What a €500 website actually buys, and what it does not

Fixed price is only useful if you know what it is fixed around. "€500" means nothing on its own. It could be a scam or a bargain depending on where the edges are. So here are the edges, plainly, including the parts a sales page usually leaves out.

What the €500 covers

A presentation website: the kind a business uses to explain what it does, show that it is real, and make the next step obvious. For the fixed price you get:

• A custom design built for your business, not a theme with your logo dropped into it.
• Code written by hand, which stays lean and does not carry the weight of features you will never use.
• A layout that works properly on a phone, because that is where most of your visitors actually are.
• The basic SEO groundwork: clean page titles, descriptions, sensible headings, a sitemap, and markup that search engines and AI assistants can read.
• Ownership. When it is done, the site is yours. There is no rented platform you have to keep paying to keep the lights on.

It is a one-time payment. Not €500 a month, not €500 that quietly renews. You pay once, you have a website.

What the €500 does not cover

This is the part that matters more, because a price you cannot trust is worse than a high one.

• It is not an online shop. A store with a catalogue, payments, stock and shipping is a different, larger job. If that is what you need, the fixed price is the wrong tool and I will quote the real thing instead of stretching this one.
• It is not a web application. Logins, dashboards, bookings with complex rules, anything with a lot of moving state, that is a build, not a presentation site.
• It is not unlimited revisions forever. We agree the site, I build it, we polish it. After it is live, changes are a separate thing, and I would rather that be clear now than feel like a bait and switch later.
• It is not a marketing department. A good website makes you easier to find and easier to trust. It does not run your ads or write your posts. It is the foundation those things stand on.

The optional pieces, and why they are optional

Some things a website needs are ongoing by nature, so I price them separately instead of hiding them in the headline number:

• Hosting, security and backups at €120 a year. A fast server, an SSL certificate, daily backups and monitoring. You can also host it yourself, and then the upkeep is yours.
• Content updates at €100 per request, roughly five hours of work, for when you would rather not touch the text and photos yourself. You only pay when you actually ask.
• An AI chatbot at €100 a year, if you get the same questions over and over and would like them answered around the clock.

Every one of those is a switch you turn on when you want it, not a subscription you are enrolled into by default.

When €500 is the wrong number for you

If you need a shop, a booking engine, or a genuine web app, do not try to squeeze it into a presentation-site budget. You will end up with something half-built, and cheap-but-wrong is the most expensive outcome there is. In that case the honest move is a proper quote for the proper scope, which is exactly what I would give you.

If a clear, fast, well-built presentation website is what your business actually needs, then €500 is the whole story, and you can see the full breakdown on the pricing page. If you are not sure which camp you are in, tell me what you are trying to do on the contact page and I will tell you straight.