How much does a website and an online store cost in 2026 (and why less with AI)

A simple company website at SaveIT costs roughly €38 excl. VAT, about one hour of a senior developer's work with AI assistants, and your own online store with a cart, payments and shipping roughly €190 excl. VAT, about 5 hours. Agencies commonly charge hundreds to thousands of euros for a similar scope, because their prices are built on days of manual work, meetings and project management rather than on how much work the job actually takes today.

Out of the box: card payments (Stripe), bank transfer with a QR code and cash on delivery. We add GoPay, ComGate or another gateway if you already have an account there.

Below we break down what the price is made of, what it does not include and how to read a quote so it does not surprise you at the end.

Indicative prices in numbers

We charge one rate: €38 per senior hour, excl. VAT. The price of a job is simply hours times rate. The times below are indicative; you always get an exact estimate before work starts.

Job	Indicative time	Indicative price excl. VAT
Company website with your copy, contact details and a form	from about 1 hour	from about €38
Your own online store: products, cart, payments, shipping	about 5 hours	about €190
Connecting the store to invoicing and accounting	about 1 day	based on hours worked
Small change: price, text, banner, bug fix	about 15 minutes	a fraction of the hourly rate

Details on the rate are on the Pricing page; the quick website service is described under Website in a day.

Why websites used to be expensive

A traditional website quote had little to do with technical difficulty. You were mostly paying for time and overhead:

• Hand-writing routine work: templates, forms, responsive layout, translations. It repeats on every website and still got billed again.
• Meetings and coordination: a salesperson, project manager, designer, developer and tester. Every handover between them costs days.
• Juniors at senior rates: in many companies a beginner actually does the work, whatever the invoice says.
• A buffer for uncertainty: a fixed project price always includes a surcharge in case something goes wrong.

What AI assistants changed

The routine part of the work, the page skeleton, styles, forms and translations, is now drafted by an AI assistant in minutes. Meanwhile the senior developer decides what AI cannot: site structure, performance, security, connections to other systems and what actually gets deployed. Every change is reviewed before it goes live.

The result is not a cheap template. It is a custom website or store built in a fraction of the usual time, and you pay only for that time. We describe how we work on the Websites and online stores page.

What the price does not include

When comparing quotes, check what is included and what you will pay separately. Usually outside the price of the work:

• Domain and hosting: these are ongoing costs, not one-off. If you would rather not deal with them, we can help with hosting and DevOps.
• Copy and photos: things move fastest when you have them ready. AI can help write the copy, but the facts about your business have to come from you.
• Third-party fees: payment gateway, a carrier such as Packeta, an invoicing tool. They have their own price lists.
• Platform subscription: with hosted store builders you pay a monthly fee for as long as the store runs.

Hosted store or your own?

A hosted platform launches quickly and you do not have to deal with a server. But you pay every month and you are limited by what the platform allows. Your own store is entirely yours: code, data and design. You do not pay licences for features you do not use and anything can be added. It does need hosting and someone to maintain it. At today's development prices, your own solution makes sense even for smaller shops that could not afford it a few years ago.

What to watch for in a quote

• Who actually does the work. Ask directly: a senior, or a supervised junior?
• Hours or a fixed price. With a fixed price you also pay for the buffer. With hours, ask for an estimate up front and a timesheet afterwards.
• What happens after launch. How much a small change costs and how long you will wait for it.
• Who owns the code and access. Domain, hosting and admin accounts should be in your name, not the vendor's.
• Who reviews changes. Speed without review is just a faster route to a production bug.

When it will not take an hour

The one-hour website applies to a simple company site with materials ready. It takes longer if you need a custom design from a designer, an import of thousands of products from an old system, several languages, complex filters or a connection to stock and accounting. Even then it is not months. We split the job into parts, you get an hour estimate for each and you see results as we go. Connections to accounting and carriers are covered by Integrations and APIs.

What a website costs after launch

The build price is only part of the story. Websites and stores keep changing: prices, new products, seasonal banners, new shipping methods. With a traditional agency you often wait in a queue for each such change and pay for it like a small project. So when choosing a vendor, find out how quickly and for how much they handle small changes.

With us, a small change takes about 15 minutes as a rough guide and you pay only for time worked, with no monthly retainer. Ongoing costs are then mostly the domain, hosting and third-party fees. If you want visibility up front, ask for an estimate: for every larger job you get one before work begins.

One practical tip: with your own store, agree on backups and updates from day one. It is a few minutes of work a month, and it saves far more expensive firefighting when something breaks at the worst possible moment.

How to save even more

• Prepare copy, logo and photos before work starts.
• Send products in a spreadsheet: name, price, description, photo.
• Send links to websites you like and say why.
• Collect small post-launch changes and send them together, or handle them as you go through express changes.

Want to know what your website or store would cost? Send us a few sentences about the job and a senior will send you an hour estimate before anything starts.