How much does a web designer cost in 2026?

Picture the owner of a 15-person installation company. The website is eight years old, looks wrong on a phone, and the contact form sends emails to someone who left years ago. He asks for three quotes and gets DKK 8,000, DKK 32,000 and DKK 95,000 back. All three call it a new website. The real question is what he gets for each amount, and what it costs to own the site for the next three years. That is what this guide works through.

What does a web designer charge per hour?

The hourly rate is the first number most people ask about, and it is also the easiest to compare. It says something about experience and about how much organisation stands behind the person. It says less about the final price, because an experienced designer often solves the task in fewer hours.

Note that web designer and web developer are two different roles, even though many freelancers cover a bit of both. If you need integrations, login or payments, the developer’s hours make up most of the bill. We have a full guide to the difference between a web designer and a web developer, and one on developer hourly rates in Denmark.

What does a website from a web designer cost?

Most web designers quote a total price for the project, even when they calculate in hours behind the scenes. The project price depends on three things: how much of the design is unique, how many pages and templates are needed, and what the site has to do beyond showing content.

Back to the installer: the DKK 8,000 quote is a ready-made theme with his own copy dropped in. The DKK 32,000 quote is an agency site with adapted design and a basic SEO set-up. The DKK 95,000 quote includes a workshop, unique design, a booking form connected to the calendar and copywriting. All three can be fair prices. They simply solve three different jobs. For the same numbers across the whole website including running costs, read what a website costs.

What is included in a web designer’s price?

What is usually included

• A kick-off meeting covering goals, audience and examples of sites you like.
• Design of the homepage and the key subpages, typically with one or two rounds of revisions.
• Set-up in a CMS so you can edit text and images yourselves.
• Responsive layout that works on phone, tablet and desktop.
• A contact form plus basic page titles and meta descriptions for Google.
• A short introduction to maintaining the content yourselves.

What often costs extra

• Copywriting and translation into more languages.
• Photography, illustrations and stock image licences.
• Logo and visual identity if you do not already have one.
• Integrations with booking, accounting, CRM or payments.
• Moving old content and redirecting old URLs.
• Accessibility to WCAG 2.1 AA if you fall under the Accessibility Act.
• Hosting, updates, backups and support after launch.

The second list is where most surprises come from. A DKK 15,000 quote can easily end at DKK 30,000 once copy, images and a booking integration are added. So always ask: what is outside this price? A good quote answers that in writing.

Which hidden costs come with a new website?

Maintenance is the item most often forgotten. A WordPress site without updates can run fine for a year and then suddenly show a blank page after an automatic update. We have collected the numbers in our guide to website maintenance costs.

Freelance web designer or agency: who gives the best value?

The right choice depends mostly on what the site needs to do in three years. If it shows your services and a phone number, a skilled freelancer is often the best buy. If it takes bookings, talks to your accounting system or grows into a customer portal, it pays to choose a team that can also build and run the code. We go deeper into that trade-off in freelancer vs agency.

Worked example: what does a website cost over three years?

The build price is only the start. Here are the installer’s three quotes over three years, with maintenance at the 15–20 % per year rule of thumb. We have added a realistic number of hours for changes, because every website gets new pages and fixes along the way.

Two things stand out. First, the cheapest quote is still the cheapest over three years, and for a company that only needs a digital business card it is a sensible choice. Second, changes weigh more than people expect: those 8 hours a year cost twice the freelancer’s build price over three years. That is why we price with a fixed monthly plan. Our smallest web package costs DKK 18,000 plus DKK 600 a month, which comes to DKK 39,600 over three years with hosting, updates, support, security and backups included. See what each package covers under pricing.

Which red flags should you watch for in a web designer’s quote?

• The domain or hosting account is registered in the designer’s name.
• The quote lists a number of pages but no number of revision rounds.
• Nothing says who updates plugins and security after launch.
• The price is very low and the theme is bought on a licence that only lasts a year.
• No portfolio of sites that are still online and look as shown.
• The designer cannot explain how you move on if the collaboration ends.
• No mention of redirects from the old website, so you risk losing Google rankings.

Ownership is the point we most often see go wrong in practice. Companies come to us with a site they have paid for, while the designer holds the domain login and no longer answers emails. That is expensive to untangle afterwards. Our guide on who owns the code has a checklist you can use before you sign.

How to get comparable quotes from web designers

When you send the brief, ask everyone the same questions. This list can be pasted straight into an email:

1. What is the total price, and what is outside it?
2. How many revision rounds are included in the design phase?
3. Which CMS do you build in, and can we edit all content ourselves?
4. Who handles hosting, updates and backups, and what does that cost per month?
5. Are the domain, hosting and code registered in our name?
6. How do you handle redirects from our old pages?
7. What does an hour of changes cost after launch?
8. How long does the project take, and what do we need to deliver when?

The answers tell you more than the price does. A supplier who answers all eight precisely and in writing is typically one who also keeps to the timeline. You will find more questions in questions to ask a web agency.

When do you need more than a web designer?

A web designer is the right choice when the website’s main job is to present. As soon as it has to handle data, you need development skills and often UX work: bookings that go into a calendar, customers who log in, or orders that flow into e-conomic. Here the price sits at the bespoke level, and it is worth knowing what UX design costs as a separate item, because that is where you save the most development hours.

At Ceptiv, design and development sit in one senior team, and we give a fixed price before we start. If your website needs to do a bit more than look good, describe the job and you will have a written proposal within 24 hours.