The short answer
In the UK in 2026, a small business website typically costs somewhere between £500 and £5,000 up front, or £20 to £150 a month on a subscription. That is an uselessly wide range, which is rather the point of this guide.
The number itself matters far less than what sits behind it. Two quotes of £2,000 can mean completely different things, and a £500 site can easily cost you more over three years than a £3,000 one.
Not "what does a website cost" but "what does this website cost me over three years, and who fixes it when it breaks?"
What you will actually be quoted
Broadly there are four tiers in the UK market, and it helps to know which one a quote belongs to before you compare it to anything else.
DIY builders: £0 to £300 a year
Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy and the rest. Genuinely fine if you have the time and some patience. The cost is not the subscription, it is the weekend you lose and the fact that most DIY sites end up looking like the template they came from. Sites built this way also tend to load slowly, which quietly costs you visitors.
A freelancer: £500 to £2,000 up front
Usually the best value if you find a good one. The risk is continuity. Freelancers change careers, get busy, or stop answering emails, and a lot of small businesses end up locked out of a site nobody can edit. Always ask who holds the domain and the hosting login.
A small agency: £2,000 to £5,000 up front
You get a process, a designer, and someone to chase. You also usually get a deposit request before any work starts, and an hourly rate for changes afterwards. Fine if you have the cash flow for it.
A larger agency: £5,000 and well beyond
Strategy workshops, brand exercises, user research. All of it real and valuable, and almost none of it necessary for a plumber who wants more calls.
The costs nobody mentions in the quote
The build price is the part everyone compares. The running costs are where the actual money goes, and they are far easier to leave out of a proposal.
- Hosting, typically £5 to £30 a month, sometimes bundled and sometimes not
- Your domain name, usually £10 to £20 a year, renewing quietly forever
- An SSL certificate, often free now, occasionally still charged for
- Maintenance and updates, £20 to £100 a month, or nothing until something breaks
- Changes, frequently £50 to £90 an hour, which is why so many sites still show last year's prices
- Copywriting, £200 to £800 if it is not included, and it is very often not included
That last one catches people out constantly. A quote that says "client to supply content" means you are writing every page yourself, and the project will sit unfinished for months while you fail to find a spare evening.
Ask any quote three questions: is the copywriting included, what does a small change cost after launch, and who owns the domain? The answers tell you more than the headline price.
Upfront or monthly: which is actually cheaper?
This is the question worth doing the arithmetic on, because the answer is not obvious.
A £2,500 build with £30 a month hosting and maintenance costs you £3,580 over three years. A £20 a month all inclusive subscription costs £720 over the same period. The upfront route only wins if the resulting site is substantially better, and for a typical local business it usually is not.
The bigger difference is cash flow. Paying £2,500 before a single visitor arrives means betting a significant sum on an outcome you cannot yet see. Paying monthly means the site has to keep earning its place, which puts the risk on whoever built it rather than on you.
The genuine catch with subscriptions is what happens if you leave. Ask directly, in writing, before you sign anything.
Red flags in a quote
None of these are automatically disqualifying. All of them are worth a follow up question.
- No mention of who owns the domain. It should be registered in your name, not the agency's. This is the single most common way small businesses get held hostage.
- "SEO included" with no detail. On page basics are a day's work and should be standard. An ongoing SEO campaign is a real monthly cost. Vague wording usually hides one of the two.
- A guaranteed Google ranking. Nobody can promise this. Anyone who does is either inexperienced or hoping you will not check.
- A large deposit with no written scope. Know what you are buying before money changes hands.
- Charges for basic changes. If updating your opening hours costs £75, your site will slowly go out of date, and an out of date site loses you work.
- No examples you can visit. Ask for live URLs, not screenshots. Then load one on your phone and count the seconds.
What we charge, and why
We charge £20 a month with nothing up front. That covers the design, the writing, hosting, SSL, backups, security updates and any content changes you ask for. Advertising budgets and larger SEO campaigns are separate and always agreed in writing first.
The reason it works is not that we cut corners, it is that we removed the expensive parts of the traditional model. No lengthy discovery phase, no account managers, no deposit chasing. We would rather look after a hundred businesses for years than charge one business five thousand pounds once. Here is how the process runs.
Whether you use us or not, the arithmetic above is the part worth taking away. Work out the three year cost, ask who owns the domain, and find out what a small change costs. We have run those numbers properly in monthly versus upfront. Those three answers will tell you more than any portfolio.
If you want a figure for your own business, ask us for a quote. It is free, there is no obligation, and you will get a straight answer even if that answer is that you do not need us.