Fixed-Price Website: I Build It First, You Pay After

I build your website to completion before you pay for it. The process is short: twenty minutes on the phone, then I decide whether to build. If yes, the site is live 48 hours later. Not a draft, not a clickable mockup, but a real site with your actual content, under a private address. You look at it on your phone and decide whether to take it. Don’t want it, the preview goes offline, and no invoice ever gets created. This offer is aimed at businesses.

Before this, I used to write proposals and wait for someone to trust a number they had no way of checking. That’s the real problem with the web design business: you’re asked to decide before you can see what you’re deciding on.

1. What I found on 25 pricing pages

Before setting my own prices, I went through roughly 25 German provider websites with public pricing. The finding that surprised me most wasn’t the price level, it was what’s missing from the prices: of these providers, only three mention conversion tracking at all. None of them builds an actual GA4 and Tag Manager property.

The same providers are happy to sell you that exact work separately six months later. GA4 and Google Tag Manager setups run between €990 and €1,990 in the German market, server-side tagging between €1,500 and €2,300, a Google Ads conversion setup between €300 and €1,500. Add it up and you land at €2,500 to €4,000 that’s included in almost no website package, even though without it nobody can tell whether the website works. That’s not an opinion, that’s addition on published prices.

Alongside that sit four patterns common enough to look normal:

• Contract terms of 12, 24 or 36 months. The longest one I found locks you in for three years.
• Setup fees on top, ranging from €149 to €1,490. One provider charges it on every tier, another as a mandatory upfront audit.
• The website belongs to the provider. One writes this outright on their site. Cancel, and you get a content export, not the site itself.
• Nickel-and-dime billing. Nearly €20 per change on a roughly €79-a-month plan. €50 to restore a backup. A 50% surcharge for a staging environment.

None of these models is dishonest. They just consistently shift the risk onto the side least equipped to see what they’re agreeing to. If you don’t know how long a website takes to build, you can’t judge whether an hourly rate is fair. I know. So I should be the one carrying the risk.

2. How the preview works and what it costs

The call and the build are free. So is looking at it, not keeping it. If you keep the site, you pay the price that was fixed before I built anything: landing page €2,490, website with measurement €5,900, growth system €11,900. Don’t keep it, the process costs you nothing, and you won’t hear from me again.

One thing needs saying plainly, or it sounds like fine print later: until you pay, the site belongs to me. You can look at it and judge it, but not publish it, move it, or reuse it elsewhere. That’s the only protection I have in this model at all.

Every tier includes what the market usually upsells afterward: GA4, Google Tag Manager, Google Ads conversion tracking, Meta pixel, consent management, an Impressum (the legal notice German law requires) and privacy policy built in, mobile Lighthouse score above 95. Not as a bonus, but because a website without measurement isn’t a business asset, it’s a guess with a logo on it.

Equally important is the other list. Next to the price sits what’s not included, and it shifts with your selection: hosting and domain (roughly €15 to €30 a month, billed directly by the provider and in your own name), the licence for the consent tool (with me that’s Usercentrics, affiliate link), licence costs for images and video, photoshoots, translations. A fixed price whose limits you have to go hunting for isn’t really fixed.

And the preview itself has boundaries I’d rather state up front: domain and hosting run on my account until you take over. Unlicensed images sit in as placeholders. External systems like inventory management, CRM or a booking tool only get connected after you accept. “Finished” means you can judge what you’re getting. It doesn’t mean I’ve touched your systems before you’ve said yes.

The catch is who I say yes to

The obvious reaction to “free” is distrust, and it’s a fair one. Anyone who works for free upfront usually gets the money back somewhere else, through lock-in, through hosting, through add-on charges.

With me, the answer is more boring. I build three sites a month upfront, and only for businesses I’ve already talked to. Most inquiries end in a no, and usually during the call itself. The reasons for turning a project down are published openly on the offer page, so nobody spends time on this for nothing.

The reason 48 hours is enough isn’t speed, it’s that I’m not starting from zero. Measurement, forms, consent, legal text and load time are solved parts for me, not open questions. What’s new each time is the structure for your offer and the copy that goes with it. An agency needs four weeks because coordination sits between everyone involved. Here, nothing sits between the decision and the build.

And yes, there are now several providers in Germany doing pre-built websites too. I found twelve of them while preparing this page, and I think that’s a good development. They all sit between €199 and €2,490 in the template segment, and not one of them includes measurement. So the difference isn’t in the promise, it’s in what’s actually built at the end.

3. Why a calculator, not a quote request form

The real test for any fixed-price promise is a single question, and I found a version of it used by a German agency with its own prospects: Does the price change if the project runs twenty hours longer? Anyone who can’t answer that with a clear no doesn’t have a fixed price, they have a starting point for negotiation.

That’s why my offer page has a calculator instead of a form. Six questions, then the number appears on screen, no inquiry, no email address required. You should know what we’d be talking about before the call happens.

While building it, I set myself three rules, because I’d seen how easily they get broken while reviewing the competition:

1. What’s displayed is the number I calculate with internally. One provider computes a minimum and a maximum, shows the visitor only the rounded-down minimum, and emails itself both. With me there’s one calculation, the same one in the browser, in the confirmation email, and on the server.
2. No range that isn’t one. Another advertises a price range where the lower and upper bound are identical for every option. If a configuration has one clear answer, I show one clear number.
3. No rounding down. If the total comes to €6,480, that’s what’s shown, not “around €6,000” and not “from €6,400”.

One small thing surprised even me while building it: click together enough individual line items to exceed a higher package tier, and the calculator switches to the cheaper package price and tells you so. The obvious alternative would have been to quietly leave the higher total standing. Technically correct, practically a cheap trick.

I have to be honest about one thing with myself too: whether public pricing and building upfront brings more inquiries in the German market or fewer, I don’t know. I haven’t found solid numbers on it, and I won’t hand you a made-up one either. What I do know is that I wouldn’t hire a provider myself who can’t give me a ballpark figure before the third phone call.

The bottom line

• I build first. A 20-minute call, then the finished site is live 48 hours later under a private address. No deposit, no credit card, no contract.
• You only pay if you keep it: €2,490, €5,900 or €11,900, no “starting from”. The price applies to the agreed scope, not to my hours.
• Until payment, the site is mine. Look, yes. Use, no. With payment, the code and repository transfer to you, history included.
• Conversion tracking is included. The market charges €2,500 to €4,000 for that same work separately.
• Three slots a month. The catch is who gets picked, not the fine print.

Want to know what your project would cost if you kept it? The calculator is on the offer page (in German) and needs no email address.

And if you’re earlier in the process and just want to know where your current site stands: the landing page check tells you that for free, without a call.