What a small business website costs in the UK, and what drives the price

We’ve written before about why nobody gives you a straight number for a website. “A website” covers everything from a one-page card to a full shop, so any honest figure depends on the job.

What you can compare before anyone gives you a figure is what each kind of supplier charges you for, and how the costs build up after launch. That’s what this guide covers.

Four ways to get a site

Do it yourself on a site builder. Wix, Squarespace and the like. There’s little to pay up front, but you do all the work, and the monthly subscription runs for as long as the site exists. Add it up over five years and it’s rarely the cheapest option, for a site you can’t take with you if you leave. Fine for testing an idea. Expensive as a permanent home.

A freelancer filling in a template. Usually WordPress with an off-the-shelf theme. You get online quickly and the upfront cost is low. The trade-offs are the usual template ones: the site ships heavier than it should, it looks like what it is, and the maintenance bill starts the day it launches. More on that in bespoke vs WordPress.

A hand-built site from a small studio. Design, words and code made for one business. It costs more up front than a template, and where it lands depends mostly on how many genuinely different pages you need and who writes the content. A five-page site for a trades business sits at the lower end. A ten-page site with case studies, photography direction and content written from interviews sits at the top.

A full-service agency. You’re paying for a team: strategy workshops, brand work, content, build and account management. For most small businesses this is more machine than the job needs. For a business where the website is the main sales channel, it can be worth it.

Whoever you go to, ask for a fixed price for the build before any work starts, and a clear monthly figure for what happens after launch. That’s how we price ours.

Anything with real functionality, such as bookings, accounts or a shop, is a different conversation and a different budget. That’s a web app, not a website, and it’s priced on what it does, not how it looks.

The running costs nobody mentions in the quote

The build price is not the whole price. Every site carries running costs, and they vary more than people expect.

• Domain name: a small yearly renewal. Non-negotiable, and it should be registered in your name, not your developer’s.
• Hosting: anywhere from free upwards. A static site like the ones we build can be hosted for nothing on Cloudflare Pages. A WordPress site needs proper managed hosting, because there’s software running on the server that has to be kept fed.
• Email: a monthly fee per inbox for something professional like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.
• Maintenance: the big variable. A static site needs far less, because there’s no software on the server to patch, but someone still has to keep the backups, the SSL certificate and the content current. That’s what our care plan pays for. A WordPress site needs updates applied regularly or it becomes a security problem, and its maintenance plan is often the largest line on the bill.

Add those up over five years, not one, and the option that looked cheapest at the start often isn’t. A template site with paid hosting and a maintenance plan can cost more over that time than a hand-built one, and at the end of it the theme is dated and you’re being asked to pay for a rebuild.

What moves the price

If you want to keep the cost down, these are the levers that matter:

• Content. Writing the words is often a third of the real work. Turn up with clear, finished copy and photos of your actual business and the price drops.
• Unique page designs. Ten pages that share three layouts cost much less than ten pages that each need their own design.
• Functionality. The moment the site takes bookings or payments, you’ve left brochure territory and the price reflects it.

What doesn’t move the price much: number of pages on its own, and most of the things that sound expensive but aren’t, like a contact form or a map.

The only bad number

A high price isn’t a red flag and neither is a low one. The red flag is a number with nothing behind it: no breakdown, and no explanation of what’s included and what isn’t.

If you want a real figure for your situation, tell us what you’re trying to do. We’ll give you a number and show the working.