What a website actually costs in the UK
A small business website in the United Kingdom costs between nothing and about £5,000 to build, and the build is rarely the number that matters. A DIY builder such as Wix or Squarespace runs £10 to £30 a month and costs you the weekend you spend on it. A freelancer charges £500 to £2,000 once. A high street agency charges £1,500 to £5,000 up front, then again for hosting and again for every edit. Sitesmiths builds the whole site before you pay anything and charges from £47 a month with VAT included, edits in it.
- Last measured
- September 2026
- Keyword
- website design uk cost
- Searches a month
- 1,440
The question behind this one is almost never about the build. It is about the second year, which is where the routes separate and where almost nobody quotes you a number up front.
What each route charges
| Route | To get live | Year two | What it really costs you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself on Wix or Squarespace | £0 to £30 a month | £120 to £360 | A weekend or two, and a site that looks like its template |
| A freelancer | £500 to £2,000 once | £60 to £200 hosting | A change means a new email, a new quote and a wait |
| A local agency | £1,500 to £5,000 once | £300 to £1,200 | A deposit before you have seen anything, and a change list that is billed |
| A template you buy and fit yourself | £40 to £80 once | £60 hosting | You are now the person who has to fix it when it breaks |
| Sitesmiths | £0 | £564 at the cheapest plan | Nothing until you have seen the finished site and said yes |
UK prices, September 2026. The agency and freelancer ranges are what is quoted publicly on UK agency sites for a small business brochure site.
What a quote leaves out
- Hosting and the domain, which almost every build quote excludes and which is then billed yearly, usually without a reminder.
- Changes. A price change, a new service, a photograph of last week's job: on a build-and-hand-over contract each one is a billable hour, so most owners stop asking and the site goes stale.
- The rebuild. A site built once and never touched needs replacing in 3 to 5 years, which is the same money again.
What really decides the price
The honest driver of price is how many pages the site needs, and that follows from how your customers buy. If the whole job is getting phoned, one page does it and anything more is spend with nothing behind it. If people compare your services before they book, each service needs its own page, because that is how people search. If you want work from more than one town, you need a page for each town.
What does not decide the price, whatever an agency says: the number of stock photographs, the presence of an animation, or whether the agency calls the work custom. Those are line items and not value.
The cheapest arrangement that produces phone calls
For a sole trader the cheapest arrangement that produces phone calls is a single page that loads fast on a phone, states the trade and the towns covered in words Google can read, carries a number that dials when tapped, shows real finished work, and is connected to a Google Business Profile. That is £47 a month from us with VAT, hosting and every change included, and you can get to the same place on a builder for around £15 a month plus your own time.
The expensive mistake is the middle: £2,000 to an agency for a site nobody can edit afterwards, which is then not edited, and which is dead within 2 years.