If your Irish business has 10 employees or fewer and limited online presence, the Trading Online Voucher (TOV) can cover half the cost of a new website — up to €2,500. It's the single best-value grant most small businesses in Ireland never apply for, usually because the LEO website makes it sound more complicated than it is. Here's the plain-English version.
What you actually get
- Up to €2,500 toward eligible online costs.
- 50% match-funding — you spend €5,000, the grant covers €2,500.
- Paid as a reimbursement after the work is done and invoiced.
Eligibility in one paragraph
You must be trading for at least 6 months, have 10 or fewer employees, turnover under €2 million, and limited or no online sales presence. You apply through your local LEO (there's one per county). Sole traders, partnerships and limited companies all qualify.
What's claimable
- New website design and build.
- Adding online payments or booking to an existing site.
- App development for online ordering.
- SEO setup, schema, analytics.
- Subscriptions for the first year of digital tools (hosting, email marketing).
- Training to run the new site (up to 30% of the grant).
What's not claimable
- Ongoing hosting and maintenance after year one.
- Paid ads (Google Ads, Meta Ads).
- Hardware — laptops, tills, card readers.
- Routine content updates after the build.
The application, step by step
- 1.Attend the free LEO information webinar (mandatory — they list dates monthly on your LEO's site).
- 2.Get two written quotes from suppliers. They must itemise what's included.
- 3.Fill in the TOV application form on your LEO's portal. Upload both quotes and a short business plan (1 page is fine).
- 4.Wait 4–8 weeks for the LEO evaluation committee to approve.
- 5.Once approved, you have up to 9 months to complete the work.
- 6.Pay your supplier in full, then submit invoices and proof of payment to claim the 50% back.
The four most common rejection reasons
- Quotes that aren't itemised — "website €4,000" doesn't fly. List pages, features, SEO, hosting separately.
- Skipping the info webinar — attendance is checked.
- Already-built sites — the grant is for new work, not retrospective claims.
- Wrong supplier — they must be VAT-registered if charging VAT, and willing to invoice properly.
Realistic timeline
From first webinar to grant payment in your account: usually 4–6 months. Plan around that — don't apply for the grant if you need the site live next month.
How we help
We've taken Irish businesses through TOV applications end-to-end. We provide itemised quotes built for LEO evaluation, our Business and Premium packages fit cleanly inside the €5,000 spend window, and we'll talk you through what to write in the application.
See the LEO grants page
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