Every hiring decision has an obvious temptation: pick the lowest price. You ask for quotes and you see everything — from someone charging €3,000 to someone who makes "your site" for €300. The gap is so wide it seems to make no sense. But it does. And understanding why is what separates an investment from a loss.
Why €300 sites exist
Today anyone, without knowing how to code, can put together a site on a ready-made builder (WordPress with a purchased theme, Wix, and so on) in a few hours and resell it for €300, €400, sometimes less. There's nothing illegal about it — but it's important to understand what you're getting for that price.
That site is a generic template, the same one dozens of other businesses use, filled with your text. It wasn't designed for your business, wasn't optimised for Google, wasn't tested, and there's almost never anyone behind it once the payment clears. The price is low because the work that usually holds up a real site simply wasn't done.
Does it work as a storefront? Sometimes. The problem is when you expect it to bring in clients — when it was never built for that.
The price you see isn't the cost you pay
A website, a store or a system have two costs: what you pay at signing and what you pay afterwards. The second is invisible at decision time, and it's where cheap charges the difference.
When something comes out at €300 or €400, something was cut to make the number work. It could be planning time, Google optimisation, security, performance, testing, or support after delivery. The work doesn't disappear — it just becomes your problem later.
Where the cut shows up (always in the same places)
On Google. A beautiful site that wasn't built for SEO simply doesn't show up in searches. You paid for a site, but no one finds you. The hidden cost here is every client who searched for your service and found the competitor.
On speed. Sites built on a plugin-heavy template load slowly. Every extra second drives visitors away and lowers your Google ranking. You don't see it on delivery day — you see it in the following months, in the conversion that doesn't happen.
On security. No updates, no protection against attacks, no backup. It works until the day it doesn't — and then the cost to recover (or rebuild from scratch) is higher than doing it right would have been.
On the aftermath. Whoever sells cheap usually disappears after delivery. Need an adjustment? Something broke? You're on your own, or you pay again for someone else to understand poorly documented work.
The math no one does in the moment
Imagine two options to solve your digital presence. The cheap one costs €400. The well-made one costs €1,500. The difference is €1,100 — and that's where the decision stalls.
Now add the other side. If the €400 site doesn't show up on Google, how many clients do you lose per month? If it converts poorly, how much do you fail to sell? If you have to rebuild in six months because it doesn't scale, you pay twice. The €1,100 difference disappears at the first or second lost opportunity — and the loss keeps running every month, quietly.
The €400 site didn't save €1,100. It postponed a bigger cost and disguised it as savings.
Cheap and expensive aren't the right extremes
This doesn't mean the most expensive is always best. A high price doesn't guarantee quality — there are people who charge a lot and deliver poorly too. The point isn't to spend more; it's to understand what's included in the price.
The right question isn't "which is cheapest?". It's: "what is each one actually delivering?". A proposal that includes SEO, performance, security, testing and support isn't more expensive — it just didn't hide the work to look cheap.
How to evaluate a proposal without being fooled by price
Before deciding on the number, ask:
- Will it show up on Google? Is SEO included or is it "we'll see later"?
- Is it built for my business? Or is it a template dozens of others already use?
- How fast does it load? Is performance handled or is it luck?
- Who takes care of it afterwards? Is there ongoing support, or does it vanish at delivery?
- Is it documented? Can someone else maintain it, or are you locked in?
If the cheap option doesn't answer these well, it isn't cheaper. It just transferred the cost to your future.
What Dilevate delivers — and why we're not the cheapest
We don't compete with whoever resells a template for €300. We compete by delivering something that works, that shows up on Google, that loads fast, that's secure, and that has someone behind it when you need it.
Our edge comes from combining two things that rarely go together: ten years managing and running real businesses, plus custom software development. Before building, we understand what your business needs to make work — because we've been on the other side, operating.
If you're comparing quotes and ours isn't the cheapest, the conversation is worth having. We give an honest analysis of your case — and if the best path is to start with something simpler and grow later, we'll say that too. What we won't do is pretend you can deliver quality for half the work.
Frequently asked questions
Why do €300 sites and €3,000 sites both exist?
Is the most expensive always best?
How do I compare quotes without being fooled by price?
What's Dilevate's edge?
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