Web · Budgeting a build
What a website really costs in Denmark in 2026
Where the kroner actually go
A business website in Denmark usually costs somewhere between DKK 15,000 for a simple template build and well over DKK 150,000 for a custom site with integrations, before 25 per cent VAT. The build is only part of it: hosting, licences, maintenance and content add a yearly running cost that many Danish companies forget to budget for.
Inside this guide
What are the realistic price tiers?
There is no official price list for websites in Denmark, and anyone who quotes a single number without asking questions is guessing. What you can do is group projects by what they involve. The ranges below are broad, indicative figures for the Danish market as we read it, excluding VAT. They are not A+A prices, and individual freelancers and agencies sit above and below them.
| Type of site | Typical scope | Indicative range (ex. VAT) |
|---|---|---|
| Template site | 5 to 8 pages on a theme or a site builder, your own text and photos | DKK 10,000 to 35,000 |
| Custom small business site | Bespoke design, 10 to 25 pages, a CMS your team can edit, basic SEO setup | DKK 40,000 to 120,000 |
| Larger company site | Several languages, many templates, integrations with CRM or booking | DKK 120,000 to 350,000 |
| Online shop | Product catalogue, payments, shipping, stock and accounting links | DKK 60,000 to 300,000 and up |
The gaps between tiers are wide on purpose. Two “custom small business sites” can differ by a factor of three depending on who writes the copy, how many page layouts are needed and whether anything has to talk to another system.
What actually drives the price up?
Most buyers assume the visual design is the expensive part. In practice, design is often a minority of the hours. These are the factors that move a quote the most:
- Number of unique templates. Ten pages built on two layouts are much cheaper than ten pages that each need their own structure. Ask how many templates a quote assumes.
- Content. Writing, translating and photographing take real time. If an agency is producing Danish and English copy for every page, that can rival the cost of the build itself.
- Integrations. Connecting a site to a CRM, a booking engine, an ERP or an accounting system such as e-conomic or Dinero means testing two systems together. This is where budgets most often overrun.
- Languages. A Danish and English site is not simply twice the work, but every extra language adds translation, review, URL structure and ongoing upkeep.
- Migration. Moving years of old pages, blog posts or products, and redirecting every old URL so search rankings survive, is careful and unglamorous work.
- Accessibility and legal requirements. The European Accessibility Act has applied since June 2025 to many consumer-facing online services, including much of e-commerce, with an exemption for the smallest service businesses. Building to WCAG standards from the start is cheaper than retrofitting.
A useful exercise before you ask for quotes: list every page type, every form and every system the site has to touch. That list is what a good supplier will price, and having it ready makes quotes comparable. If you want help shaping that brief, our page on website design and rebuilds describes how we scope a project before anyone opens a design tool.
What does a website cost to run each year?
The launch invoice is the number everyone remembers. The running cost is the one that decides whether the site still works in three years. A sensible rule of thumb is to set aside 10 to 20 per cent of the build cost each year, though a simple site on a hosted builder can come in lower.
- Domain. A .dk domain is registered through a registrar under Punktum dk, and normally costs from a few tens to a few hundred kroner a year.
- Hosting. Shared hosting can be under DKK 100 a month. Managed hosting with backups, staging and decent support is more often DKK 200 to 1,000 a month.
- Licences. Hosted platforms such as Webflow or Shopify charge a monthly plan, and WordPress sites often rely on paid plugins with yearly renewals.
- Maintenance. Software updates, security patches, uptime checks and small fixes. Many agencies sell this as a monthly retainer.
- Content and improvement. New pages, seasonal campaigns and changes based on what the analytics show.
Skipping maintenance does not save money for long. Out-of-date plugins are a common way into small business sites, and a hacked site is costlier to clean than it was to keep patched. Our website maintenance page covers what a reasonable care plan includes.
Which costs do Danish companies forget?
A few items regularly turn up after the contract is signed. None of them are exotic, they are simply easy to leave out of a first budget.
- VAT. Danish B2B quotes are usually shown excluding 25 per cent moms. If you cannot reclaim VAT, add a quarter to every figure.
