How much does a website really cost in Switzerland?

Published on 12 September 2026 · 7 min read

Nobody ever answers this question, and it is irritating. So let us start with the figure: in Switzerland, in 2026, a professional website for a small business costs between CHF 300 and CHF 30,000. That hundredfold gap is not a gap in quality. It is a gap in scope — and above all in billed human hours.

The rest of this article is about working out which bracket you are in, and about not paying for one bracket to get the contents of the one below.

The four brackets on the Swiss market

CHF 0 to 500 — you do it yourself. An online builder, a template from the catalogue, your copy, your photos. The real cost is not the subscription, it is your weekend. Count twenty to forty hours for a decent result, more if you are learning the tool as you go. Viable if your site is only a business card.

CHF 300 to 1,500 — the fixed package. A professional works from a structure they have already proven, you fill in a brief, they deliver within a few days. This is where we sit, with firm packages at CHF 290, CHF 490 and CHF 690. The price holds because the scope is fixed in advance, not because the work is rushed.

CHF 3,000 to 12,000 — bespoke work from a freelancer or a small studio. You start from a blank page: workshops, site structure, mock-ups, rounds of feedback, build. Two to eight weeks. This is the right budget as soon as your site has to do something particular — a configurator, a booking system, a catalogue that changes.

CHF 15,000 to 30,000 and beyond — the agency. Strategy, art direction, copywriting, development, follow-up, and several people around the table. Justified when the site is a main sales channel and one point of conversion gained is worth tens of thousands of francs a year.

What really pushes the bill up

It is almost never the design. It is, in order:

• Unbounded rounds of feedback. A project with no written scope drifts, and drift is billed by the hour. It is the first hidden line item in every quote.
• The content. If the agency has to write your copy, interview your teams and bring in a photographer, you are funding three trades, not one.
• The features. Online payment, client area, booking, syncing with your management software: each one is a small project.
• Multiple languages. Every language adds translation, proofreading and maintenance that multiplies.
• The CMS. Making a site editable by you often doubles the build time. Useful if you publish every week, pointless if you change a phone number once a year.

The annual costs nobody puts a figure on

The build quote is half the story. Here is what comes back every year, in Switzerland, at 2026 market rates:

• A .ch domain name — about ten francs a year. A .com, about fifteen.
• Hosting — from CHF 0 for a static site on a platform such as Netlify or Cloudflare Pages, to CHF 200–400 a year for shared Swiss hosting, more for a dedicated server.
• Professional email addresses — CHF 60 to 150 a year per mailbox depending on the provider. This is often the surprise.
• HTTPS certificate — free today (Let's Encrypt), and automatic with most hosts. If you are being billed for one, ask why.
• Maintenance — from CHF 0 for a static site to CHF 600–1,800 a year for a WordPress that has to be updated, and really does have to be updated: it is the leading cause of small business sites being hacked.

Put another way: a CHF 2,000 site that costs CHF 1,200 a year to maintain is more expensive, over five years, than a CHF 5,000 site that costs nothing but its domain.

What a firm package changes

A firm price moves the risk. If the project takes longer than expected, that is the supplier's problem, not yours. In exchange, the scope is written down before anything starts: number of pages, number of languages, what is included, what is the subject of a separate quote.

It is that framework that lets us publish a public price list and deliver from two working days once the brief is complete, with thirty days of unlimited revisions and a full refund if the result does not suit you. Our terms and conditions say so in black and white, which is the only place where a commercial promise is worth anything.

What to budget, in practice

• A tradesperson or freelancer, one page that presents the work and gets the phone ringing — CHF 300 to 800 to build, under CHF 50 a year.
• A service business, four to six pages, one language — CHF 500 to 2,500 to build.
• A Swiss business that has to exist in French and in German — CHF 700 to 4,000, with translation weighing more than design.
• A shop selling online — CHF 3,000 to 15,000, and a real time budget for the catalogue.

If you are hesitating between two brackets, the useful question is not “what budget do I have?” but “what is one client worth to me?”. A practice where one client is worth CHF 3,000 pays for a CHF 5,000 site with two clients. A shop whose average basket is CHF 40 has to reason differently.

Three questions we get asked

Is a CHF 290 site possible, or is it bait?

It is possible on three conditions: one page and not eight, a structure already proven rather than a blank page, and a brief you fill in yourself. Remove one of those three conditions and the price doubles. Our Landing Pro says exactly what it contains and what it does not.

Why do two quotes for the same site vary threefold?

Because they do not describe the same work. Compare the number of pages, the number of correction rounds included, who writes the copy, who supplies the photos, and what happens if you change your mind. Nine times out of ten the gap is there, and not in the talent.

Should you pay a monthly subscription?

Only if you receive something every month — changes, monitoring, a report. A subscription that only funds the hosting of a static site can be replaced by ten francs of domain name a year.