How Long Does It Take to Get a Website Designed?

Last week a guy asked for a launch date before we'd talked about pages, photos, or whether he even had a logo that wasn't a screenshot. Fair. Everyone wants the date. The date isn't the interesting part.

About ten working days if the assets are ready. Longer if they aren't. Agencies quote weeks because of handoffs, not because the work is harder.

Ten working days is my baseline for a normal website: one language, no shop, roughly five to eight pages. Ecommerce, a second language, or a custom booking flow is a different clock, and I quote that separately. The ten days start the day the logo, photos, and text are in my hands, not the day of the first call.

Sometimes I'm faster. When the scope is bigger, it takes longer. I want to walk you through exactly what happens in those ten days, because the process is the answer, not just the number.

Why Ten Days Sounds Fast (And Isn't a Trick)

If you've talked to an agency before, ten days probably sounds impossible. That's because agencies are usually quoting you a WordPress build: plugin integrations, a design phase with wireframes and mockup rounds, and a development team that isn't the same person who sold you the project. Every one of those things adds weeks. Not because the work is hard. Because there are more people, more handoffs, and more rounds of "let me check with the team" in between.

I build fast static sites. Astro or Next.js, no WordPress. That's not a stylistic choice. It's the reason the timeline is what it is. There's no database to configure, no plugin conflicts to debug, no page builder fighting me on layout. I write the code, the site ships, and it's fast on Core Web Vitals because there's nothing sitting between the visitor and the page. Static sites are also just less to break. Less to break means less time spent fixing things instead of building them.

None of this is a shortcut. It's a different way of building that happens to be faster because there's less overhead, not because I skipped anything.

On the calendar, ten working days is two weeks if feedback is quick. The 1-3 weeks I list on the site is the honest range once you add weekends, a slow logo file, or a homepage preview that sits in an inbox. Ten working days is the build. One to three weeks is the project.

What I Actually Need From You

Here's where most timeline conversations go wrong: the client assumes the ten days is all on me, and I'm the bottleneck. Almost never true. The bottleneck, when there is one, is nearly always waiting on assets from the client's side. If you have the following ready before we start, ten days is realistic. If I'm chasing you for a logo file three days in, it isn't.

Your logo, as a vector file. SVG, AI, or PDF. Not a PNG, not a JPG. I get this pushback a lot: "I only have the logo my old designer gave me, and it's a JPEG." That JPEG was almost certainly built from a vector file at some point. Ask whoever made it for the original. If nobody can find it, we may need to recreate it, and that's an extra step nobody budgeted for.

Any photos you want used that aren't already on your current site, and only if you own them. If your existing site has photography you like and you have the rights, I can usually pull from there. If you've got a folder of new shots (team photos, product photos, whatever), send them upfront, not halfway through.

Your text, in whatever shape it's in. Doesn't need to be polished. I'd rather have a rough Google Doc with everything you want said than nothing, because I can shape rough text. I can't shape a blank page.

That's genuinely most of it. Once I have the logo, the photos, and the text, the ball is almost entirely in my court.

The Process, Day by Day

Here's roughly how the ten days break down. I say "roughly" because every project shifts a little, but this is the shape of it. Day 10 only holds if the homepage comes back in a day or two, not a week.

Days 1-3: the homepage preview. This is the first thing you see, and it's the most important step in the entire process, because it's where we find out if we're aligned before I build the rest of the site around a design you don't like. I build the homepage first, live, on a real preview link, not a static mockup, not a Figma file. You click around an actual page.

The approval checkpoint. Once you approve the homepage, I invoice 50 percent. This isn't a formality. It's the moment the project actually locks in. Before this point, we're still figuring out direction. After it, we're executing a known plan. This is also why the homepage step matters so much: it's cheaper and faster to adjust direction on one page than to discover halfway through a seven-page build that we're not on the same page about the whole site.

During the build, revisions are unlimited until the site is right. No extra invoices for that. I would rather fix the homepage three times in week one than rebuild six pages in week three.

