How to set up a website for your Estonian e-residency company
You opened an Estonian OÜ through e-residency. Now you need a website. This guide covers everything specific to running a site for an Estonian company from abroad: domain, compliance, payments and SEO.
Do you need a .ee domain?
Not necessarily. A .ee domain signals Estonian presence and helps if you target the Estonian market. But if your customers are global, a .com is perfectly fine - and you can run both.
.ee domains are open to register for both companies and individuals. As an e-resident you can register one yourself; the process is straightforward.
Practical tip: secure the .com and .ee of your brand name even if you only launch one. Domains are cheap, brand confusion is not.
Where to host
Hosting location matters less than people think for SEO, but matters for speed and law. For an EU-facing business, host in the EU - it keeps you clean on GDPR and gives low latency to European visitors.
Options: a managed platform like Vercel (great for Next.js, zero ops), a European VPS provider like Hetzner, or an Estonian host. All work. Choose based on who maintains the site.
Show your company details correctly
Estonian law and EU e-commerce rules expect a business website to display the legal entity name, registration code and contact details. Put them in the footer.
If your OÜ is VAT-registered (KMKR), display the VAT number on invoices and quotes. If it's not yet VAT-registered, don't show a fake one - and don't add VAT to prices you aren't collecting.
Add Organization and LocalBusiness structured data with your Estonian registration code. It helps search engines understand you're a real, registered entity.
Payments
If you sell internationally, Stripe and PayPal cover most cases and are simple to integrate.
If you sell to Estonian or Baltic customers, add a local bank-link provider - Montonio is the common choice. Estonian buyers strongly prefer paying via their bank.
For cross-border EU sales of digital goods, look into VAT OSS (One Stop Shop) early - it changes how you charge and report VAT.
GDPR - do it properly
A template cookie banner is not GDPR compliance. If you use analytics that sets cookies (Google Analytics), you need real consent before loading it.
The simplest path: use cookieless analytics like Plausible. No banner needed, nothing to consent to, and you still get the numbers that matter.
Write a real privacy policy that reflects what your site actually does - what data you collect, why, and how someone can request deletion.
SEO: target your real market, not Estonia by default
Your company is Estonian, but your customers probably aren't. Don't optimise for Estonian keywords if you sell to the US or Germany.
Set the site language and hreflang to match your actual audience. Build content around the queries your customers type, in their language.
Estonia is your legal home, not necessarily your market. Keep those two things separate in your SEO strategy.
FAQ
Can I run the whole project remotely?+
Yes. Most e-residency businesses never visit Estonia. A web project can be done entirely async - calls, staging URLs, handover via GitHub.
Do I need an Estonian-language version of the site?+
Only if you sell to the Estonian market. If your customers are international, English plus their language is what matters.
Should I use Wix to keep it cheap?+
For a quick personal page, sure. For a company that will grow and needs SEO and speed, a proper build on Next.js or WordPress pays off and doesn't lock you into one platform.