Hungarian is unrelated to every language around it. That is your advantage.
Hungarian shares no family with German, Slovak, Romanian or Croatian. It is the reason international suppliers skip the market, the reason machine translation fails here, and the reason the results pages are more open than the size of the country suggests.
Start with the free 15 point site check. Two working days, no call required.
Featured case study
373
products migrated
- 822feed offers, zero errors
- 4.3%conversion rate across all campaigns, Jul to Aug 2026
What is actually different about selling into Hungary
The specifics that change the build, not a list of countries I will work in.
The regulator
The Hungarian National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information. The GDPR applies in full.
Checkout
The forint, not the euro, and it floats. Cards carry a lot of volume and paying when the parcel arrives is still a normal expectation, particularly on a first order from an unfamiliar shop.
The language
Finno-Ugric, related distantly to Finnish and Estonian and to nothing else nearby. It agglutinates, stacking endings onto word stems, which breaks translation tools and keyword exports alike.
The market
Around nine and a half million people with a developed online retail sector and far fewer technically competent competitors than a market that size would have in Western Europe.
What usually goes wrong on a Hungarian site
Machine translated Hungarian
The stacked endings produce output that is recognisably wrong to a native reader and aimed at forms that do not match real searches.
Euro prices in a forint market
The forint floats, so a converted price moves. Hungarian buyers expect forint, set for the market rather than calculated at checkout.
No option to pay on delivery
Still expected in parts of the market, especially from a shop the buyer has not used before. Removing it removes first orders.
A site built for the region rather than the country
Hungary shares almost nothing linguistically with its neighbours, so regional copy does not carry over the way it does between Czech and Slovak.
Not sure which of those it is? Send the web address and the written 15 point check says so in two working days, free.
What the work actually is
The same list whether you are in Hungary or anywhere else I work.
The 15 point technical check
Speed, indexing, structured data, redirects, consent and the rest, written out in the order worth fixing rather than the order a crawler found them.
Pages for what buyers search
Built from real search data in the language your buyers type, not translated from an English page and hoped over.
A redirect map before anything moves
Every old address mapped to a new one and tested before launch, because this is the step that loses rankings when it is skipped.
Tracking that waits for consent
Nothing loads before a choice is made, and the banner says what it does. This is the part regulators are actually acting on.
Google Ads on a flat fee
A fixed monthly amount whatever the spend, so the advice does not get more expensive when the budget does.
Shopify and WooCommerce moves
Products, variants, media and URLs moved with the search positions held, on the same domain where that is possible.
Custom systems when software is the problem
Order flows, stock feeds and internal tools, when the honest answer is that no amount of marketing fixes the process underneath.
Plain monthly notes
What was done, what it changed and what is next, in a page you can read without a glossary.
Want the number first? Every price is published, including the ones I would not charge you.
The delivery payment question, answered carefully
Paying cash when the parcel arrives remains a real part of Hungarian online retail, and the published figures for it should be read carefully. Some sources report the share of shops that offer it, which is high, and others report the share of orders actually paid that way, which is lower. Those are different measurements and they get quoted interchangeably, which is how the numbers you find online end up thirty points apart.
The practical answer does not depend on resolving that. Offer it, build the order flow so an unpaid order is handled properly, and measure what your own buyers actually choose. After a few months you will have a number for your own business that is worth more than any published average.
Why the language keeps the market open
A supplier who works across Central Europe can often reuse Czech work in Slovakia with care, or Croatian work in parts of the region. None of that applies to Hungarian. It has to be written from scratch by somebody who speaks it, which is enough friction to keep most international competitors out entirely.
For a Hungarian business that is an opportunity rather than a problem. The pages competing for your commercial phrases are local, and many of them have had no technical attention at all. Doing the structural and content work carefully is enough to compete here in a way it simply is not in German or English.
A furniture retailer: three storefronts, three ad accounts and a CRM
A Dutch furniture retailer with three brands and a ten to twelve week order cycle, where the online numbers alone made a busy business look like a failing one until the measurement was fixed.
What I will not do
Said before you ask, because it is usually the deciding part.
Promise a position
Nobody controls Google's results, and anyone who promises a ranking is either guessing or lying. I will tell you what is winnable and what is not, with the search data in front of you.
Hold your accounts
Analytics, Search Console and every ad account are registered in your name from day one. If you stop working with me you lose nothing but me.
Bill a percentage of ad spend
A percentage pays me more when you spend more, which is the wrong incentive. Advertising is a flat monthly fee whatever the budget.
Take the work if it is the wrong spend
If the free check says your problem is not a website problem, the report says so and I tell you what would actually move the number.
Rather just ask? One question by email or WhatsApp is fine.
The rest of Central Europe
Neighbouring markets, each with its own regulator, language and checkout.
Every market I work in is listed on where I work, with what differs in each one.
Fair questions before you get in touch
You are not based here. Does that matter?
It has not so far. Everything runs by email and WhatsApp, the accounts are in your name, and the work is the same work wherever it is typed. I am in Pakistan and I say so on every page, because finding that out later is worse than reading it now.
Should we still offer cash on delivery?
Usually yes, and then measure what your own buyers choose. The important part is that the order flow, the stock logic and the analytics all handle an order that is not paid yet, which is where most shops get it wrong.
Can we price in euro?
Not for Hungarian consumers. The forint floats, so a converted price is an unstable one, and buyers expect to see forint formatted the Hungarian way.
Who writes the Hungarian?
A native speaker, from Hungarian search data. The agglutination means translated copy and raw keyword exports are both unreliable, so the research and the writing happen together.
Why are the prices on the website?
Because the alternative is a quote form, and a quote form exists to get you on a call before you know the number. The free 15 point check, the 290 euro audit and the monthly and rebuild prices are all published. You can decide before you ever write to me.
How long before any of this shows up in search?
A new page on a site that already carries some authority can move within weeks. On a site with very few links pointing at it, expect months, and expect the first movement on specific questions rather than on the obvious commercial terms. I will not give you a date, because nobody controls the result. What I will give you is the order of the work and what each step is meant to change.
Send your web address. That is the whole first step.
The written 15 point check comes back within two working days, free. It says what is holding the site back, in the order worth fixing.