What Does a Website Cost in Switzerland? Honest Figures 2026

Anyone searching for website prices finds mostly one thing: “It depends on your requirements.” True, but it helps no one. So here are the honest ranges as we know them from the Swiss market, with a comparison table, two worked examples and the five-year math. We build websites from Rotkreuz in the Canton of Zug, for SMEs across Switzerland, and we state our own prices as openly as everyone else’s.

The four paths compared by price

For a company website in Switzerland there are essentially four paths. They differ not only in price, but also in who ends up owning the website and which costs keep running.

Website builder. You build it yourself, pay rent and remain a tenant. Getting started is cheap, the monthly fee just never stops. For a digital business card that is perfectly fine. For a website that is supposed to bring in enquiries, you hit the limits quickly: loading speed, search engine optimisation and, at the latest, moving to another provider.

Freelancer. A wide range, wide differences in quality. For CHF 1’500 you usually get an adapted template, for CHF 8’000 a clean custom build. The most common risk is not the price but availability: the freelancer builds on a maintenance-heavy system and is gone two years later.

Classic agency. Here, alongside the website, you also pay for project management, workshops, interim presentations and brand consulting. That can be worth it if you need exactly that. Often, though, much of the budget goes into coordination rather than work.

Coded website from the developer, our path. A focused company website costs a one-off from about CHF 5’000 with us. Multilingual sites or websites with special features (price calculator, bookings, member area) are correspondingly higher, and in a traceable way: we calculate the extra effort in hours at CHF 180. After that there are no mandatory costs. Hosting is optional and fixed from CHF 300 per year, and we bill changes by effort. What you get for that is on our websites page.

What really drives the price

The number of pages is the worst yardstick. Ten subpages with the same layout are done quickly, a single page with booking logic is not. Four things really move the price.

Languages

Every additional language means not just translation but a complete second version: navigation, forms, error messages, search engine mapping (hreflang). Set up cleanly, a second language is typically 10 to 20 hours of work with us, depending on how much content there is. The translation itself comes from you or a translation agency. Our project for Al Freihat shows that this can be fast even with three languages: German, English and Arabic, including the right-to-left script, live in two weeks.

Features

A contact form is included. Everything beyond that is development work: an online booking feature typically adds 15 to 30 hours, a price calculator 10 to 25 hours depending on the logic, a member area with login correspondingly more. The advantage of the coded solution: the feature is built exactly the way your business works, not the way a plugin dictates.

Content

Text and images are the most underestimated item. If you deliver texts that we only need to place, it costs little. If we first have to put your services into words, that adds time. Realistically, that is 4 to 12 hours of text work for a company website, depending on how much groundwork you do.

An existing website

If there is already a website, content has to be carried over and old addresses redirected so that Google rankings are not lost. That is manual work, but easy to plan, and cheap compared to the damage otherwise done: a website that drops off page one on Google after the relaunch costs more than a few hours of redirects.

Two worked examples

Ranges are good, numbers are better. Here are two typical projects, openly calculated with our rates and with the assumptions listed, so you can transfer the math to your own project.

Example 1: Focused company website, one language

A trade business with eight employees needs a website with a home page, four service pages, about us, references and a contact page with a form. The texts exist in rough form, we sharpen them.

After that: CHF 300 per year for hosting, if you take it from us, and nothing else. Two hours of changes per year, say new reference photos or an updated service list, add CHF 360. A project of this size is our website for Alianto, a service provider for association and club management: twelve services clearly structured, delivered in one week.

Example 2: Bilingual website with online booking

A physiotherapy practice wants to offer German and English and make appointments bookable directly online. The practice supplies the texts and the translation.

That is almost twice the first example, for two clear reasons, not a flat surcharge. And still well below what a classic agency charges for a comparable project. The decisive point: the booking feature belongs to you, runs without a monthly plugin fee and does not get switched off when a third-party provider changes its business model. What a website with its own features can do is shown by our regional platform Highlights Schwyz: a magazine in the browser, an ad-free weather service, documented hikes and a business directory, all coded from scratch.

The five-year math

A website builder’s monthly fee looks small, it just never stops. A coded website costs more at the start and after that only what you want. Over five years it looks like this, calculated for a focused company website in one language:

Purely in numbers, the website builder stays cheaper over five years. We are not hiding that. The question is what you get for the money: with the builder, a rented template with the provider’s limits; with the coded website, a tool built for your business that loads faster, performs better on Google and belongs to you. Once the website is supposed to bring in even a handful of jobs a year, the math tips. The detailed comparison with every line item is in our website builder comparison.

What the price ranges do not tell you

Four things appear in no quote, but cost money anyway.

The dependency. With a website builder the website is not yours, you cannot take it with you. With some agencies and freelancers the website hangs on a system that only they can operate. Before signing, ask whether you get the source code and all access credentials. Why that matters is explained in Who owns your website?

The updates. Systems with many plugins need constant security updates. If you skip them, you risk a hacked website; if you do them, you pay for them. A coded website without a plugin zoo does not have this problem, which is why we have no mandatory maintenance contract.

Your own time. With a website builder the francs are cheap, the hours are not. A managing director who spends twenty evenings on the website has paid more than the invoice shows. Whether doing it yourself pays off is examined in Build your website yourself or hire someone?

The redo. The cheapest quote becomes expensive when the website has to be rebuilt after a year. A CHF 2’000 freelancer project replaced after 18 months effectively costs more than a CHF 5’000 build that runs for eight years.

When you do not need us

Honestly: if you only want a digital business card, address, opening hours, three photos, and the website plays no role for your business, take a website builder. That is the more sensible choice, and we will tell you so in the first conversation.

The same applies in three more cases: your business runs on referrals and you do not need to be found via Google; you want to present a project or an event for one season and the website disappears afterwards; or you do not yet know whether the business idea will take off. Then test with a website builder, and if it works, come back. Moving later is feasible, we have done it many times, and cheaper than a website built too early that never brings in enquiries.

Conversely, you need us when the website has to bring in customers, when you need several languages, when a feature should take load off your operation, or when you are tired of paying monthly rent for something that is not yours.

How to keep the price down without cutting quality

The biggest lever is with you, not with us.

1. Deliver text and images. Every hour we do not spend on texts, you save. Rough drafts are enough, we sharpen them.
2. Focus. Six good pages beat twenty half-finished ones. What you only need in a year, we build in a year.
3. Start with one language. A second language can be added cleanly once the first one has proven itself.
4. Decide quickly. Queries and coordination rounds cost money at every agency, ours included. One contact person who can decide noticeably shortens the project.
5. Skip features you do not need yet. Online booking pays off when you arrange ten appointments a week by phone. With two, the form is enough.

Find out your concrete price

Flat prices without a look at the project are not serious, which is why we work with a short price calculator: a few questions, two minutes, and you receive an honest initial estimate with a fixed price. No obligation, no preparation, and if a website builder is the better choice for you, we will tell you that too.

Frequently asked questions