How much does a website cost in Switzerland in 2026?

At a glance

• Compare two quotes by adding the upfront price to 36 months of care. The cheapest website on day one isn’t always the cheapest after three years.
• The price rises with pages, languages, copy and features. Copy is the most underestimated item.
• Even the smallest website needs a privacy notice and a cookie notice if it has a form or counts visits. Hosting in Switzerland is a choice, not an obligation.
• If your work comes from word of mouth and a well-kept Google listing, you may not need a new website.

A painting firm in Bellinzona wants to know how much a website costs. It has two quotes on the table: CHF 1,200 for the first, CHF 3,500 for the second. The choice looks obvious, until the owner reads the line underneath. The first then charges CHF 95 a month with a two-year minimum term, the second CHF 29 a month with no minimum term.

After three years, the first website has cost CHF 4,620, the second CHF 4,544. The example is made up, but it’s the sum to do with every quote.

How much does a website cost over three years?

A website has two prices. There’s the price of building it, which you pay once. And there’s the price of keeping it running, which you pay every month: domain, hosting, security updates, backups, small changes. The second gets forgotten because it’s small, but over three years it can add up to as much as the first.

Three years is the horizon we use: long enough to bring the fixed costs into view, short enough that a well-built website shouldn’t need redoing yet. If an offer has a longer minimum term, count the whole term.

To give you real figures, we use our own price list, the only one we know down to the last franc1. Fondamenta is the website of up to three pages, copywriting included. Orizzonte goes up to five pages in two languages. Custom is the tailor-made project, with an online shop or client areas. We don’t know of any serious independent studies of website prices in Switzerland: the “averages” going around online are usually price lists collected by portals and agencies.

The 36-month sum, using the Digitam price list

Website	Price and care plan	Over 36 months
Fondamenta	CHF 890, then CHF 29 a month (Base plan)	CHF 1,934
Orizzonte	CHF 1,390, then CHF 49 a month (Senza Pensieri)	CHF 3,154
Custom	from CHF 1,900, then CHF 89 a month (Business PRO)	from CHF 5,104

Care isn’t the item to cut. A website without updates and backups breaks sooner or later, usually just when you need it. What matters is knowing what you’re paying for: how many changes are included, whether there’s a minimum term, what happens if you want to leave.

Judge a website’s price over three years.

What drives the price up

Between the simplest website and a tailor-made project, the difference lies almost entirely in people’s work, not in the technology. These are the items that move the total.

• Pages. Each one has to be planned, written and laid out. Many businesses need only three: who you are, what you do, how to find you. A page for each service helps people searching for exactly that service on Google, but it’s extra work.
• Languages. In Switzerland you often need more than one, and every language is another website to translate, proofread and keep up to date. With us it costs CHF 200 per language. Elsewhere, ask who translates and who proofreads.
• Copy and photos. Explaining clearly what you do is hard precisely because you know it too well. And real photos of your workshop or your team say more than any stock image. Ask who writes the copy and who takes the photos.
• Features. Bookings, an online shop, a client area, a link to your business software or to WhatsApp. Each one adds work at the start and maintenance afterwards.

What the law requires regardless

Even a joinery’s three-page website collects personal data if it has a contact form. And it almost always reads something from the visitor’s device, for example to count visits. These rules apply whatever you pay.

The privacy notice

The revised Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP, nLPD in Italian), in force since 1 September 2023, requires you to inform people when you collect their data. At a minimum: who you are and how to contact you, what you use the data for, who you pass it on to and, if it goes abroad, to which country (Art. 19)4. Anyone who wilfully fails to provide this information risks a fine of up to CHF 250,000 (Art. 60). A complaint from the person concerned is required, and as a rule the fine is imposed on the individual responsible, not on the company.

Cookies and analytics

The Telecommunications Act allows a website to read data on a visitor’s device, as an analytics cookie does, on two conditions: the person is told what it’s for and can refuse (Art. 45c TCA)5. In practice, you need a page explaining which cookies you use and why, and a simple way to say no.

Hosting in Switzerland: a choice, not an obligation

No law requires an SME to keep its website on Swiss servers. The FADP allows data to be transferred to countries the Federal Council considers adequate, and the list includes every country in the European Union6. The websites we build run on servers in Switzerland, because that’s our preference. If another agency offers you servers in the EU, that’s equally fine under the law: you simply state in your privacy notice which country the data is held in.

