Ask five agencies what a website costs and you’ll get five wildly different answers — anywhere from £200 to £20,000. None of them are lying. They’re just building different things. Here’s what the numbers actually mean, so you can work out what your business needs to spend.
The short answer
For a typical UK small business — a tradesperson, a local service company, a shop — a professional website costs £400 to £2,500 as a one-off, or £50 to £150 per month on a subscription model. Anything above that buys features most small businesses don’t need yet.
What you get at each price point
Under £300 — DIY builders. Wix, Squarespace and GoDaddy sites you build yourself. The tools are fine; the results usually aren’t. You’ll spend evenings fighting a template, the copy is whatever you manage to write yourself, and SEO basics like page titles and schema markup rarely get done. If your budget genuinely stops here, it’s better than no website — but treat it as temporary.
£400–£1,000 — professional brochure site. This is the sweet spot for most local businesses. A designer builds 4–8 pages around what your customers search for, writes the copy, sets up the technical SEO foundations, and connects contact forms and click-to-call. Done properly, this site pays for itself with a handful of enquiries.
£1,000–£3,000 — larger or more competitive. More pages (individual service and area pages for SEO), custom photography direction, copywriting across 15+ pages, integrations like booking systems. Worth it if you’re in a competitive market or cover a wide service area.
£5,000+ — custom functionality. E-commerce, customer portals, bespoke web apps. If someone quotes you this for a plumber’s brochure site, walk away.
The costs nobody mentions upfront
- Hosting: £5–£30/month. Some agencies bundle it, some bill it separately.
- Domain name: £10–£25/year.
- Updates: the killer. A £3,000 site that costs £80 every time you change your opening hours gets stale fast. Ask what changes cost before you sign.
- Ownership: ask who owns the domain and the site. If the answer isn’t “you”, keep looking.
One-off vs monthly — which is better?
A one-off build suits businesses that want to own everything outright and handle their own updates. Monthly plans (typically £50–£150/month) suit businesses that want the site maintained, updated and improved without thinking about it — and they spread the cost, which helps cash flow in year one.
The trap to avoid is a monthly plan with a long lock-in and no ongoing work. Paying £99/month is good value if it includes updates, hosting and local SEO work. It’s terrible value if it’s just hosting with a markup.
Why the cheapest quote usually costs the most
A website’s job is to turn searches into enquiries. A cheap site that never ranks and never converts costs you every job that went to the competitor above you on Google. One extra roofing job a month is worth more than the entire price difference between a cheap site and a good one.
When you compare quotes, don’t ask “which is cheapest?” Ask: does the price include copywriting? Is SEO set up from day one? Who handles updates, and what do they cost? What happens if I want to leave?
What we charge
For transparency: our websites start at £400 as a one-off — custom design, copywriting included, live within 7–14 days. Ongoing updates, hosting and local SEO are £99/month on the Growth Plan, with no long contracts. Full details on our pricing page.