Updated July 2026
How Much Does a Website Cost?
It’s the question everyone asks, and the answer nobody wants to hear: it depends.
That’s not a cop-out – it’s genuinely true. Asking how much a website costs is like asking how much a car costs. You can spend £500 on something that gets you from A to B, or £50,000 on something built for performance. The right answer depends entirely on what you actually need it to do.
Here’s everything you need to work that out.
Your three options
Before talking numbers, it helps to understand the three main routes to getting a website built.
Do it yourself Website builders like Wix and Squarespace give you templates, a drag-and-drop editor, and a monthly subscription fee. If you just need a couple of pages with your phone number and opening times, this can work fine.
The hidden cost is your time. Building a website yourself – writing the content, setting up the domain, getting it indexed by Google, connecting your emails – typically takes between 40 and 100 hours if you’ve not done it before. If your time is worth £50 an hour to your business, that’s £2,000 to £5,000 in lost earning time. Often more than you’d have paid a professional.
Template or theme builder A step up from fully DIY – a designer takes a pre-built theme and customises it for your business. Faster and cheaper than a bespoke build, but you’re working within constraints. The design will have limitations, and you’ll likely share the same underlying structure as hundreds of other websites.
Fine for some businesses. Not right for businesses that need to stand out or do something specific.
Professional web designer A designer or agency builds something from scratch, designed specifically for your business, your audience, and your goals. It costs more upfront. It also gives you a website that actually works — one that represents your brand properly, performs well in search, and converts visitors into enquiries.
If your website is a serious part of how you win work, this is the only option worth considering.
What professional web design actually costs - and why
When you get a quote and think “blimey, that’s a lot” – here’s what you’re actually paying for.
A properly built website takes roughly 14 weeks from start to finish. That’s research and discovery, wireframing and planning, design, development, content, testing, and launch. Somewhere in the region of 300–500 hours of skilled work depending on the complexity of the project.
Before a designer or agency makes a penny of profit, they’re covering their own costs: hardware, software, hosting, training, insurance, accounting, marketing, phone, internet, and everything else it takes to run a legitimate business. Add years of expertise on top, and the numbers start to make more sense.
The short version: a well-built website for a small business in the UK typically starts at around £3,500–£4,500. Online shops or sites with complex functionality will be more. If someone’s offering you a five-page website for a few hundred pounds, ask yourself what corners are being cut — because something isn’t adding up.
Think of your website as a member of staff
Here’s a way of framing it that might help.
Your website can take enquiries and send them to your inbox. It can explain your services, show your work, answer common questions, and sell for you – all at the same time, for as many people as need it, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The average small business spends around £27,600 a year on a single employee. If you think of your website as your hardest-working team member, what would you expect to invest in getting it right?
Cost vs investment — which is it for you?
This is the most important question to answer before you set a budget.
A cost is like buying a chair. It does a job, it doesn’t really grow, and the cheapest option that does the job is usually fine.
A business investment is something you spend money on to help your business grow, win better work, or generate more revenue.
If you only want a website to tick the box of having an online presence – and you’re not expecting it to bring in any new customers – a template site you build yourself might be perfectly adequate.
But if you plan to use your website to attract customers, win more work, or compete in a busy market, you’re talking about an investment. And investments deserve proper thought and proper budget.
Working out what to spend
Think about how important your website is to your business’s success. If you’re the only business of your kind in town and people will find you regardless, you can spend less. If you’re competing with similar businesses for the same customers, the quality of your website directly affects whether people choose you or someone else.
A useful benchmark: most businesses invest somewhere between 5–10% of their target annual revenue in marketing. Your website is a core part of that.
Don’t fall into the trap of asking “what’s the minimum I can spend?” Ask “what’s this worth to my business if it works properly?”
What fecking creative charges
We think a budget of £2,500–£4,500 is a sensible starting point for a custom-built small business website. From there, the price goes up or down depending on what you need – additional pages, e-commerce, booking systems, integrations, and so on.
If your budget is significantly below that, we’ll tell you straight away rather than waste your time or ours. And if a bigger agency is quoting you £15,000 for the same thing, it’s worth asking what’s driving that difference.
If you can’t pay for everything upfront, ask about staged payments. Most professional designers will accommodate this, and it lets you invest properly without taking a big hit all at once.
How to brief an agency properly
The single best thing you can do before approaching any web designer or agency is come prepared. “How much for a website?” without any other information will get you a vague answer at best and a wildly inaccurate quote at worst.
A good project brief doesn’t need to be long. Answer as many of these as you can:
- What does your business do, and who are your customers?
- What do you like and dislike about your current website (if you have one)?
- Who are your main competitors?
- Do you need a brand new website or a refresh of an existing one?
- What do you want the website to achieve?
- Are there any specific features or functionality you need?
- Are there any websites you like the look of, and why?
- When do you need it?
- What’s your rough budget?
You don’t need an exact figure – a ballpark or even a “definitely not more than X” is helpful. It lets us tell you quickly whether we’re a good fit, and saves everyone from going back and forth on a proposal that was never going to work.
Two tips before you commit
On payment: if the full cost feels like a stretch, ask whether you can pay in stages. A reputable designer will usually work with you on this. Think of it as a business investment spread over time rather than a single upfront cost.
On cheap quotes: if a price seems too good to be true, it usually is. Very low website costs tend to mean rushed work, templates dressed up as bespoke, or someone who won’t be around to support you in six months. You get what you pay for — and a website that needs rebuilding in a year costs more than doing it properly the first time.
Ready to talk about what your website should be doing for your business? Get in touch and we’ll send you a short project form, then come back with an honest estimate. We’ll look at what you need, what’s realistic for your budget, and what a website built properly for your business would actually look like.
