Website for car dealers: what it costs, and why stock is a feed problem

en 2026-09-18 7 min read

A car dealer website is EUR 1.500 to 3.500 when your team keeps stock by hand in a CMS, and EUR 3.500 to 7.500 when stock arrives automatically from the system you already store vehicles in. Design does not separate those two numbers. Where the vehicle data comes from, and who has to type it twice, does.

The finance page, the trade-in enquiry and the location page are ordinary web work at ordinary prices. Stock decides which step you land on, so settle it first.

Stock is a feed problem, not a page problem

A vehicle page is easy to build. A vehicle page that is still correct the morning after the car sold is a different job, and the difference sits behind the page rather than on it.

Your stock already lives somewhere: a dealer management system, a spreadsheet, or the account you advertise with on a marketplace. That place is the source of truth, and the website should read from it rather than compete with it. Once a car has to be described twice, the site drifts out of date and nobody is quite at fault.

So we start with what your system can hand over. There are four common answers.

• A scheduled file export. CSV or XML that the site reads on a schedule you choose. Straightforward to consume.
• An API. Your system exposes vehicles directly. Richer, and it lets the site sit closer to live.
• A marketplace feed. If you already send a file to a portal, the same file may be able to feed your own site, with no new work inside your business.
• Nothing machine readable. Then the CMS is the source of truth, someone on your team owns it, and you are on the cheaper step. A legitimate answer, not a failure.

What the feed work actually is

When a dealer site is quoted cheaply, this is the list that was left out.

• Field mapping. Your system's words for fuel, body, transmission and trim are not the site's words, and every empty field needs a decision about what the page shows.
• Photos. Images arrive at any size, in any order, or not at all, and each case needs handling.
• Sold cars. A sold car's page should not become a 404. It should say the car has gone, keep the address alive for anyone who saved it, and point at the closest match on your forecourt.
• Filters as addresses. A make plus a fuel type deserves a URL that can be shared and indexed, instead of a state that dies on refresh.
• Failure. Feeds break. The site should keep the last good copy and tell you, rather than show visitors an empty forecourt.

Those five items are why a stock-fed site sits on step 04 rather than step 03. The pages are not the expensive part. The system behind them is.

What each step gives a dealer

These are our standard steps, read through a dealer's eyes. The plain definitions are on packages.

Two things can continue every month after launch. Care is EUR 100 to 300 per month for updates, monitoring, backups and small fixes, and it does not cover redesign or new features. SEO growth is EUR 500 to 800 per month for technical and on-page work, service and location pages, internal links and reporting.

SEO foundation is different: a one-off at EUR 450 to 750 covering Search Console, analytics, indexation, technical hygiene, titles, internal links and a three to six month plan. It is done once and handed to you.

Where the rest of the budget goes

Photography comes first, and only you can supply it: a consistent background and shot order change every vehicle card on the site. Speed comes next, because a stock list has to work on a phone. How we build for that is on our Next.js page. Last is the enquiry path: decide where a question lands and who answers it. How design and build run as one job is on design engineering.

Process and timeline

1. Scoping. Your stock system, what it can export, and what happens to a car when it sells. The fixed quote follows scoping, never precedes it, because the feed decides the number.
2. Design. The vehicle card, the detail page and the filters, drawn on a phone first.
3. Build. The feed, the mapping, the pages, the forms and the routing of enquiries.
4. Content. Photos, vehicle descriptions, and the pages about you rather than the cars.
5. Launch. Redirects from old addresses, Search Console, analytics, and a check that the feed holds up.

A step 03 dealer site runs 3 to 6 weeks. A stock-fed step 04 site runs 6 to 12 weeks. This is the part that waits on you: photos and descriptions come from your side, and the calendar moves when they do.

When to spend less

• If your sales start with a phone call, a step 02 mini-site at EUR 900 to 1.500 puts your name, your cars and your number in front of people. A feed can be added to the same site later.
• If your marketplace listings already work for you, do not pay to rebuild the marketplace. A step 03 site that sells you and links out to your listings is cheaper and honest.
• Do not buy a feed before there is a system to feed from. If stock lives in a spreadsheet, keep vehicles in a CMS on step 03. The site is then as current as the person updating it, which is the honest trade for the lower price.
• Leave deposits out until you actually want to take them. Payments sit on step 04 and move the whole project there.
• Take SEO foundation once, at EUR 450 to 750, before committing to anything monthly.

Questions dealers ask

Can the site pull stock from a marketplace listing?

If you already send a file to a portal, that same file may be able to feed your own site, so your team keeps working where it works now. What matters is whether you can obtain the export, and in what format. We check that during scoping, and the fixed quote follows the check.

Who owns the site, the code and the vehicle data?

You do. The code, the repository and the database are yours. Hosting is agreed per project, so where the site runs is decided with you at scoping.

Can a buyer reserve a car and pay a deposit online?

Yes, as a step 04 build at EUR 3.500 to 7.500, because taking money brings a payment provider, a record of who paid for what, and a reserved state on the vehicle that has to hold. If you want reservations without money changing hands, a reserve form on step 03 does that job at EUR 1.500 to 3.500.

How quickly can we be live?

3 to 6 weeks for a step 03 site and 6 to 12 weeks for a step 04 site with a feed, counted from the end of scoping. Photos and descriptions decide which end of the range you land on.

Send us the export your stock system produces, or a link to your current listings, and we will tell you which step you are on and what it costs. Start here.