The short answer: from €72 to a few thousand euros, and the difference doesn't depend on how beautiful the website is. It depends on who does the work, and how much work is left for you. The two things don't go together as much as people think: the most expensive plan is also the one that takes up the most time. Below are the real price lists from fourteen providers, taken from their Italian pages, with the cost over two years and the renewal price, which is what almost no one writes on the front page.
It's the only variable that shifts the price by an order of magnitude. Everything else, the number of pages, the design, the platform, matters far less than it seems.
Wix, Aruba, Hostinger, IONOS, Squarespace, and others give you the platform. The text, photos, editing, and updates are up to you, even when artificial intelligence prepares the first draft: you're the one who adds the real content. It's the cheapest tier on the market, by far, and for those with time and willingness, it's the right choice.
The supplier builds and maintains the website. It costs three to ten times the price of the tool because what you pay for is not the software but a person's labor. This is the category we are in, and the important characteristic is that the time you spend is almost zero.
An agency with a dedicated project, for needs that a subscription doesn't cover: a real e-commerce, integrations with your systems, an identity to build. But here comes the surprise: It's the band that asks the most of you, not least. Materials to procure, content to approve, meetings, review rounds. And at delivery the site remains as it is.
This is the table that matters more than the price list, and it should be read by looking at the last column. We took the first two bands from price lists; the third describes how an agency project usually works, and like all generalizations, it admits exceptions.
| Fascia | Who writes the lyrics | Who provides the photos | Meetings and reviews | After delivery |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DIY 72 at €410 | you | you | None, but the editing is yours | Stay put, unless you come back |
| Subscription around €780 | the supplier | take from the content you have already published | No: look at the site already done and say yes or no | it updates itself every month |
| Tailor-made agency a few thousand | you, or them as a quote | you, often with a photoshoot to pay for | brief, call, review cycles to follow | Stay still, and changes often come at a cost. |
If you only look at the first column, the market looks like a ladder: little, medium, a lot. If you look at the last one, the ladder breaks. The most expensive band is also the one that demands the most of your time., and in the end leaves you with a site that is finished in the worst sense of the word: well done, and that's that.
It's not a flaw of agencies, it's how a custom project works: it starts from your needs, so the information has to come from you. It makes perfect sense when those needs exist. For a showcase website for a local business, most of the time, what's needed is for someone to do it and keep it updated without calling you.
Two years, not one, because that's the horizon where launch prices stop working and you see the true cost. An identical scenario for everyone: a showcase website for a local business, your own domain, an email address on the domain.
| Supplier | Piano | 24 months | What does the bill change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aruba | SuperSite Easy | 71,90 € | €17.90 for the first year, €54.00 from the second year. Domain and five mailboxes included. |
| Hostinger | Premium | 106,83 € | The €2.99 per month is only available if you pay 48 months in advance. Upon renewal, it's €9.99 per month. |
| IONOS | Web Hosting Standard | 118,00 € | 3 € per month for six months, then 5 €. The minimum contract duration is not published |
| Aruba | SuperSite Professional | 128,90 € | €19.90 for the first year, €109.00 from the second year |
| Flazio | Annual PRO | 162,30 € | €99 per year, VAT included, and it stays €99 at renewal. |
| GoDaddy | Web Hosting Economy | 193,95 € | €2.19 per month the first year, €10.99 upon renewal. If SSL is activated at €99.99 per year, it becomes €293.94. |
| Jimdo | Start | 241,97 € | Minimum contract of 12 or 24 months. No PO boxes, forwarding only. |
| Squarespace | Basic | 264,00 € | plus $221.60 for domain and box: email is not included |
| Register.it | SiteBuilder Start | 305,15 € | €116.30 the first year in a single payment, €166.15 per year upon renewal |
| Wix | Light | 336,00 € | €14.00 per month if you pay for the entire year, €19.00 per month. |
| Squarespace | Core | 408,00 € | plus $120.80. Includes one year of Google Workspace |
Prices excluding VAT. Flazio and Jimdo display prices including VAT: here they are reported net to allow comparison with others.
