What a web agency in Amsterdam costs
An honest answer, the parts of the bill nobody quotes, and who should still hire one.
A real Clay site, built from a Google listing
A studio in the Jordaan will quote you somewhere around a month of work for a small business site, and the quote will be fair. The question is whether a café with eleven dishes, a Tuesday it is shut and forty photographs on Google needs a month of anybody's work.
A small-business website built by people costs about €1,500, designer €700 · developer €550 · copywriter €250, and then a line every month for hosting and for somebody to change things. Clay is €29 a month for all of it, and you change things yourself.
What you are actually buying
Amsterdam has more independent web studios per head than almost anywhere, which is good news and bad news at once: the work is genuinely strong, and the rate reflects a city where a designer's rent is what it is. Most of what a small hospitality business actually needs from a site, hours that are right, a menu that can change, a map, the reviews it already has, is the cheapest part of the job and the part that gets quoted last.
This page is not for everybody
Hire one if the site is the product, a booking platform, a members' area, something that has to talk to your till. Hire one if you have a brand somebody has already paid to design and it has to be honoured pixel for pixel. Those are not marketing sites, and no builder does them.
After launch
A Dutch small business also carries the bill nobody quotes for: every change after launch. A new winter menu, a fourth photograph, the Sunday you decide to open, each one is an email and an invoice, and over a year that is usually more than the build was.
Your photographs, already sorted
Clay reads the pictures on your Google listing, grades them, crops them for the shape each band needs and puts the best one at the top. Nothing to upload, nothing to resize.
What it looks like when it is live
Drawn rather than described, the page, the address, and what it can switch on.
How it works
Search your business
Type your name, Clay pulls your photos, hours, reviews and contact details straight from your Google listing.
Pick a style
Choose a look and Clay builds a full site around your content. Change anything with a tap, no code, no templates to wrestle.
You're online
Publish to your own name.clay.site in minutes. Add a custom domain and connect your own tools whenever you're ready.
What you get
Real sites, made with Clay
Open one. It is the live site in a frame, not a screenshot, so what you see is what it looks like right now.
Questions
Is an agency ever the right answer?
Hire one if the site is the product, a booking platform, a members' area, something that has to talk to your till. Hire one if you have a brand somebody has already paid to design and it has to be honoured pixel for pixel. Those are not marketing sites, and no builder does them.
What does an agency site actually cost in Amsterdam?
We publish one figure and it is a European average for a small-business build: €1,500, made of designer €700 · developer €550 · copywriter €250. We are not going to invent a Amsterdam number, ask two studios and you will have a real one in a day.
What is the part nobody quotes?
Changes. A new menu, a fourth photograph, a Sunday you decide to open. On an agency site each of those is somebody else's calendar and usually an invoice; over a year it is often more than the build. That is the line Clay is actually replacing.
What language will my site be in?
In Dutch, written in it rather than translated into it, because the business is in the Netherlands. A site is in one language: there is no switcher and no second version of a page.
Can I move to my own domain?
Yes, on the paid plan, and the free clay.site address keeps working afterwards, so anything already printed still lands: what free covers, and what it does not.
Try it with your business
Search your business and see your site in seconds, free, no signup.