- Cookie consent. If you use analytics or advertising pixels, you need a consent solution that meets Danish and EU rules. Most consent platforms charge a monthly fee once you pass a small number of pages or visits.
- Photography and video. Stock images make a new site look like every other site. Commissioned photos are a separate line item.
- Stock fonts and icons. Some typefaces need a web licence priced by traffic.
- Your own time. Someone on your side has to gather content, answer questions and approve pages. On a small team this is often the real bottleneck.
- Tracking setup. Analytics, conversion events and consent mode need configuring and testing. Without it you cannot tell whether the new site performs better than the old one.
How should you compare website quotes?
Quotes from Danish freelancers and agencies are rarely written the same way, which makes the cheapest one look better than it is. Put every quote into the same grid and ask the same questions of each.
- What is included and what is not? Copywriting, translation, image sourcing, redirects, training and tracking are the usual gaps.
- How many rounds of revisions? A fixed price with unlimited changes is either padded or unrealistic.
- Who owns what? You should own the domain, the content and ideally the hosting account. Be careful with suppliers who keep the domain in their own name.
- What happens after launch? Is there a warranty period for bugs? What does a small change cost afterwards?
- Hourly rate for extras. Rates vary widely in Denmark, with freelancers often charging less per hour than agencies. Ask for the rate in writing so extras are predictable.
Also ask which platform the quote is built on and why. A supplier who builds everything on one system regardless of your needs is selling a habit, not a recommendation. Our guide to CMS implementation sets out how we choose between platforms.
Where should you spend, and where can you save?
If budget is tight, protect the parts that are hard to change later and economise on the parts that are easy to improve once the site is live.
Worth paying for: clear structure and messaging, fast and mobile-friendly templates, a CMS your team can actually use, correct redirects from the old site, and analytics that track real enquiries. These are expensive to fix afterwards.
Fine to phase: extra languages, a blog, animation, secondary landing pages and advanced integrations. A well-built site can grow into these over the following year.
Rarely worth it: elaborate effects that slow the site down, custom features that a standard plugin or app already handles, and a large number of pages written only for search engines.
The honest answer to “what does a website cost” is that it depends on what you need it to do. Start from the job the site has to perform, whether that is generating leads, selling products or taking bookings, and work backwards to the scope. The price follows from that, and so does the case for spending it.
Budget questions
Before you sign
a website quote
Most quotes aimed at businesses are given without moms, the Danish 25 per cent VAT. That is standard practice in B2B trade, because a VAT-registered company can normally reclaim it. Quotes aimed at private individuals or very small associations are more likely to include it. Always check the wording on the quote, usually “ekskl. moms” or “inkl. moms”, before comparing two suppliers. If your organisation is not VAT registered, for example some foundations and associations, the true cost is the quoted figure plus a quarter, and that difference matters on a six-figure project.
It is cheaper in cash, and it can be the right choice for a sole trader or a very new business. A site builder plan costs a few hundred kroner a month and you avoid a build invoice altogether. The real cost is your time and the result. Writing persuasive copy, structuring pages, setting up tracking and making the site fast on a phone are skills, and a do-it-yourself site often underperforms quietly for years. A practical middle route is to start on a builder, learn what your customers ask about, and invest in a professional build once you know what the site needs to do.
A template site can go live in two to four weeks, while a custom company site usually takes two to four months. The build itself is rarely what slows a project down. Content arriving late, approvals waiting for a manager on holiday and integrations that need a third party to respond are the usual causes. Danish summer holidays in July and the run-up to Christmas both stretch timelines, so plan around them. If you have a fixed launch date, such as a trade fair or a product release, tell suppliers at the start so they can plan backwards from it and tell you honestly whether it is realistic.
A fixed price for a clearly defined scope is usually the safer option for the buyer. It forces both sides to agree what is included before work starts, and it gives you a budget you can present internally. Hourly billing suits work where the scope is genuinely unknown, such as fixing an old site or exploring an integration. The risk with a fixed price is that anything outside the written scope becomes an extra, so the scope document matters as much as the price. Many projects combine both: a fixed price for the agreed build and an agreed hourly rate for changes.