How much does a website cost in the UK? 2026 prices

A small business website in the UK usually costs somewhere between about £500 and £5,000 to build, plus roughly £10 to £50 a month to keep running. That is a wide range because “a website” covers everything from a single page for a sole trader to a shop handling hundreds of orders a week.

This guide breaks the range down properly: what sits at each price level, what the ongoing costs actually are, and how to tell whether a quote is fair. We build websites for a living, so you should read our figures with that in mind. We have tried to make this the page we wish existed when we were on the other side of the conversation.

How much does a website cost in the UK?

Here is the honest spread for a UK small business, based on what we quote and what we see quoted around us.

Two things worth saying about that table. The bands overlap in practice, because a five page site written from scratch can cost more than a fifteen page site built from a template. And the number nearly everybody underestimates is the last column of their own life: how much of the work you are expecting to do yourself.

What the average small business actually pays

For a straightforward UK small business site, five to ten pages, written for you, mobile friendly and set up to be found on Google, the middle of the market sits at roughly £1,000 to £3,000.

Below about £500 you are usually buying a template with your logo dropped in, and often writing the words yourself. Above about £5,000 you should be getting something genuinely specific: custom functionality, a proper content process, or a larger site.

Neither end is wrong. A £400 site that brings in three jobs a month is a good buy. A £6,000 site that nobody can find is not.

What actually decides the price

Quotes vary because the work varies. These are the things that genuinely move the number. Our guide to comparing website design quotes shows how to line them up fairly.

• How many pages, and who writes them. Writing is usually the largest hidden cost. A site where you supply finished copy is a different job to one where somebody interviews you and writes it.
• Whether you are selling. A shop is not a brochure site with a basket bolted on. Products, variants, postage rules, tax and order emails all take setup.
• Custom design or a template. A template is faster and cheaper and looks like a template. Neither is a moral position.
• Anything holding personal data. Logins, bookings and memberships change the job completely, because now you are responsible for other people’s information.
• Photography. Real photos of your work beat stock every time, and a shoot is a real line item.
• Search setup. Whether page titles, descriptions, structure and Search Console are handled, or left for you.

The ongoing costs, which are smaller than people fear

People budget for the build and get surprised by year two. The running costs are modest, but they are not zero.

So a realistic total running cost for a small business site is about £10 to £50 a month if you look after it yourself, and more if you pay someone. We went through the hosting side separately in how much website hosting costs, and the maintenance side in how much website maintenance costs.

One thing to watch: you should not be paying for a basic SSL certificate, because free automatic ones give the same padlock and the same encryption. If it is a line on your invoice, ask why.

Why two quotes for the same site can differ by thousands

This is the part that makes people suspicious, and usually it is not dishonesty. It is that the two quotes are for different work.

• One includes the words and one does not. The single most common difference, and the one that stalls projects.
• One is a template, one is drawn from scratch.
• One includes the search setup, one hands you an empty site.
• One is fixed price, one is an estimate that moves.
• One includes hosting and support, one bills separately from month one.

Ask each quote the same question: what is not included? The answers will explain the gap faster than the line items will.

What we would actually watch out for

Some of this we have seen first hand, cleaning up sites built by other people.

• A low headline price with the real cost in the monthly fee. Work out the three year total, not the sign-up price.
• A monthly payment that never ends and never buys ownership. Ask directly: at the end, do I own it?
• The domain registered in the designer’s name. We have taken on a client whose previous company had gone quiet and was still taking hosting money every month, and he could not reach anyone. Keep the domain in your own name and hold the login.
• Hourly billing with no cap. Fine with someone you trust. Otherwise it is an open cheque.
• A quote with no written scope. If nobody wrote down what is included, both of you will remember it differently.

Is a cheap website a false economy?

Not automatically, and we would rather say that plainly than sell up. A tidy template site with real photos and clear words will out-perform an expensive site with nothing to say.

Cheap becomes expensive in specific situations: when nobody wrote the words so the site never launched, when it cannot be edited without going back to the builder, when it was never set up to be found, or when it holds customer data it was not built to hold. That last one is the only one we would call urgent, because it is the one that is genuinely painful to fix afterwards.

How to get an accurate price

1. Write down what you want a visitor to do. Ring, book, buy, or enquire. One primary action.
2. Count the pages you actually need. Most small businesses need five to eight.
3. Decide who is writing the words, honestly.
4. Say whether you are selling online now or later.
5. Ask for one fixed price in writing, with what is included and what is not.
6. Ask what it costs in year two.

Those six answers turn a vague enquiry into a quote you can compare. There is more on the questions worth asking in how to choose a web designer. And what a web designer costs explains hourly, day and fixed project rates.

Trade businesses are the most common version of this question we get. There is a trade specific breakdown in web design for tradesmen, and one for plumbers and heating engineers.

How we put this together

The figures above are our own, and we should be straight about what they are. They come from the quotes we give, the quotes our clients show us from other firms, and the published prices of UK agencies and builders that do list them. They are bands rather than survey data, and we have not dressed them up as a study.

We have deliberately not published our own prices here. What we can tell you is how we work: one fixed price for the whole job, agreed in writing before anything starts, no hourly billing, and the site and domain in your name. We also do not make money on hosting, and we will say so on the phone if you ask.

The warnings come from sites we have taken over, which is a less flattering but more useful source than a price list.

The short version

Expect roughly £500 to £5,000 to build a UK small business website, with most landing between £1,000 and £3,000, plus about £10 to £50 a month to run. Judge a quote on what is included rather than the headline. Keep the domain in your own name. And work out the three year cost, because that is the number you actually pay.

If you want a real figure for your own business rather than a range, tell us what you need and we will come back the same working day with one fixed price. If you are in Kent, there is a local version of this with the same numbers in how much a website costs in Kent, and what we actually build is web design for small business.