Days 4-9: building out the rest of the site. Once the homepage is approved, the remaining pages move fast, because the hardest creative decisions (layout, tone, visual direction) are already made. This is where having your content ready upfront pays off. If your text and photos are sitting in my inbox, I build. If I'm waiting on them page by page, this is where ten days becomes fourteen.

Day 10: launch, and the second invoice. The remaining 50 percent is due when the site goes live. Not before. I don't ask for full payment upfront, and I don't drag out the final invoice after launch either. It's tied to the moment the site is actually live and working.

What Happens After Launch

The relationship doesn't end at launch, and I don't want you to think it does. The first round of content changes, usually three to four weeks out, once you've had guests, clients, or contacts actually look at the live site and give you feedback, is included. That's by design. You genuinely can't know what needs tweaking until real people have used the thing. Baking that first revision round into the process means you're not paying for the obvious fixes that only show up once the site is live.

After that first round, ongoing changes are billed at 95 EUR per hour, in 5-minute increments. I want to be upfront about what that actually looks like in practice, because "hourly" scares people, and it shouldn't here. Changing a few images and some copy is usually 10 to 15 minutes. There's no CMS maintenance fee, because there's no CMS. You're not paying a monthly retainer to keep a system running. You're paying for the actual minutes it takes me to make the change you asked for.

If you want to edit text and photos yourself without going through me, the honest answer is: usually no, and most small and midsize businesses don't need to. Content on these sites changes rarely enough that sending me a note is cheaper and less hassle than maintaining a CMS: no plugin updates, no security patches, no "why did the site break after an update" phone calls.

If part of your site genuinely needs to be editable on your end, a restaurant menu, a specials section, something that changes weekly, I build that specific piece so you can update it yourself. What I don't do is bolt on a full CMS to make the whole site editable.

What Actually Causes Delays

I want to be honest about this part, because it's the part that determines whether your project takes ten working days or three weeks.

Slow feedback on the homepage preview. The homepage approval is a checkpoint, not a rubber stamp. If it sits in your inbox for a week because you're busy, that week comes straight off the ten days.

Scope that grows mid-project. Ecommerce, a second language, a booking system that isn't the one you already have. These are all things I can build, but they are not the ten-day baseline. They get a scoped quote on day one. Better to know that then than to discover it on day seven.

None of this is a lecture. It's just the actual pattern, after enough of these projects to see it repeat. The businesses that hit ten working days are the ones who turn the homepage approval around in a day or two instead of a week.

Costs, So There's No Confusion

Since timeline and price are always tangled together in people's heads, here's the short version: 2,500 EUR / 3,000 USD / 4,000 CAD covers the build, with one language included. An extra language is 500 EUR flat. That's the only build cost, no hidden fees, no surprise line items later. Ecommerce and custom booking are quoted separately based on scope.

You keep whatever booking tool you're already using; I'm not forcing you onto a new one. Domain and email stay with you, under your control, where they belong. If you don't already have hosting, I put the site on Cloudflare, on their free plan. It costs you nothing, and their free tier comfortably handles the kind of site I build for you.

Payment is 50 percent after you approve the homepage, 50 percent when the site goes live.

The Realistic Version, Start to Finish

So, pulled together: we do a short call and lock the scope. You send me the logo, photos, and text. That's day one. I build the homepage in the first three days and send you a live preview. You approve it, I invoice half, and I build the rest of the site over the following days. Around day ten, if feedback was quick, the site launches, and I invoice the other half. On the calendar that usually lands inside one to three weeks. Three to four weeks later, once real visitors have used the site, we do a round of adjustments, included, no extra charge. After that, changes are small, fast, and billed only for the minutes they take.

That's the honest timeline. Not a marketing number designed to sound impressive, but the actual shape of how these projects go, including the parts that are on you as much as they're on me. If you've got your assets ready and you turn around feedback quickly, ten working days is real. If you don't, it's still fast. Just not that fast.

If you already have the logo as a vector, a folder of photos you own, and a messy Google Doc of the text, we can talk dates on the first call. I will look at your current site or your idea, ask a few questions, and tell you whether you're in the ten-day baseline or a scoped quote. No sales pitch. No pressure. Phone is at the top of the page. Or hit the contact button.