What a restaurant website costs in Italy: real 2026 prices
A restaurant website in Italy costs between 500 and 5,000 euros if you pay for it once, or from 99 euros every three months on a subscription. The range is wide because it holds two different numbers: what you pay to build the site, and what you pay every year to keep it online.
That second number rarely shows up in the quote. It is where the second-year surprise comes from.
The price brackets you actually find in Italy
| Type of site | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Template brochure site | 500 - 1,200 € one off | 3-5 pages, PDF menu, contact form |
| Custom-built site | 1,200 - 2,500 € one off | design drawn for you, editable menu, basic SEO |
| Structured site | 2,500 - 5,000 € and up | bookings, several languages, integrations |
| Average web agency quote | 1,500 - 3,000 € one off | varies a lot between agencies |
| Do-it-yourself platform | 150 - 350 € per year | ready-made templates, you do the work |
| All-inclusive subscription | from 99 € every three months | site, domain, hosting, changes |
The price moves on a handful of concrete things: how many pages you need, whether the design is drawn for your place or adapted from a template, whether bookings and languages go inside, and who writes the copy and takes the photos. Agencies put that last item at the bottom of the quote, and restaurant owners read it last.
A 300 euro quote always has a reason for being that low. Usually it is the time nobody will spend on your menu.
The quote is not the final cost
Once the site is live, some items come back every year:
- domain: 10-50 € per year
- hosting: from 100 € per year
- SSL certificate: 10-200 € per year, when the hosting does not already include it
- maintenance: 100-300 € per year for a static site, 500-2,000 € for WordPress with updates, plugin licences and backups
A place that signed for 1,500 euros can find itself paying 600 a year from the second year on. Nobody was cheated. That is how it works: plugins update, something breaks, someone has to fix it, and that someone charges for it.
The sum worth doing before you sign is the three-year one, not the first-year one.
Pay once or pay a subscription
| One off | Subscription | Do it yourself | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost | 500 - 5,000 € | 0 | 0 |
| Yearly cost | 100 - 2,000 € | 99 € every three months, or 299 € a year | 150 - 350 € |
| Menu changes | billed per request | included | you make them |
| If you stop paying | files stay yours, site goes down without hosting | site goes offline | site goes offline |
| Time to go live | weeks | 48 hours | up to you |
Our Start plan costs 99 euros every three months, which is 33 a month, and covers the site, the QR digital menu, the .it or .com domain, hosting with an SSL certificate, and changes requested over WhatsApp. No activation fee, live in 48 hours. The Anno plan costs 299 euros and gives you three months more than Start: it adds optimisation for ChatGPT and Google's AI, the seasonal menu swap, priority changes, and a visits report every three months. Current figures are on the pricing page.
Our position is not neutral, so it is worth writing down: under fifty covers, the subscription almost always wins. What kills restaurant websites is not the build, it is the edits. A menu that changes twice a year and opening hours that change in August, multiplied by fifty euros per request, weigh more over three years than the site did.
Who owns the site when you stop paying
This is the question almost nobody asks, and the one that costs the most. The site built by a customer's cousin works beautifully as long as the cousin answers the phone. Then he changes jobs, and the domain is still registered in his name.
Three questions to ask before signing, whoever the supplier is:
- Whose name is the domain registered under?
- Where are the files hosted, and how do I get them back if we part ways?
- Who holds the passwords, and will you give them to me in writing?
Ask for the domain to be registered under your VAT number. If the person writing your quote pulls a face, you already have the answer you needed.
What a restaurant website actually needs
- a menu you can have changed without waiting three days
- phone number and WhatsApp tappable from a smartphone, not buried at the bottom of the page
- real opening hours, kept current in August too
- an address linked to Google Maps
- allergens
Allergens deserve precision, because the law speaks here. EU regulation 1169/2011 requires the 14 allergens and frozen ingredients to be declared, and that information has to reach the customer before ordering. A digital menu is valid if it carries it. What the QR code does not do is replace the paper menu: a readable copy still has to be available for anyone without a smartphone or unwilling to use one. Anyone selling you the QR code as a replacement for paper is selling you a problem. How to run both together is on our page about restaurant websites.
What you can drop without regret: the sixty-photo gallery, the twenty-megabyte video on the home page, and the blog nobody updates after the third post. If the real problem is the phone ringing while you are serving tables, that gets solved elsewhere, with an assistant that answers for you.
One real case: Sweet Insanity, Scalea
Sweet Insanity is an ice cream shop in Scalea, Calabria. It had a well-followed Instagram profile and no website. In August 2026 sweetinsanity.it went live with its own domain, HTTPS, menu, opening hours, an address linked to Maps and a tappable WhatsApp number.
The site runs a cookieless visit counter, so there is no consent banner for visitors to click through. It exists to show where people arrive from. The site has been live for a few days and the data is too thin to claim a result: when there is enough of it, we will write it here with the real numbers.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to keep a restaurant website running each year? Between 100 and 300 euros for a static site, between 500 and 2,000 for a WordPress build with plugins to update. Domain and hosting alone come to 110-150 euros a year. With an all-inclusive subscription this line does not exist separately, because it is already inside.
Is an Instagram page enough instead of a website? Instagram brings people in, the website receives them. Someone searching for "pizza near me" at eight in the evening lands on Google and Maps, not on your profile. The trouble with a social profile alone is that you do not decide what people see, and you do not hold the contacts of the people who follow you.
How long does it take to go live? With a subscription and the content ready, 48 hours. With a custom agency project, three weeks to two months, and the slow part is almost never the code: it is the copy and the photos the owner has to find time to send.
Does a QR code menu replace the paper one? No. A digital menu is legitimate if it carries the mandatory information, allergens included, but a readable version still has to be available in the dining room. The QR code sits alongside paper, it does not cancel it.
Can I start small and grow later? Yes, and it is what we suggest to anyone opening now. A well-made four-page site returns more than a three-thousand-euro project stuck halfway because the photos never arrived. Bookings and languages get added when they are genuinely needed.