A company website in Austria usually costs between € 5.000 and € 15.000 upfront at a small agency, and a good deal more at the larger firms. That is the number in the quote. The running costs, the mandatory legal texts and, for a growing set of businesses, the accessibility duty all sit outside it, and together they decide what you actually pay over the years.
What does a company website cost in Austria?
A professionally designed company website in Austria costs € 5.000 to € 15.000 upfront at a small agency. Competent freelancing often comes in below that, and larger firms go well above it. Hosting, the domain and maintenance run on top. A website subscription bundles design, hosting and support into € 295 to € 550 per month.
That band is our own, from what we see small Austrian agencies quote for a small-business build. The nearest thing to public market data is Clutch’s web design pricing guide, which puts most reviewed projects under $10,000 on a $2,000 to $100,000 spread, at agency rates of $100 to $149 an hour, with an average project cost of $38,105. Those are dollar figures from a mostly US marketplace. They describe the shape of the market, and Austrian prices come from Austrian quotes.
The range is wide because “company website” can mean anything from five clean pages to a multilingual presence with a booking system. What you end up paying comes down to four things, plus a few items that are legally required in Austria.
What determines the price of a company website?
Four things set the price: the scope in pages, whether the design is custom or a template, who supplies the text and photos, and which features you need. A five-page website with a standard layout costs a fraction of a custom-designed presence with an online shop or booking.
| Lever | Keeps it cheap | Pushes it up |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Five well-built pages | Thirty pages and up |
| Design | A customised template | A custom-designed presence |
| Text and photos | You supply them | The agency writes and arranges photography |
| Features | A contact form | Online shop, booking, members’ area, second language |
Scope is the first lever. Most small businesses get by with five well-built pages. Every extra page, every special feature, and every integration pushes the price up. Plan for thirty pages from the start and you pay for thirty pages, even if nobody reads half of them.
The second lever is the design. A customised template is cheap and looks tidy. A custom-designed presence that fits your brand and stands apart from the competition costs more, because there is real design work behind it.
The third is the one that gets underestimated: text and photos. If the agency writes your content and arranges photography, the price climbs noticeably. Supply the text and images yourself and you save money but invest time. Both are fine, it just needs to be clear up front.
The fourth is the features. A contact form is standard. An online shop, an appointment booking system, a members’ area, or a second language version for guests from abroad are projects of their own with prices of their own.
Do you need a new website at all?
Check the site you already have before you price a replacement. Three things tell me whether an old small-business website is worth keeping: clear communication, fast, decent design. A site that passes all three rarely needs replacing, and the cheapest outcome of this whole exercise is the one where you spend nothing.
- Clear communication: can a stranger tell what you sell and what to do next, from the first screen?
- Fast: open it on your phone on mobile data and count.
- Decent design: does it look like a business that is still trading?
Failing on wording, prices or photos means edits, and edits are cheap. A rebuild is for a site nobody can get into or change. The longer version of that decision, including what to do when the site passes and the real problem sits elsewhere, is in fix it or rebuild it.
What costs are legally required on top in Austria?
Every Austrian company website needs an Impressum under the E-Commerce Act and the Media Act, plus a privacy policy under the GDPR. These texts are mandatory. Some providers include standard templates, while a legally reviewed version costs extra.
Depending on your legal form, the mandatory pieces are:
- Name and address
- The VAT number
- The company register number
- A reference to the relevant trade authority or your WKO membership
- A privacy policy under the GDPR
- A compliant cookie notice, as soon as you run analytics or marketing tools
These are a requirement for the website to go online on a legally sound footing at all.
For many small businesses this part stays invisible until a warning letter arrives. So clarify in advance whether the mandatory texts are included in the quote, whether they come only as a template, or whether a legal review is billed separately.
Does the accessibility duty add to the bill?
For most small businesses it adds nothing. Where it does apply, it is one of the larger items in a quote. Two tests decide which case you are in.
Austria’s Barrierefreiheitsgesetz (BaFG) has applied since 28 June 2025. It reaches a website through what the site lets a visitor do, which is why your trade is the wrong thing to reason from. A shop, an online appointment booking tool or a subscription sign-up is the kind of thing the law names. The second test takes most small businesses back out: WKO states the microenterprise exemption as fewer than 10 employees together with at most € 2 million in either annual turnover or balance-sheet total.
| Where you sit | What it adds to the build |
|---|---|
| Brochure site with a contact form, under 10 people, at or under € 2 million | Nothing under the BaFG. A second law, the BGStG, can still ask for accessibility, so this is not a licence to ignore the topic |
| Shop, booking tool or subscription sign-up, under 10 people, at or under € 2 million | Exempt as a microenterprise. WKO still advises building it accessibly, because retrofitting after you grow costs more |
| Shop, booking tool or subscription sign-up, 10 or more people or above both money lines | In scope. An accessible build, plus published conformity information under § 14 (2) BaFG |
One thing to have straight before somebody quotes you for “WCAG AA compliance”: the statute names no conformance level. WKO’s e-commerce guidance says EN 301 549 applies and that a large part of its clauses are identical to the WCAG 2.2 criteria. The level lives in the standard rather than in the law. We build to Levels A and AA because that is the professional bar, and it is worth knowing the difference when an agency prices it as a legal requirement.
