How much should a small business website cost in the UK?

Website pricing is murky in a way that helps nobody. So here are real ranges, and more usefully, what actually moves the number.

The honest ranges

• Under £1,000. Usually a template with your text dropped in. Fine as a placeholder. It won't generate enquiries, because nothing about it was designed to.
• Low thousands. Where a properly built small business site sits. Strategy, custom design, content structured around what your customers search for, technical SEO foundations, and a CMS you can actually use.
• Mid thousands and up. More pages, ecommerce, integrations, booking systems, or genuinely complicated requirements.
• Five figures. Bigger organisations, complex ecommerce, bespoke systems. If you're a small local business being quoted this, ask very precisely what you're getting.

What actually drives the price

One exception worth knowing. Rebuilding an existing site like for like costs less than building a new one, because the content, structure and messaging already exist. You're paying for the build, not the thinking. Ours start at £899.

People assume it's the number of pages. It rarely is. The twentieth page costs a fraction of the first, because the design system already exists.

• Strategy and structure. Working out what the site has to do, what each page targets, and how someone gets from landing to enquiry. That's where the value is, and where the skill is.
• Content. Who writes it. Copy that sells and ranks is a specialist job. Write it yourself and you'll pay less. Write it slowly and you'll wait longer.
• Functionality. Payments, bookings, memberships, integrations. Each one is real engineering, not a page.
• How bespoke the design is. A tailored design costs more than a refined template. Sometimes that's worth it. For a lot of local service businesses, it isn't.

Why the cheapest quote usually costs the most

A £600 website that brings in nothing hasn't cost you £600. It's cost you £600, plus every customer who went to a competitor over the two years you had it, plus the price of doing it properly afterwards.

The better question isn't what does a website cost. It's what's one new customer worth to me. If a customer's worth £500 and the site brings in one a month, arguing over £1,500 of build cost is the wrong argument.

What to watch for

• Monthly website fees where you never own anything. Some providers charge £50 to £150 a month forever. Over five years that's far more than a build, and you walk away with nothing.
• Hidden essentials. Hosting, SSL, domain and basic SEO should be clear up front, not bolted on later.
• Ranking guarantees. Nobody controls Google. A guaranteed number one is a guaranteed reason to walk away.

For what we include as standard, see web design for local business. Every project gets quoted individually with a fixed price up front, because the right number genuinely depends on what your site has to do.