| Supplier | Offer | First year | From the second | 24 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Register.it | One Page Website | from 300 € | unpublished | uncomputable |
| Register.it | Smart Site | from €780 | unpublished | uncomputable |
| Italiaonline | AI site, three floors | I am not publishing | I am not publishing | uncomputable |
| Solucom | Subscription site | 390 € | 390 € | 780 € |
Our price includes a €90 list price startup contribution, which is currently waived by the launch promotion on the annual plan: at full list price, two years would cost €870. Where you see "not published" or "not public," it's not due to our reticence: the supplier does not provide that information. In the case of Italiaonline, the price is only known by speaking with a salesperson over the phone.
It's not incorrectness, it's the standard business model of hosting. But if you compare entry prices, you are comparing promotions, not costs.
The Economy Web Hosting plan starts at €2.19 per month and renews at €10.99. On the same page, it states that the security certificate renews automatically at €99.99 per year, which alone costs more than the hosting. And the three-year plan costs more than the one-year plan.
The €2.99 per month option is only available if you commit to forty-eight months and pay in advance, which means €143.52 all at once. Upon renewal, the price increases to €9.99 per month. The prices for twelve or twenty-four months are not readable on the page.
SuperSite Easy is €17.90 for the first year and renews at €54.00. However, it should be noted that Aruba writes the renewal price next to the promotional price, which is more than what almost everyone else does: it remains the cheapest provider on the market even after renewal.
Honest exceptions exist and must be recognized. Wix at renewal, it keeps the same price as the first year. Flazio It costs €99 per year and stays €99 even after. If the entry price seems too good to be true, the question to ask isn't "how much does it cost" but "how much does the renewal cost"It's an email line to the vendor and saves you a surprise in twelve months.
I'm the reason the final bill never looks like the price you had in mind.
Almost everyone gives it away for twelve months and then puts it on the bill: IONOS at €10 per year, Aruba at €11.99, GoDaddy at €13.11, and Jimdo prices it at €24. Hostinger and Wix do not publish the renewal price for the domain, so you have to ask beforehand. It seems like a small amount, but it's the classic charge that arrives when you least expect it.
It's not always included. Jimdo doesn't offer it in any package, only forwarding. Squarespace, on the Basic plan, doesn't include it, and Google Workspace costs $8.40 per month. Aruba, on the other hand, includes five, and IONOS includes one. If you write to customers from your Gmail address, this feature is important to you.
Today it's free almost everywhere, and in fact almost no one charges for it. The exception we found is GoDaddy, where the cheap hosting page states an automatic renewal at €99.99 per year. It's worth checking before signing up, not after.
It's the least transparent part of the market, and it's worth knowing that before you pick up the phone.
Register.it post the starting prices for the websites they build: from €300 for a single page, from €780 for a complete website. But next to those figures it says "for the first year only," and the renewal price is not published anywhere.
Italiaonline, which is the Libero and PagineGialle group, has three site plans with the public content list and no price, nor for entry nor for renewal. It is purchased by phone, through a seller, a toll-free number, or the "we'll call you" form. In their general conditions, the contract lasts twelve months with automatic renewal for another twelve, and cancellation is only valid with registered letter with return receipt or certified email, received at least forty-five days in advance of the deadline. With the loyalty formula, there's a minimum duration, and if you leave early, the remaining balance is paid in full.
This is not a criticism of their work, which we haven't seen and don't judge. It's useful information for those who have to decide: if you only find out the price on a phone call, you're only halfway through comparing alternatives.
