What a Law Firm Website Actually Costs in 2026

Ask three web companies for a quote and you can get three very different numbers. That’s not because one of them is lying. Law firm website cost depends on a handful of decisions that most quotes don’t spell out: who writes the content, how many practice areas you cover, what your intake forms do, and who looks after the site once it’s live.

This post walks through each of those, so you can read a quote and see where the money is going. Where I give prices, they’re our own, in euros.

Why law firm website cost varies so much

The honest answer is scope. A small firm with two practice areas and one office needs a very different site from a firm with ten practice areas, three offices and a site in two languages.

On top of that, the quotes you get come from different kinds of companies: template builders, general web agencies, and vendors who only work with legal practices. Each prices the job differently.

That difference in price mostly comes down to how much of the site is templated versus built from scratch, and how much legal-specific work (practice-area detail, intake logic, compliance language) goes into it. There isn’t one industry-wide rate that applies to every firm, which is exactly why quotes spread so far apart.

If you want the general picture first, our guide to small business website cost explains the main price levels for any business site. The rest of this post covers what’s different for a law firm.

The five things that drive the price

1. Content, and who writes it

This is usually the biggest hidden cost. Someone has to write the home page, the about page, every practice-area page and every lawyer’s bio. Then a lawyer has to review it.

A lawyer’s time is expensive, so “we’ll write it ourselves” is rarely free. Ask every company whether writing is included, how many rounds of review are included, and who’s responsible for getting the facts right.

Plain language matters too. People looking for a lawyer are often stressed. Pages that explain what you do in normal words tend to work better than pages full of legal terms.

2. Practice-area pages

Most firms want one page per practice area, and that’s the right call. Each area has its own clients and its own questions, and a single “Services” page can’t answer them all.

But every page is more content to write, review and keep current. Ten practice areas is roughly five times the content of two. Add separate pages for each office, or a second language, and the count grows again.

3. Intake forms

For a law firm, the contact form is the front desk. It’s also where most of the thought should go.

Questions to settle before the build:

• What information do you actually need at first contact, and what should you not collect through a web form?
• Where do submissions go: an inbox, a case management system, or both?
• How are the messages protected on the way and once they arrive?
• What stops spam from burying real enquiries?
• Do you want people to book a consultation directly?

Every “yes” here adds work. A simple form that emails one person is quick. A form that feeds a case management system, checks for conflicts and books a call is a proper piece of development.

4. Rules and upkeep with compliance in mind

Lawyer advertising rules differ from place to place, so check with your bar association or law society what applies to your site. Privacy rules apply too. If you work with clients in the EU, for example, GDPR shapes what your forms collect and what your privacy notice says.

None of this is a one-off. Rules change, pages change, and someone needs to keep the site in line over time. Ask your own advisers what your site needs to say, and ask your web company who will keep it up to date.

5. Hosting and security

A law firm site handles enquiries that can be sensitive, so the basics matter more than usual:

• a security certificate that renews on its own
• software that’s kept up to date, with updates tested before they go live
• regular backups, stored away from the hosting account
• a firewall and login protection
• security headers set correctly

WordPress publishes its own guidance on hardening a site (Hardening WordPress, WordPress.org). It’s a good checklist to hand to whoever quotes you.

Build cost vs running cost

Most firms focus on the build price. The bigger number over five years is often the running cost, because it comes back every month.

When we price a site, we look at both. Here’s our side of the running cost:

• Basic Care, €100 (~$115) a month. Updates, backups every two weeks, uptime monitoring, security hardening, and a monthly report. Fits a simple site with few practice areas that doesn’t change often.
• Pro Care, €250 (~$290) a month. Adds up to 2 hours of development a month, weekly backups and staging-first updates. Fits a firm that publishes articles or updates lawyer pages regularly. It also includes Polylang Pro, which matters if your site is in more than one language.
• Partner Care, €450 (~$520) a month. Adds up to 4 hours of development a month, daily backups and same-business-day priority support. Fits a site with custom integrations, like intake that connects to other systems.

Extra development on Basic and Pro is €75 (~$85) an hour. For the detail of what each tier covers, see our breakdown of website maintenance packages.

If you’d rather not pay for the build up front, there’s another model. We build, run, and grow WordPress websites for small businesses — for one monthly fee. Our website-as-a-service plans are Starter €199 (~$230), Business €399 (~$465) and Enterprise €699 (~$810) a month.

For a one-off build, the price depends on the five factors above.

So when you compare quotes, compare the law firm website cost over three to five years, not just the first invoice.

A simple way to budget

Before you ask for quotes, write down:

1. How many practice areas, lawyers and offices you have
2. How many languages the site needs
3. Who will write the content, and who will review it
4. What the intake form needs to do, and where submissions go
5. Which other systems the site needs to connect to
6. Who will look after the site after launch, and what that costs a year

Hand the same list to every company. You’ll get quotes you can actually compare.

Questions to ask before you sign

Whether you’re talking to a legal-marketing vendor or a wordpress development agency, ask them all the same things:

• Is content writing included? How many review rounds?
• Where do form submissions go, and how are they protected?
• Who applies updates, and are they tested first?
• How often are backups taken, and where are they kept?
• How fast do you respond if the intake form stops working?
• If we leave, do we keep the site, the content and all the logins?

The last one matters more than it looks. You should own your website outright.

Result

Law firm website cost comes down to five things: content, practice-area pages, intake forms, upkeep with the rules in mind, and hosting and security. The build is one bill. The running cost comes every month, so budget for both.

If you already have a site and want to know what it needs before you spend anything, ask us for a free website audit. We’ll tell you plainly what we find.