This is a guide, not legal advice. For your own case, ask your accountant or a lawyer.

Speed and mobile: two numbers to check

In Switzerland, in August 2026, 42.9% of page views came from a phone and 55.3% from a computer7. So almost one page in two. For Google, the phone matters even more: since 5 July 2024 it has crawled and indexed websites only with its smartphone crawler, and content that can’t be opened on a phone at all is no longer indexed8.

2.5 s

These values are called Core Web Vitals, a page’s “vital signs”. Google sets three thresholds and measures phones and computers separately9:

• the main content appears within 2.5 seconds;
• the page responds to a tap within 200 milliseconds;
• the page doesn’t jump around while it loads: the score that measures layout shifts stays below 0.1.

You can check this yourself in two minutes. Open PageSpeed Insights, Google’s free tool, paste in your website address and look at the mobile results. If there’s no data from real visits at the top, your site doesn’t get much traffic yet: go by the lab test further down.

A slow website isn’t fixed with a more expensive package, but with properly sized images, fewer outside scripts loaded on the page (chat, video, analytics) and good hosting. Ask whoever quotes you how they measure speed.

If you want to sell online

An online shop is a different job from a brochure website. You build a website once; you run a shop every day: products, prices, stock, shipping, returns. Before you ask how much an e-commerce site costs, ask yourself who will keep it up to date. Then there are a few rules you need to know.

• Seller details. The Federal Act on Unfair Competition requires anyone selling online to state their identity and address clearly, email included, to explain the steps for concluding the contract, to let customers correct mistakes before ordering and to confirm the order electronically without delay (Art. 3 para. 1 let. s UCA)10.
• Payment. TWINT reports more than 6 million users in Switzerland and says it is accepted by around 84% of online shops. These are the company’s own figures, from August 202511. For a Swiss audience, it’s hard to do without.
• Customers in the EU. If you sell to consumers in the European Union, since 28 June 2025 the European Accessibility Act also applies to online shops, including those selling from outside the EU. Microenterprises providing services are exempt: fewer than 10 people and annual turnover or balance sheet total of no more than EUR 2 million12.

With us, an online shop comes under the Custom solution, from CHF 1,900. But if you sell ten products to customers who already know you, sometimes less will do: a page with your products, an order form and payment by TWINT.

When you don’t need a new website

Sometimes people asking for a new website actually have a different problem. Before you sign a quote, ours or anyone else’s, see whether one of these applies to you.

If, on the other hand, you’re wondering whether customers find you when they ask artificial intelligence, read how to get found on ChatGPT.

And if you’re not sure which case you’re in, that’s what the Web Strategy Session is for: a free 15-minute phone call to work out what you really need. If you don’t need a new website, we’ll tell you there and then. If you do, we’ll prepare a free first draft, so you can see the result before you decide.

Sources

1. Websites: packages and care plans. Digitam SAGL, price list valid in September 2026.
2. Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search. Google Search Central, updated 10 July 2026.
3. Swiss VAT rates. Federal Tax Administration (FTA), rates in force since 1 January 2024.
4. Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP), SR 235.1. Fedlex, in force since 1 September 2023: Art. 19 (duty to inform), Arts 60 and 64 (fines).
5. Telecommunications Act (TCA), SR 784.10. Fedlex, Art. 45c (data stored on third-party devices).
6. Data Protection Ordinance (DPO), SR 235.11. Fedlex, Annex 1: countries with adequate data protection.
7. Desktop vs Mobile vs Tablet Market Share Switzerland. StatCounter Global Stats, August 2026 data.
8. Mobile-indexing-vLast-final-final.doc. John Mueller, Google Search Central Blog, 3 June 2024.
9. Web Vitals. Google, web.dev. The thresholds are those currently in force; the page was last updated on 31 October 2024.
10. Federal Act on Unfair Competition (UCA), SR 241. Fedlex, Art. 3 para. 1 let. s (e-commerce).
11. More than 6 million people in Switzerland use TWINT. TWINT AG, press release of 19 August 2025.
12. Directive (EU) 2019/882 on the accessibility requirements for products and services. EUR-Lex: Art. 2(2)(f), Art. 3(4) and (23), Art. 4(5).

Written by Alessandro Scerpella. Sources checked on 18 September 2026. If you spot a figure that doesn’t add up, write to us at info@digitam.ch.