Website speed: what it costs to fix

en 2026-09-20 6 min read

Fixing a slow website costs EUR 100-300 a month if it comes down to a few small fixes under a Care plan, EUR 450-750 as a one-off if the speed work belongs inside an SEO foundation, and EUR 1.500-3.500 at step 03 if the front end has to be rebuilt. Which of the three you need is decided by testing the site, not by guessing, and that test is the first thing that happens.

What follows is what actually makes a site slow, what each kind of fix involves, and which step of the price list it belongs to. The figures are the same ones on the packages page.

Slow is two problems with one name

The first problem is the server. A browser asks for your page and the machine holding it thinks before answering. Nothing has been drawn yet and nothing can be. That is hosting, database queries and whatever plugin insists on doing work on every single request.

The second problem is the browser. The page has arrived and the visitor's phone is now doing the work: decoding a photograph far larger than the screen it is shown on, running scripts, waiting for a font before it will show a single word. The connection is fine. The screen is still white.

The two need different fixes and cost different money, which is why one flat number for "make my site fast" is not an honest answer.

Causes to check

• Photographs uploaded straight from a camera or phone and scaled down by the browser, instead of being resized before upload.
• A theme or page builder that loads every feature on every page, including the ones that page never uses.
• Third-party scripts: a chat widget, a tag manager, a heat-mapping tool, a second analytics tool, an embedded video player, a cookie banner.
• Web fonts that hold text back until they have finished downloading.
• Cheap shared hosting, where the server answers when it gets round to it.
• A listing or search page running a database query that was never indexed.
• Sliders, carousels and scroll animation that start working the moment the page opens.

Images, fonts, scripts and animation are the cheap end of that list. A theme that is itself the cause, hosting and database work are the expensive end.

What each kind of speed problem costs

The price follows the cause. Here are four situations and the four different jobs they turn into.

When a rebuild is the cheaper answer

Paying for speed fixes on a site whose theme is the cause is renting the result. The theme updates, the plugins update, the weight comes back. Every later change also has to be negotiated with that same theme, so the small fixes stay expensive for as long as you keep it.

The test is simple. If the slow parts are things loaded onto the page, such as images, scripts and fonts, they can be taken off and the site stays. If the slow part is the machinery generating the page, the machinery is what you are paying to keep. At that point step 02 at EUR 900-1.500 or step 03 at EUR 1.500-3.500 buys a site that is fast because of how it is built, not fast because someone keeps sweeping up after it. How we build is on the design and engineering page.

How the work runs

1. Measure first, on a phone and on a mobile connection, page by page. A homepage score says nothing about the service page people actually land on.
2. Take the cheap weight off: images, unused scripts, fonts, caching. This is done before anything structural is proposed, because it may be all the site needs.
3. Do structural work only if the measurements still call for it: hosting, the data layer, or a front-end rebuild at the step the scope points to.
4. Measure again, page by page, and compare.

Timelines come from the step the work lands on: 2-3 weeks at step 02, 3-6 weeks at step 03, 6-12 weeks at step 04. Fixes under Care go live as they are finished. A fixed quote always follows scoping.

You own the code, the repository and the database, including anything written during a speed project. Hosting is decided per project and agreed in the scope.

When to spend less

Some of this you should not pay anyone for. If your site is one page and the only heavy thing on it is a hero photograph, compress the photograph and you are done. If there is a chat widget nobody answers, remove it. If there are two analytics tools, keep one. If a plugin is switched on and unused, switch it off. None of that needs an invoice.

And if the pages you care about get hardly any visitors, speed is not what is holding you back. Nobody is waiting on a page they have not found. The honest recommendation then is the SEO foundation at EUR 450-750 as a one-off, which covers technical hygiene anyway, or nothing at all for now.

Questions worth asking first

Will a faster site rank higher?

Speed is one input among many, not a switch. If two pages answer a question equally well, the faster one has the edge. If nothing links to your site and the page does not answer the question, making it faster will not move it. It will still change what happens to the people who do arrive, and that is the part worth paying for.

Can a WordPress site be made fast, or does it need replacing?

Both are possible, and testing decides. Caching, image handling, removing scripts and serving fonts locally take a lot of weight off a WordPress site without touching the design. If the theme loads its whole feature set on every page, the theme is the problem and it has to go, which means a rebuild at step 02 or step 03.

Is speed included in a new build?

Yes, at every step, from a single-page landing at EUR 600-900 upwards. Images are sized and compressed before they ship, fonts are served from your own domain, JavaScript is kept to what the page needs, and space is reserved so nothing jumps. Building it that way from the start costs less than adding it later, so it is not a separate line item.

Does the Care plan cover speed work?

Care at EUR 100-300 a month covers updates, monitoring, backups and small fixes, and an image and script pass on a page fits inside that. Care is not a redesign and it does not add new features. A front-end rebuild is a step 02 or step 03 project with its own quote.

Send your URL through the contact form and you will get the measurement, the cause and the price it belongs to, in that order.