Cheap web design in Ireland, without a cheap website

At the bottom of the market there are three routes, and each one costs something later.

The first is a template platform with a monthly fee. The site goes live quickly, then the fee never stops. The design is a theme thousands of other businesses also bought, and the content is difficult to take with you if you leave.

The second is the cheapest quote on a freelancer marketplace. Sometimes that works. Often you get a site nobody can pick up afterwards, because there is no documentation, no handover and nobody answering after launch.

The third is an AI website generator. Worth saying plainly: for a one page site with your name, a phone number and a photo, a generator is a reasonable choice and costs almost nothing. It stops being reasonable the moment you need a page per service, a form that lands somewhere useful, content someone actually researched, or anything a search engine can tell apart from the other sites generated the same week.

The honest answer is geography, not a trick and not a cut down version of the same service.

Running a studio in Romania costs less than running one in Dublin. Rent, salaries and overheads are lower, and that shows up in the quote rather than in the work.

There is no agency in the middle. You talk to the people writing the code, so nobody is adding a margin for passing your brief along.

The work is done by our own team, not resold to a chain of subcontractors we have never met.

What you are not buying: somebody who drives to your premises, a local account manager, or an Irish office. If any of that matters, we are the wrong supplier and it is cheaper for both of us to know now.

Our presentation website starts at €29 a month on DCL Site, plus a one-time setup with a fixed quote. That is the figure we invoice and the figure you pay.

For that scope you get a small site, typically a handful of pages, built on our own code rather than a purchased theme. A mobile version that loads quickly on a phone, because that is where most enquiries come from. A contact form that reaches your inbox. An admin area you can log into and edit yourself. Domain and hosting set up, on our own servers or left where they are, whichever suits you.

What is not inside the entry figure: copywriting, photography, an online shop, bookings, logins, or a connection to another system you already run. Those appear as separate lines on the quote, before you commit to anything.

A low price is made by reducing scope, not by reducing standards. Five things stay in every build, including the smallest one.

Mobile speed. A site that takes five seconds on a phone loses the enquiry before anyone reads it.

Ownership. Code, content, domain and every access detail are yours. There is no licence you keep paying to keep the site online.

Our own code instead of a theme. You can add a page or a section next year without rebuilding the site.

Analytics that only fire after the visitor has made a cookie choice. We build it that way by default, not as an extra.

Contact details that work. A phone number that dials with one tap, a form that is monitored, and details that match whatever you publish elsewhere.

One more thing we will not do to make a quote cheaper: assemble a WordPress theme and hand it over. We do not build sites in WordPress. We do move sites off it, which is a different job.

Most of the small budget enquiries we get come from sole traders and one person limited companies, plus startups that need something credible before the first customer, not after.

The mistake at this stage is rarely spending too little. It is spending it on the wrong thing: a large site describing services that do not exist yet, instead of a small site that explains one offer clearly and makes it easy to get in touch.

Start with what you can fill with real content today. A page for each service you actually sell, the area you cover, your prices or at least a range, and proof of work you have done. Add the shop, the booking system or the client area when there is demand for them. Because the site is built on our own code and handed over in full, adding later is an extension, not a rebuild.

If paying the full amount before launch is difficult, ask for a payment schedule on your quote and we will answer in writing for your project.

We would rather put the terms in your quote than publish one rule here that may not fit your case. What we can say generally: the schedule is agreed before work starts, it is written down, and it does not change halfway through unless the scope changes and you approve that change first.

CJM Bathrooms is a bathroom renovation business in Ireland. We moved the site off WordPress onto a custom build, cut the DNS over through Cloudflare, carried the existing customer reviews across so nothing was lost in the move, and set up analytics that only runs after consent.

The whole project ran remotely, from brief to launch, in a country where we have no office. It is one client, not a portfolio of Irish work, and we would rather say that than imply otherwise.

We have not published a budget figure for that project, because the client has not agreed to make it public.

Related pages: a small Irish build we delivered