If you want to get a website built, the first decision isn't the provider, it's five other things: the goal of the site, the content and who writes it, the scope, the domain, and the legally required pages. After that, almost every project runs the same way: brief, structure, draft, filling in content, legal pages, launch, maintenance. Projects rarely fail on the technology, they stall at step four, because the text and photos never come out of the business. Four types of provider are on offer: agency, freelancer, site builder, and AI-assisted build, each with one clear strength and one equally clear limit. Running costs appear either way, at minimum for the domain and hosting. What a quote costs depends less on the type of provider than on three questions: how many pages, how much functionality, who writes the text.
I don't have my own websites built by an agency, I have them built by an AI employee from my AI workforce: this page and the company site humanity-it.com both run through him. I worked through the same decision for AI agents in Hire an AI Agent or Build It?. Here it is about the part no quote explains on its own: what you have to supply before anyone can build anything.
What to settle before the first quote
These five points decide price, duration and result. Settle them up front and you get comparable quotes instead of ballpark numbers.
- The goal of the site. Should the website bring enquiries, job applications, appointments, or is it a digital business card for people searching your name? That isn't a marketing question, it decides the structure: a site for appointment requests needs a form and a short path to it, a business-card site gets by with a phone number and address in plain view. Every site has to be reachable, the difference is the length of the path there.
- The content and who supplies it. Services, prices or price ranges, references, team, opening hours, directions, photos. For each item, settle whether the text exists, gets carried over from the old site, or has to be written fresh, and by whom. If the quote says "copywriting subject to your input", you are writing it yourself.
- The scope in pages and features. One page or twelve, blog yes or no, appointment booking, shop, multiple languages, newsletter. Every feature is its own building block with its own maintenance. For many small businesses a well-built single page plus contact details is enough, and for one specific action a landing page is often the more honest answer than a relaunch.
- Domain and hosting. A .de domain is registered through a provider that is either a DENIC member or works with one; DENIC runs the registry, the provider is your contracting party and usually offers web space and email alongside (source: DENIC, as of September 2026). One thing matters: the domain is registered to your company as the domain holder, and the registrar account, the auth code and DNS stay accessible to you. How the handover works when you change provider belongs in the same paragraph of the contract.
- The legally required pages. A site notice, a privacy policy, and, as soon as you store more than what is strictly necessary on your visitors' devices, real consent; more on that below. Settle in the quote whether the provider writes these texts or only installs them: a common argument the day before launch.
The legal side in Germany
This is not legal advice, it's the baseline that belongs in the project plan. The list is not exhaustive: anyone selling or taking bookings online may also need consumer information, a right-of-withdrawal notice, price details or terms and conditions, and some industries have requirements of their own.
- Site notice (Impressum). Section 5 DDG requires, for commercially offered digital services, among other things the name and address, the legal form and authorised representatives, details enabling rapid electronic contact including an email address, the register and registration number, for regulated professions the chamber and the professional title, and the VAT identification number where there is one, all of it easily recognisable and directly accessible.
- Privacy policy. Article 13 GDPR requires, when personal data is collected, information on the controller, the purposes and legal basis, recipients, storage period and the rights of the data subject. A contact form or a newsletter triggers this.
- Consent for cookies and tracking. Section 25 TDDDG permits storing information on users' devices or accessing it only with consent based on clear and comprehensive information. Exempt is what is strictly necessary to transmit a message or to provide a service the user explicitly requested. So a banner that merely informs is not enough for analytics and marketing services.
- Accessibility, depending on your business. Germany's Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz has applied since 28 June 2025, but not to every website. It covers certain products and certain services to consumers, among them electronic commerce. So check in this order: first whether your offering falls within that scope at all, then the exemption for microenterprises providing services, meaning fewer than ten employees and an annual turnover or balance sheet total of at most two million euros. Settle that before the build, because contrast, font sizes and keyboard operation are cheap in the draft and expensive in a finished design.
How a website project actually runs
Phase two and seven are the ones quotes leave out most often. Without phase two there is no shared picture of the site, without phase seven you have an outdated website again two years later.
Where website projects usually fail
The text never arrives. The classic. The draft is ready, the design is liked, and then the project sits for three months because nobody has time to write the service descriptions. The remedy: state in the brief that existing content gets carried over and shortened. You can rewrite later, page by page.
