How much
does a website
actually cost?
Nobody publishes their prices, so everyone asking this question gets the same non-answer: it depends. It does depend — but not so much that a straight figure is impossible. Here is mine, and here is what moves it.
Starting
from
A website
from£1,200Designed, built, hosted and launched. Hand-written code, not a theme with your logo dropped on top. Typically three to five weeks from the first conversation, depending mostly on how fast your words and photographs arrive.
A website that does something
from£3,000Online booking, taking payment, or a customer area behind a login. This is where a site stops being a brochure and starts doing work you would otherwise be doing by hand.
An app or a product
from£8,000Dashboards, capture tools, mobile apps — designed and engineered end to end rather than mocked up and thrown over a wall. Scoped in stages, so you know what the next step costs before you commit to it.
Hosting & care
from£25/moHosting, SSL, backups, monitoring, DNS and the small changes you think of later. On servers I run and answer for myself, so it is one arrangement rather than four accounts whose passwords nobody can find.
Fixed scope, fixed price, agreed before anything starts. Not VAT-registered — the price quoted is the price paid.
A cheap website is not cheap because someone found a clever shortcut. It is cheap because the thinking was skipped — and the thinking is the part you were buying.
What moves
the number
Whether it presents or performs
A site that shows people who you are and how to reach you is a fundamentally smaller job than one taking bookings and card payments at two in the morning. The second has to be right when nobody is watching, and that is most of what the extra money buys.
Whether the words exist
The most common reason a project drifts is that the copy was never written. If you have your text and photographs ready, the build is quick. If you do not, that is fine — but it is honest to say up front that it is work, and it is usually your work.
How many people are on the invoice
An agency quote carries an account manager, a project manager, a designer, a developer and the office they sit in. Some projects genuinely need that team. A five-page site for a local business does not, and paying for it anyway is the most common way small firms overspend.
What happens after launch
Ongoing cost is where quotes are least comparable. Page-builder sites carry plugin licences and platform subscriptions that quietly outgrow the build cost over a few years. Hand-coded sites do not have those, which is the main reason I write them that way.
Questions
about money
How much does a small business website cost in the UK?
It depends almost entirely on who builds it. A template site from a hobbyist can be a few hundred pounds; a London agency will rarely start under £10,000. An experienced solo studio sits in between — mine start at £1,200, or £3,000 once there is booking, payment or a login involved.
Why is the range so wide?
Because “a website” covers very different things. Number of pages, whether it does something or just says something, whether the copy exists, and how many people’s time is inside the quote. Compare what is actually being built, not the headline figure.
Are there ongoing costs?
Yes, and anyone claiming otherwise is hiding them. Hosting, SSL, backups, monitoring, domain renewal, occasional updates. Mine is from £25 a month and covers all of it. There are no plugin licences, because there are no plugins.
Is a cheap website ever the right answer?
Yes. If you need one page with your hours and a phone number, buy the cheap thing and spend the difference on your business — I will tell you so. It stops being right the moment the site has a job to do, or the first impression is the sale.
Do you charge for a quote?
No. The first conversation is free and ends with a fixed scope and a fixed price, so you know the whole cost before committing to any of it. Larger builds get staged, so the same is true of every step after the first.
Where are you, and does it matter?
Bath. It matters only if you would like to sit down with the person building the site, which you are welcome to do — see web design in Bath. Otherwise projects run remotely across the UK and abroad without anyone noticing the difference.
Want a real number for your job? Start here.
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