How much does a short-term rental website cost?
The honest answer has three parts: what you pay once to have the site, what you pay every year to keep it online, and what's optional. Here are real numbers, with no fine print.
Key takeaways
- Development: one-time payment of €290 (Essential), €599 (Professional) or €1490 (Premium).
- Operation: €60-80/yr for domain and hosting — the only mandatory recurring cost.
- Maintenance and SEO: optional, €30-90/month, only if you want ongoing help.
- The site, the code and the domain are yours, with no platform lock-in.
- It typically pays for itself in 2-3 direct bookings, through saved commissions.
The three parts of any quote
Almost everyone asks the wrong question. "How much is a website?" has no single answer, because a site has costs of different natures that get mixed together. To decide well, separate them into three:
- Development — paid once, to design and build the site. It's the bulk of the upfront investment.
- Operation — paid every year for the site to exist on the internet: domain and hosting.
- Maintenance and growth — optional and recurring, only if you want ongoing help with edits, SEO or campaigns.
When someone gives you a figure without saying which of these parts it refers to, they're comparing apples to oranges. Subscription software that costs "€30/month" blends all three into one perpetual monthly fee. A bespoke site with a one-time payment separates them — and that's where the difference in model that matters most over a few years lies.
1. Development: what you pay once
In our case, development is a one-time payment, with no monthly fee for the site to exist. There are three packages, depending on the size of the property and what you need:
- Essential — €290. A responsive single-page site with a contact/booking-request form, gallery and base SEO. Ideal for a property just starting out.
- Professional — €599. Multiple pages, an integrated booking engine, multilingual (PT/EN), online payments and stronger local SEO. The sweet spot for most rentals.
- Premium — €1490. A bespoke site with dedicated design, multiple units/rooms, experiences, extensive content and specific integrations. For premium villas, rural tourism with experiences or clusters of units.
Notice what this does NOT include: there's no monthly fee to keep the site online. You pay for development once and the site is yours — code, design and domain in your name.
2. Operation: what you pay every year
A site needs two things to live on the internet, and both are cheap and independent of whoever built it:
- Domain (your address, e.g. yourplace.pt) — typically €10-20/yr.
- Hosting — where the site's files live and are served to visitors.
Added up, these two come to about €60-80 per year. That's the real cost of keeping the site running, and it doesn't change whether you get 2 or 200 bookings. Because the domain and code are yours, you can move the site to another hosting provider whenever you like, with no one's permission.
3. Maintenance and growth: optional
This is the part many quotes hide as mandatory, and which for us is optional. If you can use Instagram, you can use the site's dashboard — changing photos, updating prices and replying to guests needs no one. We provide video training and WhatsApp support for that.
If you'd still rather delegate, there are maintenance and ongoing-SEO plans between €30 and €90/month. They're for people who want regular help with content, Google optimisation and campaigns — not for the site to keep existing. The distinction matters: the site doesn't "die" if you don't pay for maintenance.
One-time payment vs subscription: the 3-year maths
The big decision isn't the price of the first month — it's the model. Subscription platforms (such as Lodgify, Amenitiz or Smoobu) charge a monthly fee per property for as long as you're a customer. It's a legitimate model and brings operational features (channel manager, PMS), but it has a consequence: the site lives inside the platform and depends on the active subscription.
Do the maths over three years. A subscription of, say, €40/month is €480/year, or roughly €1,440 over three years — per property, restarting every month. A bespoke Professional site is €599 once, plus €60-80/yr of operation: around €800 over three years, and the site is yours at the end. The difference isn't only in value; it's in ownership. In one case you keep an asset; in the other you rent access.
This doesn't mean subscriptions are bad — for someone who wants a full channel manager and PMS in a single tool, they make sense. It means they're different models, and the medium-term maths usually favours the one-time payment when what you want is an own site that converts direct bookings.
When the site pays for itself
The saving doesn't come from the price of the site — it comes from the commissions you stop paying the OTAs. Every direct booking you'd have made through Booking or Airbnb avoids a commission typically between 15% and 25%.
On a single €1,200 booking for one week, 15% commission is €180. Just two or three direct bookings like this and the Professional site is paid off. From then on, every direct booking is margin that stays with you, every year, with no monthly fee eating into the gain.
Frequently asked questions
- Is there a mandatory monthly fee to keep the site online?
- No. Development is paid once (€290-1490). The only mandatory recurring cost is the domain and hosting, which add up to €60-80/yr. Monthly maintenance (€30-90) is optional.
- Is the site really mine? What if I want to change provider?
- It's 100% yours. Domain, code, design and guest data are in your name. You can move the site to another hosting provider at any time, no questions asked and losing nothing.
- Why pay once instead of a cheaper monthly subscription?
- A subscription is per property and perpetual — it adds up every month and the site lives inside the platform. With a one-time payment, over three years it usually works out cheaper and you keep an asset of your own, not rented access.
- How quickly does the site pay for itself?
- Typically in 2 to 3 direct bookings. Each direct booking avoids 10-25% OTA commission; on a €1,200 booking, that's €180 saved in one go.
Want a quote tailored to your property?
Tell us how many units you have and what you need. In under 4 working hours we'll tell you the right package and the total cost, with no hidden monthly fees.