The old site isn't captured in full. On my own projects, three things happened that I've asked about in every inventory since. On one website the complete price list sat inside an auto-play slider, two thirds of the offering would have been missing from the rebuild. At a car workshop, a file called logo.png turned out to be a sports club crest rather than the company logo. And a navigation built on anchor jumps instead of real subpages made those subpages unreachable during the rebuild. None of these traps is visible at a glance.
Nobody owns the "after". Once the site is live, prices, opening hours or services change, and every adjustment triggers an invoice. Settle up front who makes it, how long it takes and what it costs.
Responsibility for the domain is unclear. If the service provider is registered as the holder, every switch depends on their cooperation. No accusation, just a question you settle in one sentence at the start.
The four types of provider compared
Searching locally, "get a website built" plus a city name, leads to agencies and freelancers nearby. Whether proximity matters depends on the project: for photo shoots and on-site consulting yes, for the build itself usually not. The advantage: you can look at a local reference and ask the business running it. That costs nothing and says more than any self-description.
What costs money every month, whoever builds it
I deliberately don't quote fixed prices, because without a defined scope they say nothing. What can be said is which items appear:
- The domain, as an annual or monthly fee at the provider, for each domain separately.
- Hosting or a platform subscription, meaning web space at the provider or the site builder's plan.
- Email mailboxes, unless they already run elsewhere.
- Maintenance and changes, as a flat rate, by the hour, or as your time.
- Services that bill separately: appointment booking, newsletter, shop, analytics.
- Legal texts from a generator with an update service.
What drives the price is mainly: the number of pages, every feature beyond a contact option, copywriting by the provider, photography, multiple languages, carrying over old content, and redirecting old addresses. Compare those seven points, not the bottom line.
The fourth option: a role that builds and then keeps maintaining
In my business this is done by Ralf, an AI employee with a single job: he gets the address of an outdated website and turns it into a modern site that works on a phone, in one go. All the content from the old site is carried over, nothing is invented; whatever is missing he marks as a placeholder and lists in his report. Nothing goes live without my approval.
The difference from the other three routes isn't speed, it's phase seven: a role doesn't deliver once and leave, it stays responsible. The version number of this website has gone up several times since August because Ralf keeps rolling it out, not because anyone commissioned a new project. And he doesn't work without a counter-check: Ralf and my lead scout review each other, and on the first cross-check Ralf found errors in four out of ten briefs. The same rule applies to his own results. How he works and where I hold him back is on Ralf, who turns old websites into modern ones.
To be honest about it: this doesn't replace an agency when a shop has to connect to inventory software or several departments have a say. The real work is still the inventory beforehand, exactly the step conventional projects stumble over too.
Frequently asked questions
What does it cost to get a website built?
A serious number only exists for a defined scope. The price hangs on the number of pages, the features, and who writes the text. On top come a domain and hosting or a platform plan, plus every add-on service that bills separately.
Agency or freelancer, which is better?
Neither, as a blanket answer. An agency brings project ownership and several trades from one source, a freelancer the direct line and a leaner cost frame, because only one person works on the project. What decides it is how many people have a say and how deeply the site reaches into other systems.
Can I have a website built with AI?
Yes, and that's where the most is moving right now. The catch isn't the building, it's the material: an AI that doesn't capture your old site properly will fill the gaps itself. The inventory is the real checkpoint, not the design.
Who owns my website in the end?
Copyright arises by operation of law with the people who created the code, text, design or photos (Section 7 UrhG); what you may do with it depends on the usage rights granted to you (Section 31 UrhG). So the items belong in the agreement separately: source code, design, text, images, third-party components such as themes, fonts, stock photos and plugins, plus the domain, the accounts and the data. Put in writing which usage rights you get, that source code and credentials come to you, in which format the content is exported, and who helps when you move. A complete copy alone does not hand you the rights, because themes, fonts and stock media come with licences of their own. With site builders even the copy is limited; Wix, for one, states plainly that a Wix site cannot be hosted externally.
Do I need a landing page or a whole website?
A landing page fits when there is exactly one action, for example a signup for a single offer. You need a website as soon as you want to be found long term and show several services. What matters is that the two fit together instead of becoming two construction sites.
Where to go from here
Don't start with quotes, start with one sheet of paper: the goal of the website, a list of all content with a note on who supplies it, and the legally required pages that go with your offering. With that sheet you get comparable quotes from any provider. What a build without an agency looks like, Bringing AI to a Small Business walks through step by step. Ralf and the other ready-made AI employees are available to load in my community Claude Practitioners; if your sheet snags somewhere, put the question there in a post.
