What a web agency in Lyon 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 quote for a bouchon in Vieux Lyon arrives written as a project, discovery, design, build, sign-off, and it is an honest way to price honest work. It is also a great deal of process for a nine-table dining room whose menu is decided at the market that morning and needs to say so by noon.
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
Lyon carries France's second business district at Part-Dieu, and the studios that grew up around it are built for clients with a marketing department: a brief, a retainer, a meeting in the diary. The same studios take the bouchon down the hill, and down there it is a small job in a large calendar. None of that is bad faith. It is what happens when the corporate work pays the rent.
This page is not for everybody
Hire one when the website is not the deliverable. A maison holding a Bib listing and a press kit in one voice needs a designer; so does a name over several counters at Les Halles; so does a gym running three sites off one membership. Four brasseries under one brand is an agency's job. One dining room is not.
After launch
The Lyon year is full of dates a site has to keep up with. The fortnight in August when the kitchen shuts. The four nights of the Fête des Lumières, when the city fills up and everybody's hours change. On an agency site, none of that is yours to edit.
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 when the website is not the deliverable. A maison holding a Bib listing and a press kit in one voice needs a designer; so does a name over several counters at Les Halles; so does a gym running three sites off one membership. Four brasseries under one brand is an agency's job. One dining room is not.
What does an agency site actually cost in Lyon?
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 Lyon 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 French, written in it rather than translated into it, because the business is in France. 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.