A typical UK small business website costs between £500 and £7,000 to build, plus £15 to £60 a month to keep running. The wide gap exists because “a website” can mean a template, a freelancer job or a custom build. These are typical ranges, not quotes.
Picture a plumber in Horsforth who asks three firms to price a five-page site. The quotes come back at £450, £2,800 and £11,500. Same brief on paper. Nobody explains why. That spread is normal, and it is rarely a scam at either end.
How much does a website cost in the UK for a small business?
Think in four bands. Each buys a different product.
A do-it-yourself builder such as Wix or Squarespace runs at roughly £10 to £40 a month, plus your own evenings. It suits a simple first presence. A template site set up by a freelancer typically lands between £500 and £1,500. It is quick, and it looks like a template because it is one.
A custom small business website from an agency usually sits between £2,500 and £7,000 for five to twelve pages. Bookings, e-commerce, member areas and integrations push that to £7,000 and up, and large shops go well beyond it.
If you are still choosing a platform, our comparison of WordPress, Wix and Squarespace sets the three out side by side over three years.
Why is one quote ten times another?
Four things do most of the damage.
Design. A template is somebody else’s design in your colours. Custom means someone planned your pages around how your customers decide. That takes hours, and hours cost money.
Words come next. Who writes the copy? If you supply it, the price drops. If you want the agency to write it, and most owners should because they are too close to their own business, expect an extra line on the quote. It is also the biggest single lever on whether the site produces enquiries.
Then there is build quality. Cheap sites often arrive stuffed with plugins and a heavy page builder. They look fine in the pitch and crawl on a real phone on a train out of Leeds. A hand-built theme is lighter and cheaper to run for years. If speed is already a worry, read why your website might be slow before you pay for a rebuild you may not need.
Last, SEO groundwork. Page structure, titles, descriptions, alt text and schema are dull to do and invisible to look at. They decide whether you are found or just decorative.
What does a website cost to run after launch?
This is the part people forget when they compare headline prices.
You pay for a domain name, which is a few pounds to around £20 a year for common endings. You pay for hosting. You pay for backups, security updates and the occasional fix. For a well-managed WordPress site, hosting and care together usually come to £15 to £60 a month.
Then there is the work you do yourself. Writing the text, finding photos and answering questions takes owners longer than they expect, often ten to twenty hours across a project. Your time has a price too, and it is the line that never appears on a quote. Professional photography of your own premises or team, which beats stock images every time, adds a few hundred pounds if you hire a local photographer for half a day.
Some agencies bundle all of it into one monthly fee. That can be good value, provided you can leave with your site when you want to. Over three years, a £3,000 site with £40 a month of running costs is really a £4,440 decision.
What should you refuse to pay for?
Be sceptical of a long list of extras you cannot explain. Animated sliders. A mega menu. Six plugins for features nobody will use. Every addition slows the site, adds something that can break and makes updates dearer.
Watch for paid extras that should be standard. Basic SEO set-up, an SSL certificate, mobile layouts and a contact form that actually emails you are not luxuries. If a cheap quote lists them as optional, the real price is higher than the headline. If a dear quote cannot explain what it includes beyond “design”, the price is vague for a reason.
Be careful with “unlimited revisions” too. It usually means unlimited indecision, and the agency prices that in.
Fixed price or day rate?
For a normal business site, insist on fixed. You want the number before work starts. Hourly billing rewards slowness, however honest the people are. Ask what is included, what counts as a change request, and who owns everything at the end.
That last question matters more than it sounds. If the agency registers your domain or hosting in its own name, you are renting your own shop front. We explain the risks in who owns your domain name and website.
Is a website worth the money?
Work out what one new customer is worth to you. Say a £4,000 site brings in four extra customers worth £1,500 each over their lifetime with you. That is £6,000, so it pays for itself inside a year. If it brings none, it was expensive at £400.
The sum is crude, but it forces the right question. You are not buying pages. You are buying enquiries. A site with a clear offer, a visible phone number and a form that works will out-earn a prettier one that hides all three.
How do you compare website quotes fairly?
Give every supplier the same short brief. What you sell, who buys it, how many pages you expect, what the site must do and what content you will provide. Ask each to say what is in and what is out. Compare that, not the headline price.
Then ask one awkward question: how will this site bring me enquiries? A good answer mentions page structure, local search, calls to action and tracking. A weak answer is about how nice it will look.
Check the redesign side too. If you already have a site that ranks, a rebuild can wipe out years of search history unless someone plans the redirects. Our website redesign checklist shows what a careful agency should be doing before launch.
Frequently asked questions
Is £500 enough for a business website?
Enough for a basic one-page presence. Not enough for something designed to win work.
Do I have to pay monthly?
Only if you want hosting and care handled for you, and any decent agency will let you take the site elsewhere. If one will not, treat that as your answer.
How long does a custom site take?
Four to six weeks is typical if your content arrives on time. It is nearly always the content that slows things, rarely the build.
Will I need to pay for changes after launch?
Small edits, such as a new price or a team photo, are usually quick and cheap, or free if you have a care plan. Bigger changes, like a new section or a booking system, are quoted separately. Ask for an hourly rate before you sign, so you know it in advance.
Is a Wix site cheaper than WordPress?
Cheaper to start. Over three years the gap narrows, and WordPress gives you more room to grow. Neither is wrong for the right business.
Why do some agencies refuse to give a price?
Some need a conversation first, which is fair. Others hide behind it to see how much you will pay. A range, with the assumptions behind it, should be available after one call. Anything less is a sales tactic.
If you want a fixed price for a site that is built to rank and convert, look at our web design service and send us your brief. We will tell you honestly which of the four bands you belong in, even if it is the cheapest.
