By DylanWebsite prices in the UK run from a few hundred pounds a year for a site you build yourself to well over £10,000 for a big agency project. Two quotes for the same five-page site can be thousands of pounds apart, and most of that gap comes down to what each quote includes and what you’ll pay once the site is live.
We design, build and look after websites for trades and local service businesses, and our own prices are near the end so you can see where they sit.
| Route | To build it | To run it each year |
|---|---|---|
| DIY builder (Wix, Squarespace) | Your time | £120-£600, plus the domain |
| Freelancer | £1,500-£3,000 for five pages | £700-£2,000 |
| Agency | £2,000-£10,000+ | £700-£2,000+ |
| Pay monthly (ours) | £0 | £1,490-£5,990, paid yearly |
What You Get at Each Price
Building It Yourself
A website builder like Wix or Squarespace costs about £10-£50 a month depending on the plan, and you can have something live in a weekend if you keep it simple.
The templates look decent. The time goes on the parts a template can’t do for you, like writing pages that answer what customers ask, taking photos of your work, and setting up the page titles and business details Google uses to find you. You’ll also be the one fixing it when something looks wrong on a phone.
It’s a sensible place to start if you’re testing an idea or money is tight. Once the business relies on enquiries from the website, it’s worth asking whether those evenings are better spent elsewhere.
Hiring a Freelancer
For a five-page brochure site, freelance web designers typically charge around £1,500-£3,000, although you’ll find quotes well below and above that. Five pages for a local business usually means a home page, two or three service pages, an about page and a contact page.
At the cheaper end you’re usually getting a ready-made theme with your logo and text dropped in. Further up, the design should be made for your business, and some freelancers will help with the words too.
The main thing to check with a freelancer is what happens after launch. Ask who hosts the site, what a change costs, and who has the logins if they get busy or stop trading.
Using an Agency
Agencies start at around £2,000-£3,000 for a small site and go up to £10,000 or more for larger sites, online shops and anything with custom features. Part of what you’re paying for is the team and the process, with a project manager, designers, developers and rounds of sign-off. That suits a bigger business with a few people involved in decisions. For a sole trader it can mean a lot of meetings for a five-page site.
Most agencies include the first year of hosting, then move you onto a monthly hosting and maintenance plan.
Paying Monthly
A pay monthly website spreads the cost of the build over a monthly fee that also covers hosting, maintenance and changes, so there’s no big bill at the start. Prices vary a lot between providers, and so do minimum terms, so compare what’s included as well as the monthly price. We’ve gone into this in more detail in how much a website costs per month.
What Makes One Website Cost More Than Another
Two sites can look similar and still be priced very differently. These are the things that move the price most.
The number of pages. Every page needs designing, writing and checking on phones. Most local service businesses can start with five pages and add more as they grow. On our Launch plan, each page beyond five is £99.
Who writes the words. Writing is often the slowest part of a website project, and plenty of quotes leave it to you. If the designer writes it, the price goes up, so check whether copywriting is in the quote.
Photos. Stock photos are cheap and look like stock photos. Photos of your own jobs, vans and team cost very little and do far more to win trust, especially for trades.
Features. Online booking, taking payments and online shops add cost because they need setting up, testing and looking after. An online shop is usually the most expensive kind of small business site, often starting from around £5,000 with an agency.
A template or a design of your own. A template is quicker to set up, so it costs less. A design made for your business costs more up front and makes it easier to stand apart from the other firms in your area.
Connecting other tools. Linking the site to your booking system, CRM or accounts software is custom work, and it’s normally quoted separately.
The Running Costs People Forget
You pay for the build once, but these costs come round every month or every year:
- Domain name: a .co.uk domain is often advertised for pennies in the first year, then renews at around £12-£27 a year depending on the registrar. Check the renewal price before you buy.
- Hosting: £5-£30 a month for basic WordPress hosting, or £15-£50 a month for managed hosting with backups and support.
- Business email: £5-£20 a month per mailbox.
- SSL certificate: this is the padlock in the browser. Most hosts include one free these days, so be wary of paying extra for it.
- Maintenance: £75-£200 a month if you pay someone to update the site, back it up and fix things when they break.
- Changes: usually £50-£100 an hour when they aren’t covered by a plan.
Add those up and a site that cost £2,500 to build will typically cost another £700-£2,000 a year to run properly. Our guides to hosting costs and website maintenance cover each of these in more detail.
What a Five-Page Site Costs Over Three Years
The table compares the routes for a typical five-page site. The figures use the ranges above and leave out your own time, which is the biggest cost on the DIY route.
| Route | Year one | Three years |
|---|---|---|
| DIY builder | £120-£600 | £360-£1,800 |
| Freelancer | £2,100-£4,800 | £3,300-£8,400 |
| Agency | £2,600-£4,800 | £3,800-£8,400 |
| Pay monthly (our Launch plan) | £1,490-£1,788 | £4,470-£5,364 |
The freelancer and agency figures include hosting and maintenance, but leave out the domain, email and any changes, which usually cost £50-£100 an hour. Our Launch plan includes the domain, one business email and two changes a month. The lower pay monthly figures are for paying yearly.
Over three years the totals end up closer than you might expect. Paying up front can work out cheaper if the site hardly changes. If you’d rather not find a few thousand pounds at the start, or you want changes and help as part of the price, paying monthly usually makes more sense.
How to Spend Less Without Ending Up With a Worse Site
- Start with the pages you need now. Five pages is a sensible start for most local businesses, and you can add more once you know what customers look for.
- Write a first draft of your service pages yourself. You know what customers ask you on the phone, and those questions are what the pages should answer. A designer can tidy up your wording far quicker than they can start from nothing.
- Take your own photos. A phone in good daylight is fine, and pictures of real jobs beat stock images.
- Leave out features you won’t use in the first year. You can add booking or payments later.
- Ask what you’ll pay in year two as well as the launch price.
Questions to Ask Before You Pay Anyone
Whoever you go with, get answers to these by email before you agree to anything:
- Whose name will the domain be registered in? It should be yours.
- What will I pay each year after launch, including hosting, email and the domain?
- What does a change cost once the site is live?
- Who writes the words, and how many rounds of amendments are included?
- Will I get the logins, and can I take the site with me if I leave?
- Is the design made for my business, or is it a template?
What We Charge
Our websites are pay monthly. Launch is £149 a month for up to five pages, Professional is £299 and Growth is £599, with nothing to pay up front and a 12-month minimum. Paying yearly gets you two months free. Every plan includes a unique design, hosting, your domain and changes, and you can buy the site outright at any point, from £1,995 on Launch, with the price dropping the longer you’ve been with us. See what each plan includes.
If you’d rather pay for a build up front, we do that too, so get in touch and we’ll quote for it.
Already have a WordPress site you’re happy with? Our hosting and maintenance packages start at £75 a month with maintenance, or £19 a month for hosting only.
So What Should You Budget?
For a small business site that brings in enquiries, plan on £1,500-£3,000 up front plus £700-£2,000 a year to run it, or a monthly plan that covers both. Building it yourself is fine while you’re starting out, as long as you count the hours.
Whichever route you choose, ask every supplier for the first-year cost and the yearly cost after that, because that’s where quotes really differ.
