Working With a Small Studio: The Honest Trade-offs
A small studio like ours builds a single-page landing for EUR 600-900 and a business website for EUR 1.500-3.500, with the prices published and a fixed quote after scoping. What you give up against a large agency is capacity, cover when someone is out, and breadth of services under one roof, and on some projects those are worth more than the price difference.
Neither kind of supplier is better in general. It depends on how many people must work on your project at once, what happens if one of them is unavailable, and who in your company approves suppliers.
When a large agency is the right call
If one of these describes your project, hire the larger agency and do not hire us:
- Several workstreams, such as brand, copy, photography, campaigns and the build, must land together on a fixed date. A large agency can put a team on each. A small studio works more in sequence.
- Your procurement asks for what a small supplier may not have: a minimum company size, a dedicated account manager, a vendor security review built for large firms.
- You need someone answering about the site at any hour, with a response time written into the contract.
- The website is one part of a wider rebrand across print, retail and advertising, and you want one supplier accountable for all of it.
- Your board wants a supplier name it already recognises, and that comfort is worth the extra cost.
Each of those is a fair reason to pay more. If a small studio tries to argue you out of them, ask whose interest that serves.
The downsides of a small studio, ours included
Capacity and start dates
A small studio can only run a limited number of builds at once. If the calendar is full when you need to start, you wait or go elsewhere, and adding people to hit a deadline is harder when there are fewer to add. Ask when a studio could actually start, not only how long the build takes.
When one person is out
Illness or a family emergency moves a small team's schedule in a way a large agency absorbs by shifting someone across. That risk is real. What limits it is ownership: the code, the repository and the database are yours, so another developer could continue from the repository instead of starting again.
A narrower bench
A large agency can keep strategists, copywriters, photographers and media buyers under one roof. A small studio covers a narrower range, so you may coordinate other suppliers yourself. Our core is design and engineering. If your project is mostly a campaign with a website attached, weigh that.
Support hours
A small studio cannot staff a support desk around the clock. Care at EUR 100-300/mo covers updates, monitoring, backups and small fixes, not redesign or new features, and it is not a helpdesk that picks up at any hour.
What you get in exchange
The price reflects the build rather than the overhead. A large agency's quote has to carry account managers, project managers, a sales team and an office. A small studio has less of that to cover, which is how a step 03 business website can sit at EUR 1.500-3.500 and why we can publish the number.
Your brief passes through fewer hands. Each handoff between salesperson, account manager, designer and developer is a chance for a detail to get lost. The flip side is that decisions come to you directly, with nobody in the middle absorbing the questions.
Design and build stay together. When the person designing a page and the person building it sit in different departments, the design file and the live site drift apart. We design and build in the same place, in code, so what you approve is what goes live, as design and engineering explains.
Side by side
| Small studio | Large agency | |
|---|---|---|
| Business website price | EUR 1.500-3.500 at step 03, published | Quoted on request, with more overhead to carry |
| Who you deal with | Fewer layers between you and the build | An account manager between you and the team |
| Parallel work | Limited, more happens in sequence | Separate teams can run design, content and build at once |
| If someone is out | The schedule can move; the repository limits the damage | Someone else is moved across |
| Services under one roof | Narrower, in our case design and engineering | Wider, and can include strategy, content and media |
| Support at any hour | Not available | Can be contracted, at a price |
| Large-company procurement | May not meet the requirements | Set up for it |
| Code, repository and database | Yours, at every step | Depends on the contract, so ask before signing |
How a project runs here, and how long it takes
- A scoping call to work out which step your project sits on.
- A fixed quote, which always follows scoping.
- The build, with a preview link so you can follow progress.
- Launch. We can host the site, and whether we do is agreed per project.
- Care afterwards if you want it, and nothing if you do not.
- Step 01, single-page landing: EUR 600-900, 1-2 weeks
- Step 02, mini-site: EUR 900-1.500, 2-3 weeks
- Step 03, business website: EUR 1.500-3.500, 3-6 weeks
- Step 04, advanced site or web app with login, dashboard, API, CRM, payments or a chatbot: EUR 3.500-7.500, 6-12 weeks
- Step 05, custom SaaS platform: from EUR 7.500, timeline set after discovery
On a small team those weeks begin when a slot is free, so ask for a start date as well. Once the build runs, the part that waits on you is copy, photos and sign-off at each stage. The full ladder is on the price list.
When to spend less
If you are testing an idea, you do not need a full website yet. A website builder, or a step 01 landing page at EUR 600-900, tells you whether anyone responds before you spend EUR 1.500-3.500 on a business website.
If you cannot yet say what you sell and who buys it, then do not hire us yet. A site built before that is settled has to be rewritten once it is, and you pay for the words twice. A freelancer you trust is a fair choice for a small, well-defined job, with the same key-person risk. And if your current site works but nobody finds it, SEO foundation at EUR 450-750 one-off may do more than any rebuild.
Questions buyers ask
What happens to my site if you become unavailable?
Nothing about ownership changes. The code, the repository and the database are yours, and another developer can continue from the repository. If we host for your project, moving it elsewhere is a deployment job rather than a rebuild. Put the same question to any small supplier.
Is a small studio cheaper because the work is worse?
The price difference comes from overhead, and the work still has to be done, so judge it directly. Look at live sites, ask how a repository is organised, and read the fixed quote for what is included. A studio that cannot show you any of that has a problem unrelated to its size.
Can a small studio build a web app?
Yes, within its capacity. Step 04 covers login, dashboards, API and CRM work, payments and chatbots at EUR 3.500-7.500 over 6-12 weeks, and a custom SaaS platform starts from EUR 7.500 after discovery. A small team cannot shorten that by adding people, so set the launch date around the build. We build these with Next.js, covered on our Next.js page.
Can we start with you and move to a larger agency later?
Yes. Because you own the code, the repository and the database, a larger agency can pick up where we stopped instead of rebuilding. Starting at step 01 or 02 does not lock you in.
If you want to find out whether your project fits a small studio, tell us about it at contact.
Building something?
JP Studio designs and builds websites, storefronts and product interfaces.