The penalties are real and they are scaled. § 36 BaFG puts offering a non-compliant service at up to € 80.000, dropping to € 50.000 where a microenterprise or an SME commits the offence, and missing the § 14 (2) information at up to € 40.000. The explanatory notes point at advise-before-penalise for a first or minor breach. Whether the law reaches your site at all is worked through in does my business website need to be accessible.
What does it cost to run a company website?
On the sites I run, the recurring job is checking that the company information is still correct, that the copy still matches how we position ourselves, that the images are still relevant, that the team page is current and that the legal material is right. I go through that at least once every three months. It is content work, and it arrives as hours rather than as an invoice.
That matters for a budget because it is the part no maintenance contract covers. A retainer buys you updates, backups and someone to call. It has no idea that your homepage still sells something you gave up on last year.
The bills that do arrive:
- The .at domain. nic.at charges € 68 for a new registration including the first year and € 34 for every year after that, both excluding VAT. Most people buy through a provider who bundles it, so the line on your invoice will be higher.
- Hosting. Quoted per provider, and for a five-page business site it is the smallest number on the page.
- Updates, backups and certificates. Inside the fee on an ongoing plan. Billed separately under a project contract.
- Content changes. Either your own hours or somebody’s hourly rate.
- The conformity information, if the accessibility duty reaches you. It has to stay true, which means revisiting it whenever the site changes.
There is no monthly total in that list on purpose. Maintenance quotes for the same five-page site vary by an order of magnitude between providers, and any single figure we printed here would be a guess dressed up as data. Get yours in writing.
Anything you keep for years drifts. Content goes stale, software needs updates, and Google changes the rules. For a local business it quickly pays to understand how a small Austrian business gets found on Google locally. Speed degrades quietly too, and how to tell if your website is too slow gives you the signals to watch. What actually needs doing after launch decides the total cost more than the build itself.
One-off project or website subscription: what do you pay over three years?
Do the arithmetic on both sides before you choose. A subscription at € 295 to € 550 per month is € 10.620 to € 19.800 over three years, with hosting, maintenance and support inside that number. A project website is the build plus 36 months of whatever the maintenance contract says. The second number is the one most quotes leave open.
| Project website | Website subscription | |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront | € 5.000 to € 15.000 | None |
| Running | Whatever the maintenance quote says | € 295 to € 550 per month, everything included |
| Over three years | The build plus 36 months of maintenance | € 10.620 to € 19.800 |
| Known on the day you sign | The build price | The whole three-year cost |
Take the monthly maintenance figure from the quote, multiply it by 36, add the build, and hold that total against € 10.620 to € 19.800. If a provider will not put a monthly maintenance figure in writing, ask why before you sign.
Over three years a subscription can land above a project total. Its advantage is that you can work the total out on the day you sign, and it holds everything in one fee, with no separate maintenance invoice and no question about who to call when the contact form breaks on a Sunday. The project model fits when you need something complex or have in-house people to maintain the site afterwards. Either way, the build process from kickoff to launch covers what to expect at each stage before you commit.
If you want to go deeper on the model comparison, the breakdown of website builder, agency, or subscription helps. Once you are holding a quote, what makes a website cost more than the quote covers what moves that number after the work starts, and what Austrian law lets a provider charge above an estimate. If your current site runs on WordPress, WordPress alternatives for Austrian businesses covers what to consider before switching.
How much should a small business in Austria budget?
Budget for the three-year total and treat the quote as one input to it. For most small company websites that means either the low end of the € 5.000 to € 15.000 build plus a maintenance line you have agreed in writing, or a subscription that bundles the lot. Which path fits depends on how much of the upkeep you want to carry yourself.
A website sits on the revenue side of the ledger as well. In a GoDaddy survey of 1,000 US Gen Z and Millennial consumers, 73% of the Gen Z group and 80% of the Millennial group said a dedicated website and online store make a small business more credible. That is an expectation among young buyers, measured in the US. The question is what it costs you to have no website, or to run one nobody maintains.
Three things to do before you accept a quote: run the three checks on the site you have, ask for the monthly maintenance figure in writing, and work out whether the accessibility duty reaches you. If predictable monthly costs suit your cash flow better than a large upfront payment, our plans and pricing show you exactly what each monthly fee covers.