Website builder or agency? What actually pays off for trade businesses

What we measured in one German district

Our own count comes from the Märkischer Kreis in Germany; we have not run the same count in Ireland yet, so read the numbers as an example of a typical trades market, not as Irish statistics. In July 2026 we reviewed Yellow Pages listings for five trades across eight towns in the Märkischer Kreis: roofers, electricians, painters, joiners, and heating/plumbing (SHK) firms from Iserlohn to Meinerzhagen. 1,097 listings in total.

The result: 38 percent of the 1,097 directory listings for trade businesses in eight Märkischer Kreis towns had no website listed. Not an outdated one. None.

Among the businesses that do have one, we ran a random sample of 120 websites through Google's official PageSpeed test (as of July 2026, mobile measurement):

Half of them don't reach a performance score of 70 out of 100; the median sits at 69.

People searching for a tradesperson do it on a phone, at the moment the roof starts leaking. If the site still shows a blank screen after four seconds, the job goes to whoever ranks next.

The bar in this market is low. For the trade that's bad news. For you it's an opening.

What the website builder actually costs

Wix, Jimdo and similar tools start at roughly 10 to 40 euros a month depending on the plan (list prices, July 2026). That's the part that shows up on the price list.

The part that doesn't: you build the site yourself. Be honest about the hours: writing copy, picking photos, clicking together a menu, testing on mobile, redoing it. For most people that adds up to 20 to 40 hours of work (our estimate). As a master tradesperson, your hourly rate on site runs somewhere between 60 and 90 euros. The website you build at the kitchen table therefore costs, in real terms, 1,200 to 3,600 euros in your own evenings and weekends. No invoice, but you pay it.

And then the actual problem starts: the site exists, but nobody finds it. Website builders deliver the technology, not the visibility. Copy that ranks on Google for "roof renovation Iserlohn" is not something the builder writes for you.

There are cases where the builder is still the right call. This guide shows the running costs that quotes leave out.

What an agency actually costs

We looked at published prices from web agencies in North Rhine-Westphalia that specifically serve trade businesses and small firms. The entry-price range: 800 to 2,500 euros, with more elaborate trade-business websites running 2,500 to 4,000 euros. On top of that come ongoing hosting and maintenance costs, ranging from 20 to 180 euros a month depending on the provider.

Our own prices are published openly on our pricing page. We're not playing hide-and-seek here. The point of this guide is different: whether you buy from us or from someone else, you should know how to weigh price against return.

And if you want the full market picture, from builders to Irish agency rates: all the price ranges are in our guide How much does a website cost?.

Weighing a monthly website rental against buying outright? We've laid out the honest math, including the 4-year cost comparison, in Rent or Buy a Website: What Really Pays Off?.

The calculation that actually matters

Example calculation: the assumptions are stated; check them against your own numbers (all amounts net of VAT).

A roofing business in the Märkischer Kreis. Average job value for a roof repair: around 2,000 euros, considerably more for full renovations. Assumed margin: 15 percent, or 300 euros per job.

• Agency website: 4,000 euros one-off, plus 100 euros a month in maintenance → 5,200 euros in year one
• For that to pay off, the site needs: 5,200 ÷ 300 = roughly 17 extra jobs in year one. So one or two a month.
• From year two, the threshold drops to 4 jobs a year: one per quarter.

One or two extra jobs a month, in a region where four in ten competitors have no website listed and three-quarters of the rest load too slowly, is a low bar to clear. The reverse also holds: a website nobody finds won't even deliver those four jobs. Visibility is the real goal here; a finished site alone doesn't get you there.

Run the same logic for your own business: job value times margin, divided by annual cost. If the required number of jobs sounds unrealistic, skip it. If it sounds laughably low, you know what to do.

When the builder is enough

Honest answer: more often than agencies admit.

• Your order book is full for months and you don't want to grow. Then you just need a digital business card with opening hours and a phone number. Jimdo, done.
• You live entirely on repeat customers and referrals, and want to keep it that way.
• You're testing a business idea and don't know yet whether it'll still exist in a year.

In these cases, 15 euros a month is the right price, and any agency that still talks you into a four-figure website is doing you a disservice.

When it isn't

• You want to grow, hire new people, or build a second line of business. Applicants check the website first these days. A business without a decent online presence simply doesn't exist for a 25-year-old journeyman.
• You want customers to find you, not just confirm you. That takes copy, structure, and speed that hold up on Google and, increasingly, on ChatGPT and similar tools — exactly where the sites in our measurement fell short.
• The next job is worth four figures. Then a single extra customer alone covers a substantial share of the website cost.

Methodology, for verification

Survey conducted July 2026: 1,097 industry listings (Yellow Pages) for roofers, electricians, painters, joiners, and SHK firms in Iserlohn, Lüdenscheid, Menden, Hemer, Plettenberg, Altena, Werdohl, and Meinerzhagen. Of these, 675 had a website, 422 did not. Performance sample: 120 randomly selected websites, tested with Google PageSpeed Insights (mobile measurement); 99 produced usable results, the rest were unreachable during testing or returned no result. Price ranges: published list prices from agencies with a trade-business focus in North Rhine-Westphalia, as of July 2026. The example calculation is a model: plug in your own numbers. HTTPS share and speed figures refer to the 99 usable results of the 120-site sample.