a too-cheap offer
A €150–200 offer for a “complete website” almost always means one of the following: a template you’ll see on a hundred other sites; no contract and no ownership of the domain (check whose name it’s registered in — it must be yours!); zero SEO, meaning a site Google will never show; or a vanishing contractor at the first change request. A cheap site that brings no customers isn’t cheap — it’s the most expensive kind, because you pay twice: the second time for a real one.
The uncomfortable question: do you need a new website at all?
Here’s something you’ll rarely hear from a web agency: sometimes a website isn’t the right first investment.
If customers already find you — through referrals, Google Maps, Facebook — but you lose time and orders in handling them, a new website won’t fix anything. Your problem isn’t visibility, it’s capacity. In that case the same budget, invested in automating your workflows — enquiries, quotes, invoices, scheduling — pays back several times faster, especially outside the big cities, where every pair of hands counts.
The right order for most small businesses: first make sure your processes can absorb customers, then pour more customers in through a website and advertising. The reverse order fills a leaky bucket.
How to choose sensibly
Three questions to ask any contractor before you sign:
- “What exactly do I get for this price?" — a concrete list: number of pages, languages, design from scratch or a template, what the SEO includes.
- “Who owns the domain, the hosting and the code?" — the only correct answer is: you.
- “What will a change cost me six months from now?" — this is where you find out whether the contractor plans to exist in six months.
At threepixels.dev we do both — websites Google actually shows, and automations that absorb the customers they bring. If you’re not sure which you need first — get in touch and we’ll tell you honestly, even if the answer is “you don’t need a new website”.