Prices change with promotions, contractual terms do not. They are taken from supplier documents.
| Supplier | How do I cancel |
|---|---|
| Italiaonline | Registered mail with return receipt or PEC, received at least 45 days before expiry. With the loyalty formula, early termination requires full payment of the balance. |
| Jimdo | Minimum contract of 12 or 24 months, and the 14-day withdrawal does not apply to businesses. |
| Flazio | Email with 60 days' notice. In case of early termination, they will retain the full annual fee. |
| IONOS | Tacit renewal with 4 weeks' notice, but the minimum contract duration is not published |
| Solucom | Email with 30 days on the annual, 7 on the monthly. No penalty, and the domain is registered in your name: if you go elsewhere, you take it with you. |
If you choose a tool, the price you pay is the one in the table. The real cost, however, includes an item that no one puts on the invoice: your hours. Writing the texts, choosing and cropping photos, figuring out why the menu breaks on the phone, coming back six months later to change the hours.
For some, it's time well spent: you learn something useful, maintain control, and those who get a taste for it do a better job than a distracted supplier would. If you recognize yourself in this description, the tool belt is the right choice and our charts above are more useful to you than any of our offers: Aruba at €72 in two years is the cheapest way to be online in Italy, and we have nothing to add.
For many others, no. A beautician who closes at 8 p.m. doesn't learn a program in the evening, and the website remains half-finished for months: the worst-case scenario isn't spending too much, it's paying for a subscription for a website that never went online. There, the question changes: not "how much does the website cost," but "How much does it cost not to have it".
Each provider has its own profile page, featuring historical and assigned prices, along with an honest section on when it’s best to choose that provider. Updated as of July 30, 2026.
A .it domain costs around 10 to 13 € per year for renewal, depending on the registrar: as of July 30, 2026, IONOS at 10 €, Aruba at 11.99 €, and GoDaddy at 13.11 €. Hostinger and Wix do not publish their renewal rates. The first year often costs just a few euros or is included in a plan, and that’s where the misunderstanding arises: the price that matters is the renewal fee. A .com domain costs between €15 and €22. Be wary of providers offering it for one cent: they almost always require you to purchase it for multiple years or renew at much higher rates.
There are three fixed costs: domain, hosting, and security certificate. With a do-it-yourself solution, the cost ranges from €40 to €170 per year, depending on the provider and the plan. On top of that is something that doesn’t appear as an expense on the invoice but is still a cost: content updates. If you do them yourself, it takes time; if someone else does them, it costs money. A website that no one updates costs little but yields even less.
Because they are two different things. A subscription gives you a website built on a tried-and-tested system: it costs little because the provider does it a hundred times. An agency project starts from your requirements and solves them one by one, and makes sense when those requirements truly exist: an e-commerce with hundreds of products, integrations with your management software, a brand to build from scratch.
The first thing you should know is that price doesn’t mean less work for you—it actually means more: you provide the materials, you write or approve the content, and there are briefs, meetings, and rounds of revisions to go through. And once the project is delivered, the website stays as is: it only changes if you remember to request a modification, which in many cases is subject to a separate quote. For a showcase website for a local business, those requirements usually don’t apply, and that kind of work isn’t worth it.
The software is free, but the rest isn't. You need hosting and a domain—the same items as before—and you need someone to update WordPress and the plugins: leaving an installation untended for a year is the most common way for a site to get hacked. If that someone is you, WordPress is the most cost-effective option available. If it isn’t, the cost shifts from the software to maintenance, and the total ends up being about the same.
It does a good first version, and it does it well aesthetically. The point is what ends up inside: in the tests we did, the generated sites arrived with reviews signed by non-existent clients, generic addresses, and placeholder phone numbers. These are contents to be replaced, and replacing them is exactly the work you thought you had avoided. If you don't replace them, you are publishing fake reviews in the name of your business.
Three questions for the provider before signing, and the answers in writing. How much does the renewal cost, not the initial setup. What is not included, specifically the domain from the second year and the email inbox. How to cancel, with what notice period and by what method. If any of these answers are vague, the price they told you is not the price.
We'll prepare your business website with your actual content and send you the link. It costs nothing, no card is needed, and if you're not convinced, it ends there. This way, you're comparing something that exists, not a promise.
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