It is the first thing everyone wants to know and the last thing most agencies will tell you. So here are the numbers, and more usefully, what sits behind them.
The short answer
For a small UK business, a professionally built website generally lands somewhere between £3,000 and £15,000. Below that you are usually buying a template with your logo dropped in. Above it you are usually buying either genuine complexity or an agency’s overhead, and it is worth knowing which.
Our own projects start from £3k and most land between £5k and £9k. You can see exactly what sits in each bracket.
Why the range is so wide
Because “a website” describes a five-page brochure and a booking platform equally badly. Four things move the number, and almost nothing else does.
1. How much thinking it needs
Page count is a poor proxy. Forty pages sharing three layouts is a smaller job than ten pages that each need working out. What costs money is the deciding: what goes on each page, in what order, to get someone to enquire.
2. Who writes the words
This is the single most underestimated line in any quote. If your copy is written and signed off, a build moves fast. If it is not, someone has to write it, and that someone is either you or the agency. Projects stall here more than anywhere else.
3. What it has to connect to
A brochure site is straightforward. Online booking, payments, live stock, a CRM sync or a client login are each real engineering. One integration can add more than five extra pages would.
4. How competitive your market is
Getting a landscaper found in a small town and getting a law firm found in a city are not the same job. If ranking matters, the difficulty of your market is a genuine cost input.
What you should be suspicious of
- A quote with no questions attached. Anyone who prices your site without asking what it has to achieve is guessing, and you will meet the difference later as a change request.
- “Free” websites with a monthly fee. Usually a three to five year lock-in that costs more than buying outright, and you rarely own the thing at the end.
- Sub-£1,000 builds. There is no version of the strategy, design and conversion work that fits in that budget. You are buying a template, which is fine if that is what you meant to buy.
- Hourly rates with no ceiling. Fine for ongoing work, alarming for a fixed project.
The question worth asking instead
“How much does a website cost” is the wrong question. The right one is what does it need to bring in to have been worth it.
If your average job is worth £400 and a site brings you two extra enquiries a month, a £5,000 website pays for itself inside a year and then keeps going. If your average job is worth £15,000, the maths stops being interesting almost immediately. And if the site will not realistically bring in work at all, then even £1,000 is too much.
That calculation, rather than the sticker price, is what should decide your budget.
What about the ongoing costs?
Budget for hosting and care on top. A site that nobody maintains gets slower, less secure and gradually less effective, which is a slow way to waste the build cost. That is what care plans are for.
Getting a real number
Any decent studio will give you a firm price before work starts, and will tell you what would change it. If you want ours, the four-question starter takes about two minutes and gets you a realistic bracket back, usually the same working day.