What a website really costs an artisan: the line items nobody mentions

How much does a website cost for an artisan? Anyone who answers with a single figure is selling you something. The real cost of a website isn't a number: it's a list of line items, some written on the quote and some not. The second group almost always weighs more than the first. Here is the full list, what to ask whoever quotes you, and where to read official prices, so you do the math with real numbers.

The line items you see on the quote

These are the costs everyone accounts for. The trick is in the details: first-year price versus renewal, monthly versus annual, what's included and what's a paid add-on.

• Domain. Your site's name (yourname.it) is registered through a registrar and renewed every year. For .it domains the list of accredited registrars is kept by the .it Registry: the price is on the price list of the registrar you pick, and the number that matters is the renewal price, not the first-year promo.
• Hosting or the builder subscription. Either you pay for space to install WordPress, or you pay the fee of a site builder (Squarespace, Wix, WordPress.com). The official pricing pages are public: Squarespace, Wix, WordPress.com. Compare monthly, annual and renewal prices.
• The "free" domain. Many annual builder plans include a domain voucher for the first year (Wix says so on its plans page): from year two you pay for it. Write it down.
• Theme or template. Free ones are often enough; paid ones are one-off or subscription. If a freelancer proposes a premium theme, ask who pays its renewal.
• Extensions and plugins. Contact forms, galleries, maps, antispam, backups: each can have a free and a paid tier. The "cheap" site often becomes a different figure after four plugins.
• Email on your domain. info@yourname.it isn't always included in hosting: sometimes it's a separate service.

The line items you don't see

This is where the quote and the real cost part ways. None of these arrive as an invoice, but you pay every one of them.

• Photos. A workshop site lives on images: the studio, hands at work, finished pieces, the group at the end of the evening. Either you pay a photographer or you spend your own days. Rushed phone photos show, and they show for years.
• Copy. Every workshop needs a title, a description, what's included, who it's for, how to get there, what happens if it rains. If you work with tourists, all of it in two languages. Writing it well is a trade; writing it badly costs bookings.
• Your time. The biggest item and the one nobody writes down. Hours to pick the tool, hours to learn it, hours to fix what doesn't work, then hours every month to keep it alive. If you don't price it, the site will always look "almost free". It isn't.
• Maintenance. System and plugin updates, backups, the security certificate, a plugin that stops talking to another after an update. With a builder you do less of it; with self-hosted WordPress you do all of it.
• Privacy and cookies. Privacy policy, cookie banner, compliant forms: either you set them up, you pay someone, or you do them badly.

Bookings and payments: the part that changes the bill

A showcase site is one thing. A site that takes bookings for a workshop with dates, limited seats and a deposit is another, and the quote has to say so. Three items.

1. The booking system. A plugin or built-in module, on a subscription or a licence. Check that it handles seats per date (eight people on Saturday at 3 pm), not just one-to-one appointments like a hairdresser's. Many tools are born for the second case and adapt poorly to the first.
2. Payment fees. The gateway keeps a share of every payment. Stripe publishes its rates on its pricing page: for standard European Economic Area cards it lists 1.5% + €0.25 per transaction, with no monthly fee and no setup cost. Watch the second layer: some builders add their own fee on lower plans. Squarespace, for instance, lists on its pricing page a 2% transaction fee on sales for the Personal plan and zero from the higher plans; WordPress.com publishes on its pricing page a table of payment fees that changes by plan. Those are the first lines to check.
3. What happens after payment. Confirmation email to the customer, reminders, refund if you cancel, a participant list to bring to the studio. Ask who sends them and how much manual work sits behind it.

If you're still deciding how to collect bookings, before the site it's worth reading the 7 ways to manage workshop bookings: the website is only one of the seven, and not always the best fit.

The cost of not updating it

It's the item no quote contains, and the most expensive. A site with March's course still on the home page in October, the old price, the studio photo from three years ago: the customer doesn't write to ask whether it's still valid. They leave. Every month you don't touch the site you pay in bookings that don't arrive and in trust that fades.

The point is simple: a site is alive only if someone keeps it alive. If that someone is you, go back to your time. If it isn't, go back to maintenance and ask what a change costs.

How to get a realistic quote: three scenarios

We don't give figures because they change by area, tool and person. We give you the questions. With these you compare quotes properly, not by gut feeling.

Do it yourself

Add up these lines, all at renewal price and not at the promo price:

• Domain, from the registrar's price list.
• Hosting or builder fee, from the official pricing page, on annual billing.
• Booking system and gateway, with per-transaction fees.
• Paid theme and plugins, renewals included.
• Your build hours times your hourly rate, plus the hours per month to keep it updated.

Freelancer

A freelancer's quote should be read for what isn't written. Ask in writing:

1. What exactly is included: how many pages, which features, how many revisions.
2. Whose name the domain and hosting are in. They must be yours, with the credentials in your hands.
3. Who writes the copy and who takes the photos. If "the client provides them", that cost is yours.
4. Are bookings and payments included and working, or "can be added"?
5. What maintenance costs after delivery, and what a single change costs.
6. Is there an hour of training so you can update dates and prices yourself?

Agency

With an agency the questions are the same, plus three: whether there's a maintenance contract with written response times, whether the quote is per project or a retainer, and whether they can show you a site with bookings and payments working today, not a demo.

The alternative: a Maker profile on Handsome

If what you need isn't a website but a place where customers book and pay for your workshops, there's a route that skips most of the list above. On Handsome the Maker profile is free: you get a public page for yourself and one for each workshop, with dates, available seats and booking already switched on. The customer pays a deposit online and settles the rest at the studio; the deposit lands directly in your Stripe account, without passing through us. Handsome applies 0% commission on your takings: only the Stripe fees you read in the official price list remain, and nothing is loaded on top of the price you set.

What you don't have to buy or configure:

• Builder, theme, booking plugin and their maintenance.
• A payment gateway to connect and test: you open your Stripe account from the profile.
• Confirmation emails to the customer and reviews, which are verified because they're tied to a real booking.
• The hours spent working out why the form doesn't show remaining seats.

There's also an optional subscription, Maker Pro (€9.90 a month or €95 a year), for those who want extra tools: the basic profile doesn't require it. And it isn't an either/or: if you already have a showcase site, keep it and link it to your profile. The full comparison between the two routes is in website plus Calendly or Handsome; to see what the workshop pages already online look like, open the workshop list.