A client often asks: "Your competitor offers €990 all-in, you're €4,000 — what justifies the gap?" The honest answer is never "we're better." It's "we're not selling the same thing." Three economic models coexist on the website market — each serving a different profile. Here's how to choose without regret.
Model 1 — Pure one-shot
What you buy. A delivered site, hosted wherever you want (OVH, IONOS, or VPS), with admin credentials, documentation, and optionally 1 to 3 months of bug warranty. That's it. The provider is gone.
2026 market pricing: €1,500 to €3,000 excl. VAT with a junior freelancer, €4,000 to €10,000 excl. VAT with a local agency. The range depends mostly on number of pages, animations, multilingual, and copywriting included.
What you need for it to work:
- Someone on the team who knows how to update WordPress (or install static site updates)
- A hosting budget (€5 to €30/month depending on solution)
- Discipline to renew domain + SSL cert every year
- An emergency contact if the site goes down (usually the provider, hourly billed)
Who it works for: companies with someone tech-friendly in-house, tight budget, assumed management capacity. Freelancers, boutique firms, artisans with a VPN, SMBs with part-time IT.
Classic trap: nobody does security updates for 18 months → an old WordPress plugin is exploited → the site becomes spam relay → SEO collapsed, recovery time 3 to 6 weeks. "Cheapest" becomes most expensive.
Model 2 — Subscription (build included + maintenance included)
What you buy. A monthly service including build, hosting, security, backups, technical updates, monitoring, and a modification allowance (typically 1 to 2 h/month). The site lives as long as you pay the subscription.
2026 market pricing: €49 to €149 excl. VAT / month depending on site complexity (page count, blog, multilingual, light e-commerce, appointment booking).
What you need for it to work:
- Nothing technical on client side
- A contract specifying reversibility (how to recover your site at exit)
- A responsive provider contact (24 to 48 business hours SLA)
- A budget accepting 3 to 12 months initial commitment (compensating the free build)
Who it works for: leaders who prefer paying €60 to €90 monthly rather than €5,000 at once, SMBs / artisans without in-house tech skill, boutique firms wanting to outsource 100% of management, companies planning to regularly use the modification allowance (event announcements, price updates, news).
Classic trap: signing a contract without a clear reversibility clause. At exit time (2 to 5 years later), the provider charges €800 to €2,500 "migration fee." Always ask: "How do I recover my site if I stop tomorrow?" BEFORE signing.
At MAG&Cie: three plans (Essential €49/month, Pro €89/month, Premium €149/month), static site generated (Astro/Next.js), full export provided on simple request at exit, no surcharge. It's written in the contract. See our website page.
Model 3 — One-shot with hosting included
What you buy. A delivered site + hosting billed yearly or monthly, but without active human maintenance — just infrastructure. Often offered by local agencies whose hosting at OVH or Infomaniak costs €30 to €60/year and who rebill €20 to €40/month.
2026 market pricing: €3,000 to €8,000 excl. VAT build + €20 to €60 excl. VAT / month hosting.
What you need for it to work:
- Understand there's NO active human maintenance included — you're just paying for the machine
- Plan a separate budget for content modifications (billed €60 to €150/hour)
- Explicitly ask: "Are WordPress / plugin updates included?" — if no, it's disguised one-shot
Who it works for: companies wanting the simplicity of infra outsourcing without the price of active maintenance. But careful, this model ages poorly — after 3 to 5 years, the site is technically dated and update cost is a rewrite.
Raw 3-year comparison
| Model | Build cost | Yearly cost | 3-year cost | Client workload |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| One-shot freelance + self-hosted | €1,500 – 3,000 | €60 – 300 (domain + hosting) | €1,680 – 3,900 | High (updates, backups) |
| One-shot agency + hosting included | €4,000 – 10,000 | €240 – 720 (hosting) | €4,720 – 12,160 | Medium (content to send, updates sometimes forgotten) |
| Subscription (free build) | €0 | €588 – 1,788 | €1,764 – 5,364 | Low (everything included, 1-2h/month) |
| Hybrid (build + active maintenance) | €3,000 – 8,000 | €720 – 2,400 | €5,160 – 15,200 | Low (but costs more than subscription) |
Subscription almost systematically wins on 3 years IF you don't already have an internal team capable of maintaining the site. One-shot wins only if you have that capacity and truly mobilize it.
How to decide in 5 questions
Before choosing, answer honestly:
- Who's going to update WordPress / plugins every 3 months? If the answer is vague, exclude pure one-shot.
- Who's going to restore the site the day it goes down? On a Monday morning at 8am. If nobody has the number, exclude pure one-shot.
- How many content modifications per month? Zero → one-shot or hosting included. 1 to 2h → subscription wins. More → plan a custom contract.
- What's your horizon? 1 to 2 years (market test, product launch) → subscription, no strong commitment. 5 to 10 years (established firm) → well-done one-shot or subscription, depending on internal capacity.
- How much cash do you have available NOW? €5,000 sitting in the account → one-shot possible. €100/month subscription → subscription, without mobilizing cash.
The most common mistake
Paying €2,000 to a low-cost agency, letting the site rot 18 months, getting hacked, redoing everything with a real provider for €5,000. Real cost: €7,000 + 3 weeks of site down + damaged reputation. When €89/month over 3 years (€3,200) would have covered it all — without the hack.
The other mistake: taking a subscription for a one-shot project that will never evolve. Event site for a company anniversary, product page for a short campaign, A/B-testable landing page: a static one-shot hosted free on Vercel or Netlify, no subscription needed.
Our positioning
At MAG&Cie, we offer all three models based on need:
- Website flat fee — 3 subscription plans (Essential, Pro, Premium)
- One-shot site on quote — for one-off needs or highly specific projects
- Existing site takeover + hosting — when you already have a site and just want to outsource maintenance
Want to see what fits your situation? 30 minutes qualification, free, no commitment — we look together.
A website doesn't cost what it costs. It costs what it costs + what it avoids costing (hack, downtime, wasted internal time). The best model aligns both.