How much does a website cost in the UK?
In short
- A professionally built small business website in the UK costs £500 to £3,000, plus £20 to £100 a month to host, secure and maintain it.
- The build is rarely the expensive part. Branding, copy and photography are where most of the time and money goes - two quotes for “a five page site” can differ by thousands purely because of what already exists.
- Website builders cost around £192 a year and you own nothing. Over five years that’s £960 with nothing to keep, against roughly £2,800 for a custom site that’s yours outright.
- Ongoing costs are real and are usually left out of quotes: hosting, domain, SSL, security, backups and changes.
- The most expensive mistake is a site nobody can find. If a quote doesn’t mention search, ask why.
The short answer
For a small business in the UK in 2026, expect to pay £500 to £3,000 for a professionally built website, plus £20 to £100 a month to keep it hosted, secure and updated.
| What you’re after | Typical UK cost | Ongoing |
|---|---|---|
| DIY website builder | £0 - £400 a year | Forever |
| Moving an existing site to a custom build | £500 - £1,500 | £30+/month |
| A new custom-built small business site | £1,000 - £3,000 | £30+/month |
| Agency build | £3,500 - £12,000 | £100+/month |
| Ecommerce or booking systems | £3,000 - £15,000+ | Varies |
Those are the numbers. Now the useful part - what actually moves them.
Why nobody will give you a straight answer
Search this question and you’ll get a dozen pages of “it depends on your requirements” followed by a contact form. It’s maddening, and it’s deliberate: the longer they can keep the number out of the conversation, the longer they’ve got to talk you round.
I find that irritating as a customer, so I’m not going to do it to you.
The other two things the industry does with pricing are worth naming while we’re here. There’s the £299 website that turns out to be £299 plus hosting plus a change fee plus an SSL certificate plus £150 to add a page. And there’s the agency charging four thousand pounds for a template with your logo dropped into it. Both are common. Both are why people don’t trust web designers on price.
The bit everyone gets wrong: the build isn’t the expensive part
Here’s the thing I wish more people knew before they start getting quotes.
Most people assume the cost of a website is the building of it. It isn’t. Most of the time and effort goes into the preparation - and if that prep isn’t done, you either pay someone else to do it or you end up with a site that doesn’t work very hard for you.
Before anyone writes a line of code, the questions are:
- Do you have branding? A logo, colours, fonts, some sense of how you want to look. If not, that’s a job in itself.
- Do you have words? Not notes. Actual copy that explains what you do and persuades someone to get in touch. Most businesses need help with this, and a good copywriter isn’t free.
- Do you have images? Photos of you, your work, your premises, your team. Stock photography is obvious, and it makes small businesses look bigger and blander than they are - which is precisely the wrong direction.
- Do you know what the site is for? Enquiries? Bookings? Credibility, so people who’ve been recommended you don’t get put off? A site trying to do everything usually does nothing.
Two businesses can ask for “a five page website” and be quoted £800 and £3,000, and both quotes can be fair. The difference is almost never the design. It’s how much of the above already exists.
If you turn up with clear branding, decent photos and your copy written, you’re at the cheaper end. If you need all of it, budget for all of it - or accept that you’ll get a nice-looking site that doesn’t say anything.
Builder, freelancer, or agency?
Website builders - Wix, Squarespace and the rest - cost around £16 to £30 a month. I want to be fair about these, because they’ve earned their place. Historically they’ve been a brilliant low-cost way to get a good-looking site up and running fast, and for a long time that was genuinely the best option for a small business with no budget.
They’re still the right call if you’re testing an idea and don’t want to commit, if your budget is a few hundred pounds rather than a few thousand, or if you actively enjoy tinkering with your own site and want to be in there changing things every week. Some people do, and they should absolutely use a builder.
But I don’t think they’re the most efficient way to build and run a business website any more. The tools available now mean you can have something faster, more secure and genuinely yours for less than the difference adds up to. Which brings us to the maths.
Freelancers and small studios charge £500 to £3,000 for a small business site. You get someone who knows your business, and you own what you end up with.
Agencies start around £3,500 and go up steeply. Worth it if you need a large site, a team, or specialist work. For a five-page site for a local business, you’re mostly paying for the account manager.
The five-year number
This is the calculation that changes how the whole question looks.
A website builder at £16 a month is £192 a year. Over five years that’s £960 - and at the end of it you own nothing. Stop paying and the site goes. Try to leave and you can take your content, but not the site itself.
A custom build at £1,000 with a £30/month care plan is £1,000 up front and £1,800 over five years. So £2,800 - and at the end you own the site outright.
Roughly three times the cost. But one of those is rent and one of those is yours, and the gap narrows every year you stay. The builder never stops charging you and never gives you anything to keep.
Whether that’s worth it depends on how long you expect to be in business. If the answer is “a while”, the maths tends to favour owning it.
The costs nobody puts in the quote
Every website has running costs. Anyone who implies otherwise is hiding them somewhere.
- Hosting - £5 to £30 a month for something decent
- Domain - £10 to £20 a year
- SSL certificate - often included, sometimes not
- Security and updates - the invisible one, until it isn’t
- Backups - you’ll never think about these until the day you desperately need one
- Changes - new opening hours, a new photo, a price update. Some charge per change, which gets expensive and, worse, makes you reluctant to keep your own site current
Budget £20 to £100 a month depending on who’s looking after it and how much they do.
And the cost of a site nobody can find
This one gets left out of every pricing conversation I’ve seen, and it’s the most expensive mistake on the list.
A lot of web designers don’t build for search. The site looks lovely, launches, and then sits there. No structure Google can read, no thought about what people actually search for, nothing that helps an AI assistant like ChatGPT or Claude recommend you when someone asks it for a local supplier - which is increasingly how people find businesses.
What’s the point of a website nobody can find?
A £3,000 site that brings in nothing is far more expensive than a £1,000 site that brings in two customers a month. Cost and value aren’t the same thing, and search visibility is where the difference usually shows up. When you’re getting quotes, ask what they do about it. If the answer is vague, that tells you something.
What I charge
Since I’ve spent this whole article complaining about people who won’t give numbers:
- Moving an existing site to a custom build: from £500
- A brand new custom design: from £1,000
- Care subscription - hosting, security, SSL, backups, updates and up to three small changes a month: from £30/month
All plus VAT. Bigger jobs - extra pages, a new section, a redesign - are quoted separately, so you only pay for what you need.
Every business is different, which is true, but it’s not a reason to keep the numbers secret. It’s a reason to have a fifteen minute conversation.
So what should you budget?
If you’re a small business in the UK looking for a site that works properly:
- £500 - £1,500 if you’ve got branding, photos and copy sorted, or you’re moving an existing site across
- £1,000 - £3,000 for a new custom build where some of the prep still needs doing
- £30 - £60 a month to keep it hosted, secure and looked after
- Add £300 - £800 if you need copywriting, and similar for photography
And if a quote comes in far below that, ask what’s not included. It’s usually the prep - and the prep is the bit that makes it work.
Not sure where you’d land? Book a free call and I’ll give you an honest figure, or download the pricing pack and have a read first. No hard sell - if a website builder is genuinely the right answer for you, I’ll say so.