What a website really costs in Geneva

Three ways to build a website, three pricing logics

A 900-franc website and a 12,000-franc website can meet the same need on paper. The difference doesn't show in the quote — it shows six months later.

• Online platform (Wix, Squarespace) — CHF 500 to 1,500
• Freelancer / independent — CHF 800 to 4,000
• Geneva agency — CHF 3,000 to 12,000

Ranges for a standard showcase site (5 to 8 pages), excluding e-commerce and recurring subscriptions.

What a freelancer charges

No office, no salesperson, no project manager to pay on top of the work itself. It's often the cheapest option at equal quality, but it rests entirely on one person.

• Simple showcase site, 3 to 5 pages — CHF 800 to 2,500 (Tailored design, contact form, going live)
• Fuller showcase site, 5 to 10 pages — CHF 2,500 to 4,500 (Blog, portfolio, several detailed services)
• Copywriting by the provider — + CHF 300 to 800 (usually extra)

The weak point isn't quality, which can be excellent. It's the dependency on a single person. If they're overloaded, unavailable for a while, or change careers, there's nobody else to pick up the file. Before signing, a portfolio and two or three verifiable references are worth more than any promise.

What an agency charges

An agency sells you a team, not a single pair of hands. That costs money — and in Geneva, it costs more than elsewhere in French-speaking Switzerland.

• Standard showcase site — CHF 3,000 to 8,000
• Bilingual FR/EN site with advanced SEO — CHF 4,000 to 10,000
• WordPress e-commerce — CHF 5,000 to 15,000
• Custom application or platform — from CHF 15,000

In Geneva specifically, expect 30 to 50% more than the same project delivered by an agency in Lausanne or Fribourg. It isn't that the work is better. It's that rents, salaries and the international positioning of the Geneva market end up in the quote. You're paying, in part, for an address.

Subscriptions: the price you only see afterwards

A website is never a one-off purchase. Even the most honest quote hides one reality: you'll have to keep paying to keep the site online, up to date and secure.

• Hosting — CHF 100 to 600 / year
• Domain name (.ch) — CHF 15 to 50 / year
• Maintenance, updates, backups — CHF 500 to 3,000 / year (most often forgotten)
• SSL certificate — CHF 0 to 200 / year (Often included, sometimes billed separately)
• Changes after delivery — variable, often CHF 100 to 180/h (Beyond the revision rounds set in the contract)

All in, budget between 700 and 5,000 francs a year to keep a site alive. Platforms like Wix or Squarespace advertise very low entry prices, but the mandatory monthly subscription often brings the total back to the level of a classic professional site within two or three years — without the site ever really being yours: the day you stop paying, it disappears.

The real hidden cost — It isn't a line someone forgot to put in the quote. It's the time lost managing a DIY platform yourself, the rebuild forced on you two years later because SEO was never considered from the start, or the maintenance invoice that doubles because nobody checked what it actually covered.

Why we stay cheaper, without cutting corners

We get asked often, so here's a straight answer.

We start from templates we built ourselves upfront, before there was even a client on the other side. The bulk of the work — structure, design, site logic — is already done and already proven. What's left for each project is adapting it to the client's business, copy and colours, rather than starting from a blank page every time. That changes everything about the hours spent, and therefore the price.

The other half of the answer is simpler still: we deliberately take a low margin. No office on Rive, no sales team, no layers of project management to fund. We bill the actual work, not the structure around it. That's what lets us offer a complete professional site under 800 francs, with no subscription hiding behind it, and without quality suffering for it.

• Ready-made template, adapted to your business — included (Structure and design already built and tested)
• One to two rounds of adjustments — included
• Going live, with no monthly commitment — included

How to read a quote without getting caught out

• Ask exactly what maintenance covers. "Support included" means nothing until the volume is spelled out.
• Count how many revision rounds are planned before you sign. Beyond that, every exchange can be billed.
• Check who owns the site at the end: the code, the domain name, the access. On some platforms, the answer is: nobody but the platform itself.
• A price well below market isn't a gift, it's a signal. Ask what was removed to reach it.

The budget that matters isn't the one on the first quote — it's the one for the first full year, subscriptions included.