How much does a business website cost in the UK?

The build is the cost everyone asks about, and it's rarely the one that matters most. A website costs money every year you own it, and a cheap site that quietly loses you enquiries can end up costing more than a dearer one that doesn't. For the record, ours run from £3,500 to £15,000, and a single landing page, built around the one thing you want visitors to do, is a fixed £3,500 and takes about three weeks. All of that is published before you speak to anyone. And if you're not yet sure you need a website at all, the first question is whether Instagram alone is enough.

Four ways to get a website

The last route is easy to overlook. If your current site works well enough but its most important page doesn't, a single well-built landing page can do more for enquiries than a full rebuild, for a fraction of the cost.

What drives the price

The number of pages that need designing and writing. A five-page site and a fifty-page site are very different jobs, especially when every page needs its own words.

Who writes the words. Copywriting can be left out of website quotes, on the assumption that you'll supply it. If you haven't the time, or the words are the problem, budget for it. On most small and medium businesses' sites, the words matter more than the design.

Custom design or a template. A well-chosen template, adapted properly, can look professional and cost far less than a design from scratch. A custom design makes sense when the site has to do something a template doesn't, or when the way it looks is central to how you sell.

What it has to do. Online booking, payments, a shop, members' areas, links to your other systems, more than one language: each adds design, build and testing time.

Moving an existing site. Rebuilding means moving the content and mapping every old page address to a new one, so that visitors and search engines aren't sent to dead pages. Google's guidance on site moves recommends permanent redirects, which send anyone using an old address to the new one, and warns that rankings may wobble for a while as Google catches up. Make redirects part of the quote, not an afterthought.

Accessibility and speed. A site should be usable by everyone, including people who use screen readers or have low vision, and it should be fast on a phone. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, published by the W3C, set out what that means in practice, and Google's Core Web Vitals set out what counts as fast. Building both in from the start costs less than fixing them later.

Photography and video. Real photos of your work, premises and people are worth more than stock images, but they cost money to commission.

What our websites cost, and what they include

Our websites run from £3,500 to £15,000 and typically take a few weeks, depending on the number of pages and whether a developer is involved. The work covers:

• where your current site loses people, page by page, with the reasons;
• pages rebuilt around what you want the visitor to do next;
• dedicated pages for campaigns, so ad money lands somewhere that earns its keep;
• two versions of the important pages tested against each other, so the decision rests on evidence rather than taste;
• the build or rebuild itself, with a developer alongside where one is needed.

The landing page sprint covers one page: where your current page loses people and why, the words, the design and build, and two versions of the key section tested against each other.

Choosing a platform

The platform affects the build cost, the running cost and how easily you can make changes yourself. Broadly, the choice looks like this:

There's no single best choice. The right one depends on what the site has to do, who will update it, and how much you want to depend on one supplier. Ask whoever quotes for the build why they've chosen the platform they recommend, and how you'd move away from it if you ever needed to. Whoever builds it, make sure the domain and the site's accounts are in your business's name, not theirs.

What to put in a website brief

A clear brief gets you better quotes, and quotes you can compare. It doesn't need to be long:

1. What the site is for: the one or two things you most want visitors to do, such as enquire, book or buy.
2. Who it's for: your main customers, and what they need to know before they act.
3. What you have now: the current site, what works and what doesn't, and roughly how many visitors it gets.
4. The pages you think you need, and any features, such as booking, payments or a members' area.
5. Who will write the words and supply the photos.
6. What you'll need to update yourself, and how often.
7. Your budget range and your deadline, with the reason for the deadline.
8. How you'll judge success, for example more enquiries from the same number of visitors.

If you have a one-sentence description of what you do, put it at the top, because it shapes everything else.

The running costs people forget

Every website has costs after launch. Individually they're small; over the years you own the site, they aren't.

• Domain name. Renewed every year or every few years, with whichever registrar you use.
• Hosting or a platform subscription. On a website builder, this is the monthly or annual plan. On a self-hosted site, it's the hosting account. Current prices are on each platform's own pricing page, for example Squarespace, Wix and Shopify.
• Paid plugins, themes and licences, which often renew yearly.
• Maintenance and security updates. Someone has to keep the software up to date and check the site still works afterwards.
• A cookie consent tool, if you use analytics or advertising cookies that need consent.
• Content updates. New services, prices, photos and posts, which take either your time or someone else's.
• Email, if it comes with or alongside your hosting.

The three-year cost of owning a site

Comparing quotes on the build price alone misses most of the picture. A fairer comparison is the cost of owning the site over a fixed period, say three years. Work it out like this:

1. Build cost, including copywriting, photography and redirects if they're extra.
2. Plus 36 months of running costs: platform or hosting, plugins, maintenance and support.
3. Plus the value of your own time spent maintaining it, if you're doing that yourself.

Take two sites, with round numbers. One has a £4,000 build and £60 a month in running costs and support, so over three years it costs £4,000 + (36 × £60) = £6,160. The other has a £1,500 build and £150 a month in support, which comes to £1,500 + (36 × £150) = £6,900. The cheaper build is the dearer site.

Then weigh the cost against what the site does. A site that brings in a few more enquiries each month than the one it replaces can pay for itself quickly. That's why we start with where your current site loses people, before quoting for anything new.

Questions to ask before you agree a website quote

Most website overruns come from something nobody asked about at the start. These are the questions to ask about the money:

• What exactly is included: how many pages, how many designs, how many rounds of changes?
• What happens if we need something that isn't in the quote, and what does that cost?
• Is setting up redirects included, from every old page to its new address?
• Is tracking included, so I can see enquiries from the new site on day one?
• What happens after launch: what support is included, for how long, and what does it cost after that?

The questions about the designer themselves, from who writes the words to who owns the domain, are part of choosing a web designer, and they matter just as much.

If the quote is a fixed price, check it against what a fixed-price project actually includes. Before you brief anyone, read the nine homepage mistakes that cost enquiries, so the new site doesn't repeat them. And if the website is only one part of your budget, what marketing costs in the UK prices every other service.

Before you sign

Four checks decide whether two website quotes are really for the same thing:

• The quote states the number of pages, designs and rounds of changes, and who writes the words and supplies the photos.
• Redirects from old pages are included.
• Testing on phones, for speed and for accessibility, and a tested enquiry-tracking set-up are included before launch.
• I have worked out the three-year cost, including hosting and support after launch, not just the build price.

Then put the quote through the six checks every quote should pass: who does the work, who owns the domain, hosting and logins, the fee kept separate from other costs, the term, what the site must achieve and how you'll measure it, and what you get.

If you'd like us to build it, our websites service builds a site, or a single page, around what you want visitors to do: full sites from £3,500 to £15,000, and the landing page sprint at a fixed £3,500.