Websites in Portugal: the real price

Everyone wants a number and nobody wants to hear "it depends". Well: it really does depend — just not in the vague way of someone dodging the question. It depends on concrete things any serious agency explains in two sentences, no circling.

Let's start with the easy part: how many pages the site needs, and what job each one has to do. A simple info page with text and photos isn't the same work as a page with a booking form, a quote calculator or a client area. Every extra feature means extra hours of development — and hours cost money, no matter who builds the site.

The second factor doesn't show up on launch day: six months from now, who updates the content, fixes a bug or installs the security update that just came out? A "cheap" site nobody maintains becomes slow, insecure or simply frozen in time — and then the real cost isn't what you paid at the start, it's what you lose later: customers who give up waiting for the page to load, or who find an outdated site and go to a competitor.

That's why we charge for the two separately. Building the site — design, structure, features — is always quoted to fit, because every project really is different and a generic price list works for neither of us. Upkeep after launch, on the other hand, has a fixed public price, precisely because it doesn't vary by project: it's hosting, security, backups and support, always the same scope.

If you're comparing proposals and one is clearly cheaper than the rest, ask what's been left out. Maintenance? Training to run the site yourself? Fixes after launch? That's almost always where "cheap" turns expensive — the bill just arrives later, and without warning.

Before asking anyone for a quote, have these answers ready:

• How many pages you need, and what each one has to do
• Whether you'll sell online, and how people will pay
• Who runs the site afterwards — you, or the agency
• Whether you already have content (text, photos) or that needs making too

With this in hand, a serious quote should be clear the first time. If it isn't, you'll know what to ask next.