What a web agency in Berlin 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
Most of what a Neukölln bar needs on its website it changes weekly anyway: the by-the-glass list, the hours that moved when the terrace shut for winter, a photograph of the room as it is now. An agency project is built for the opposite, decided once, signed off, made over some weeks. Both are reasonable ways to work. They are just not the same job.
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
Berlin's web market grew up around startups and an international creative scene that largely works in English, and that shapes the brief more than the rate does. A Kreuzberg salon takes bookings in English; a Wedding barbershop serves customers in Turkish and German. Before anything else, settle which language the site is written in, and who keeps that version right.
This page is not for everybody
Hire one if the site has to exist in German and English at once: Clay writes a site in one language, with no switcher and no second version of a page. Hire one for a club with a Friday-to-Monday programme and tickets to sell, a line-up that changes every week is a system, not a page.
After launch
A German site carries an Impressum and a privacy page, and that text is yours: it comes from a lawyer or your Steuerberater, not from a web designer. Clay does not write it and does not make you legally compliant, add it as its own section, linked from the footer.
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 has to exist in German and English at once: Clay writes a site in one language, with no switcher and no second version of a page. Hire one for a club with a Friday-to-Monday programme and tickets to sell, a line-up that changes every week is a system, not a page.
What does an agency site actually cost in Berlin?
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 Berlin 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 German, written in it rather than translated into it, because the business is in Germany. 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.