You ask for three quotes for the same website. The first comes back at CHF 1'200, the second at CHF 4'200, the third at CHF 11'000. No one explains where the difference goes, and you have no way of telling which of the three is reasonable.
Nobody publishes reference prices
No public price index covers website production in Switzerland specifically. The industry surveys that exist measure salaries, not project prices. The ranges you read everywhere — "budget CHF 1'200 to 8'000 for a brochure site" — come from sales pages copying one another, and never say how many real projects they are based on. When someone gives you an "average price", ask. You will not get an answer.
What is advertised in French-speaking Switzerland
The figures below are advertised publicly by providers. None of them comes from an invoice.
| Route | What is advertised | What it usually covers |
|---|---|---|
| Self-managed platform (Wix, Squarespace, Jimdo) | around CHF 150 to 650 a year, excluding domain and add-ons | a handful of pages, and several dozen hours of your own time |
| Freelancer | CHF 2'000 to 6'000 for a brochure site | five to eight pages, a contact form, one person you deal with |
| Small studio | CHF 4'000 to 10'000 | content to produce, a bilingual version, handover to a third party possible |
| Established agency | CHF 5'000 to 15'000 and above | catalogue, connection to business management software, contractual guarantees |
The first row is the easiest to check: subscription prices are public. The other three are self-declared, and their ranges overlap — a CHF 5'000 quote fits inside all three. So a table will not settle your case. Hours will.
A price is hours multiplied by a rate
Published rate cards put a web freelancer's hour between CHF 70 and 180, and an agency hour in French-speaking Switzerland between CHF 120 and 200. Again, these are advertised rates, which no industry survey confirms.
One benchmark is almost always missing: a five- to six-page brochure site, with the content supplied by you, generally takes 25 to 40 hours. Below fifteen hours, something is not in the quote.
- CHF 2'000: around twenty hours. Tight scope, your own content.
- CHF 4'000: around thirty hours. Your content laid out, one or two rounds of revisions.
- CHF 8'000: fifty to sixty hours. Copywriting, photography, several people involved.
Below CHF 2'000 you are buying something else: an off-the-shelf template, your content, no scoping. Ask for the number of hours planned and how they break down. That is where to start.
Then add VAT, which distorts a lot of comparisons. The standard rate has been 8.1% since 1 January 2024, and a business is in principle only liable for it above CHF 100'000 in turnover (details on ch.ch, in French). A freelancer under the threshold invoices you CHF 4'000 net. A VAT-registered agency invoices CHF 4'000 plus 8.1%, so CHF 4'324. Two quotes "at 4'000" are not the same price.
The three items that create the gap
The text. Who writes it? If the answer is "you", that is your time: one to two hours per page, and, from experience, the most common reason a project drags on for six months. If the provider writes it, those are billable hours.
The photographs. Unsplash, Pexels and Pixabay allow commercial use without attribution, but they guarantee neither the consent of the people photographed nor that of the locations and brands visible in the frame. As soon as a face is identifiable, "free" transfers the risk to you. Paid libraries flag which images have a signed release from the people in them, and cap the compensation they will pay: that is not a guarantee. For a tradesperson, half a day of photography in the workshop settles the question.
The languages. Professional translation in Switzerland is billed at between 11 and 35 centimes per word. A six-page site runs to 3'000 to 5'000 words, so CHF 330 to 1'750 per language, excluding integration and proofreading. Around Biel/Bienne and Bern, where French and German sit side by side, bilingual is not a box to tick: it is a second piece of writing.
You often read that a rebuild costs less than a new site. Nothing guarantees it. List your pages. Beyond thirty or so, redirecting the old addresses to keep the search positions you have earned becomes a line item to price separately.
The second-year bill
- A .ch domain name: CHF 10 to 25 a year depending on the reseller. Switch runs the registry but does not sell to end customers; you go through an intermediary.
- Hosting: shared hosting — several sites on the same server — starts at around CHF 10 a month with Swiss hosts, so CHF 120 to 400 a year.
- Maintenance: CHF 80 to 250 a month in the offers advertised in French-speaking Switzerland. At CHF 150 a month, that is CHF 1'800 in the second year, a substantial share of what the site costs you over three years. Demand the detail: updates, tested backups, monitoring, included hours for changes, response time. Then the awkward question: what happens if I do not take this contract? A site with no content management system and no plugins does not need one.
- Licences: some plugins — theme, multilingual module, online booking — renew every year, from a few dozen to a few hundred francs each. Ask for the list and the amounts in writing.
One line costs nothing and will spare you the worst: the domain name must be registered in your name, with your address as the contact. Free to do at the start, painful to put right if your provider disappears.
What gets sold to you and is not compulsory
Some quotes lean on obligations that are not obligations.
- A Swiss site addressing Swiss customers falls under the revised Federal Act on Data Protection (revised FADP; nLPD in French), in force since 1 September 2023 (official page on kmu.admin.ch, in French). The EU GDPR only applies if you address people inside the European Union, or if you track their online behaviour: detailed audience measurement, targeted advertising.
- The "up to 4% of turnover" line comes from the GDPR and is wrongly copied onto Swiss sites. Swiss law provides for a criminal fine of up to CHF 250'000, aimed at the responsible individual and requiring an intentional breach; the company can be sentenced instead of the individual, for a markedly lower amount. Prosecution is a matter for the cantons, not for the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC; PFPDT in French).
- The cookie banner is not imposed by Swiss law. The Telecommunications Act (LTC in French) requires you to inform visitors and to let them refuse; blocking access to the site behind an "I accept" button is a European practice. Consent is still necessary in specific cases, for instance extensive advertising profiling (analysis by Sylvain Métille, in French).
- Hosting in Switzerland is not a legal obligation, but an argument about trust and proximity.
- The European Accessibility Act has applied since 28 June 2025, but to a closed list of services sold to consumers, e-commerce among them. The test is the market you target, not where you are based, and businesses with fewer than ten people are exempt. For a bakery in Delémont, it changes nothing.
Your questions before you sign
Send them in writing to all three providers.
- How many hours are you planning, and how do they break down? Expect a figure per item; "it depends" is a signal.
- Is the amount with or without VAT, and are you VAT-registered?
- Who writes the text, who supplies the photographs, and what happens if I deliver them late? Good answer: the project pauses with no extra charge, and the launch date moves by the same amount.
- What is the timeline, what deposit, and how many rounds of revisions are included? A deposit is normal; paying the whole amount up front is not.
- What will I pay in the second year, line by line?
- Are the domain name and the files in my name?
If your site dates from 2016, test it before you decide. Is it readable on a phone? Does it open in under three seconds on 4G, timed by hand or with PageSpeed Insights? Does it show the security padlock? Is your information up to date? Does the system running it still receive updates — if nobody can answer, that is already an answer. One or two failures, and a refresh is enough. Three or more, and a rebuild is justified.
Then go back to your three quotes. CHF 1'200 buys a template and a lot of your own time; CHF 4'200, around thirty hours; CHF 11'000, several people and content production. None of them is dishonest in itself. The bad quote is the one that refuses to say which of the three it is. The figures cited here are publicly advertised prices, and they move: ask for a breakdown, not a total.