What does a firm website cost? Prices, running costs and the right questions before you sign

The short answer

There are three routes to a firm website, and they differ less in the quality of the result than in who does which part of the work and how it is billed. The ranges below come from published price surveys for Germany (sellwerk) and Austria (Herold), as of November 2026; all amounts are net.

What you are paying for

Every quote is made up of the same building blocks; they are just split up differently. Once you know them, you can compare quotes even when they are structured completely differently.

• Structure and design: which pages are there, how do they lead to contact, how does the firm come across? Custom designs take more hours than adapted templates.
• Copy: for firms, often the most demanding part. Service pages have to be clear to laypeople and at the same time comply with professional rules. Cut corners here and you end up writing it yourself, usually at weekends.
• Photos: team photos and pictures of your offices make a stronger impression than stock images of scales of justice and section signs.
• Features: contact form with encrypted transmission, online booking, client portal link, reviews, multiple languages.
• Legal: a legal notice under your professional rules, a privacy policy, no cookies or a proper consent solution.
• Operation: hosting, domain, security updates, backups, changes, a contact person when something goes wrong.

Net or gross: what firms really pay

Unlike medical practices, whose treatments are exempt from VAT, lawyers, tax advisers, auditors, notaries, bookkeepers and mediators provide services that are subject to VAT. This means they can deduct the VAT on invoices for their business as input tax: in Austria under § 12 UStG 1994 (VAT Act), in Germany under § 15 UStG. An invoice carries 20 per cent VAT in Austria and 19 per cent in Germany, but in economic terms you only bear the net amounts. That is why we quote prices net.

Route 1: the agency

An agency develops the website from scratch, with a workshop, design drafts, feedback rounds and custom code or a content management system such as WordPress. Agencies that specialise in law and tax firms know the professional rules and often supply text modules or subject content. Published price surveys, including one specifically for tax adviser websites, put this at €3,000 – €20,000 net up front, plus €100 – €1,000 net per month for hosting, maintenance and a quota of changes.

An agency is the right fit if you are building a larger firm with several offices, a dedicated recruiting section or special features, and you have someone in-house to manage the project. Expect a project to take several weeks to months, plus your own time for meetings and approvals. Check the contract for who owns the content and the code, and what it costs to switch provider.

Route 2: the website builder

With Squarespace, Wix, Jimdo or your host's site builder, you build the site yourself. Business plans cost €15 – €45 per month. On paper this is the cheapest route, as long as you do not count your own time. For a firm, doing it yourself means writing the service copy, putting together a legal notice under your professional rules, handling embedded fonts and maps in line with data protection law, securing the forms and testing the whole thing on a phone.

A website builder works for a first interim site or if you enjoy design and technology. Check in advance where the data is hosted, whether there is a data processing agreement and whether you can take the site with you later. Many builders do not allow exports, so switching means rebuilding from scratch.

Route 3: a fixed price for firms

In between are providers that specialise in one sector. Because law and tax firm websites need similar pages, features and mandatory disclosures, they can work with a proven system and still tailor the design and copy to your firm. At Meine-Kanzlei-Website, the finished website costs €1,800 net one-off, or €3,600 net with its own content management system for your team. On top of that come €30 per month for hosting, security updates and backups, and domain management from €24 per month, each plus VAT.

The package price includes design, copywriting and build, in German and English, the pages for services, team, contact and FAQ, and operation without cookies or tracking. Before you pay anything, you see a free preview of your website. The page How we work describes the process, and the packages are set out in detail under Pricing.

Running costs that are easy to forget

The starting price is visible; the running costs hide in contracts and subscriptions. Over five years, they often matter more than the one-off investment. Go through this list with every quote:

• Hosting and domain, with some extensions more expensive than others
• Maintenance: CMS and plugin updates, security monitoring, backups (market prices, for example, at adfera for Germany and ld-media for Austria)
• Changes: new team members, new opening hours, a new practice area
• Licences for themes, plugins, fonts or images that renew every year
• Subscriptions for online booking, review widgets or newsletter tools
• Your own time, or your team's, for upkeep and coordination

Think in three years, not three weeks

A fair comparison takes the one-off price, adds 36 months of operation and estimates how many changes you will need in that time. A new colleague, an additional practice area, a move, new opening hours: in a growing firm this happens more often than you expect at the start. With hourly billing, these small jobs add up; with a system that has its own CMS, your team handles them itself.

Do not forget your own time. Every hour you spend polishing copy, resizing images or testing a form is an hour you are not working for clients and not billing. Especially while you are setting up, when admission, premises and the first matters all demand attention at once, this is the most expensive item, even though it never appears on an invoice. Value your time at the hourly rate you charge clients and do the maths honestly.

12 questions before you sign

Which content belongs on the website so that the investment pays off is explained in our guide What belongs on a firm website. How to get found locally afterwards is covered in the article on local SEO for firms.