How much does a website cost in the UK?
Anywhere from a few hundred pounds to forty thousand. Here is where your business is likely to land, what drives the price, and what it costs to keep running.
The short answer
For most UK small businesses, a website designed and built properly by a freelancer or small studio costs £3,000 to £10,000. A do-it-yourself builder costs far less in cash and far more in your time. An agency costs more, for larger teams and bigger projects. Online shops and sites with logins sit higher.
We build business websites from £450, so we have an interest here. We have tried to be fair anyway: where a cheaper route suits you better, this guide says so.
| Route | Typical cost to build | What you usually get | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| DIY website builder | £100 to £1,000 in the first year | A template you fill in yourself, hosting included, monthly fees | Starting out, testing an idea, very tight budgets |
| Freelancer, template or theme | £500 to £3,000 | A theme set up with your content, often on WordPress | Simple brochure sites with few changes |
| Small studio, custom design and build | £3,000 to £10,000 | Designed around your customers, built for speed and accessibility, an editor | Businesses that rely on the site for enquiries |
| Custom online shop | £5,000 to £25,000+ | Catalogue, checkout, stock, delivery rules, order admin | Shops with distinctive products or their own systems |
| Agency | £10,000 to £40,000+ | Strategy, brand, content, larger teams, longer projects | Larger organisations with complex sites |
These ranges are our estimates, not survey data. They come from what we see in the UK market and in quotes clients show us. Treat them as a guide to the shape of the market, not a price list.
Where the money goes, on one scale.
Typical build costs for each route, on the same axis, with our starting prices marked so you can see where we sit.
Our packages, marked: Business website from £450 · Online shop from £950 · Website and admin portal from £1,300
What drives the price
Every website quote is mostly a guess at time. These are the things that change how much time it takes.
Page types, more than page count
A site with ten service pages that share one design is not ten times the work of one page. A site where every page has its own layout is. When you compare quotes, ask how many different page designs are included, not just how many pages.
Content: who writes it
Content is the most underestimated cost in a website project. If you supply finished words and photos, the build is quicker. If the supplier writes your pages, or turns rough notes into copy, that takes time and should be in the quote. If it is not mentioned, ask.
Integrations
Connecting to a booking system, a CRM, Xero, a mailing list or a stock system adds work. Tools with a good API are usually straightforward. Older systems, or ones without an API, can take much longer.
Selling online
A checkout adds payments, order emails, stock, delivery rules, VAT and refunds. That is a lot of edge cases, which is why online shops cost more than brochure sites even when they look similar.
Accessibility and speed
A site built to WCAG 2.2 AA from the start costs little extra. Fixing an inaccessible site later costs a lot. The same is true of speed: passing Core Web Vitals (LCP under 2.5 seconds, INP under 200 milliseconds, CLS under 0.1) is cheap to design in and expensive to retrofit. Ask whether either is included, and how it is tested.
Moving from an old site
A redesign of a twenty-page site is quick to migrate. A site with years of blog posts and product pages needs a full redirect map so it keeps its Google rankings. That planning is real work. Our website redesign page explains how it is done.
Logins
As soon as customers or staff need to sign in, a website becomes a web application. That means accounts, permissions, security and data protection. It is a different kind of project and is usually priced in stages.
Running costs every year
The build is a one-off. These are the costs that keep coming, and they are often left out of the comparison.
- Domain name. Usually under £20 a year for a .co.uk or .com, more for premium names. Make sure it is registered in your name.
- Hosting. From a few pounds a month on shared hosting to more for managed, UK-based hosting with backups and monitoring. Builders include it in their monthly fee.
- Care and updates. Software updates, security patches, backups and small changes. Either your time, an hourly rate, or a monthly care plan. Small business plans commonly run from about £50 to £250 a month.
- Licences and plugins. Premium themes, plugins, form tools and booking systems often carry annual or monthly fees. They add up quietly.
- Email. Business email is usually a separate subscription per person, not part of the website.
- VAT. VAT-registered suppliers add 20%. If you are VAT-registered too you can usually reclaim it; if not, it is a real cost. Compare quotes on the same basis.
Ecommerce extras
An online shop has costs a brochure site does not. The biggest is card processing. Stripe's UK pricing page lists 1.5% + 20p per successful payment on standard UK cards and 2.5% + 20p on cards from the EEA, with higher rates for premium and international cards (October 2026; check the current rates on Stripe's site before you decide). On a £40 order from a standard UK card, that is 80p.
Hosted shop platforms add a monthly plan, and often fees for apps you install, and sometimes an extra charge if you use a payment provider other than their own. A custom shop avoids the platform fee but costs more upfront. Which is cheaper over three years depends on your order volume and how many paid apps you would need.
Budget too for product photography, writing product descriptions, and the time to load your catalogue. For a few hundred products, that can take longer than building the shop.
The hidden costs nobody quotes
These are the costs we see catch people out most often. None of them is a scam; they are simply easy to leave out of a quote.
- Copywriting. “Content to be supplied by client” can mean weeks of your evenings.
- Photography. Stock photos are cheap but generic. A half-day shoot of your premises, team and work is often the best money you will spend on the site.
- Migration. Moving content, setting up redirects and checking nothing broke. Skipping it can cost you rankings you spent years earning.
- Changes after launch. Ask what a small change costs and how quickly it happens. An hourly rate with a slow turnaround is a hidden cost of its own.
- Lock-in. If the supplier owns the hosting account, the domain or the code, leaving can mean starting again. Ask who owns what, in writing.
- Rebuilding to grow. If adding booking, payments or a customer login later means a new site, the cheap first site was not cheap.
Three example budgets
Ranges are easier to use with a real business in mind. These are illustrations, not quotes, but they show how the same questions lead to very different answers.
A sole-trader electrician
Five or six pages: home, services, areas covered, recent work, about, contact. The main job is turning local searches into calls and quote requests. A builder can do this for a few hundred pounds a year if you have the time and the photos. A custom site makes sense once most of your work comes from search and you want it fast, accessible and easy to update from your phone. Expect the lower end of the small-studio range, plus a domain and a modest care plan.
A physiotherapy clinic with three practitioners
Ten to fifteen pages, practitioner profiles, prices for each treatment, an embedded booking system, and forms that handle health information safely. Health data and online booking push this towards the middle of the small-studio range. If the clinic later wants patient logins for forms and exercise plans, that is a portal, and it is usually priced as a separate stage.
An independent shop with 150 products
A catalogue, checkout, stock, delivery zones, VAT and order emails. A hosted platform gets you selling quickly for a monthly fee. A custom shop costs more upfront and usually starts around the bottom of the custom online shop range, with no platform fee afterwards. Product photography and descriptions are often the hidden half of the budget.
How to get an accurate quote
The fastest way to a useful quote is to give a supplier the same short brief you give everyone else. Five things make most of the difference:
- What visitors should do. Call, book, buy or ask for a quote. One main action shapes the whole site.
- Your current site or Google listing. It shows your content, your customers and what needs moving.
- Who writes the words and supplies the photos.
- What it needs to connect to. A booking system, a payment provider, an accounts package.
- Two or three sites you like, and what you like about them.
Then ask each supplier the same questions: is the price fixed, what is not included, who owns the code and domain, what does it cost to run each year, and what happens if you want to add booking or payments later.
How Echtic quotes.
Every website starts with a free website plan: a sitemap, a homepage design and a fixed quote, within five working days. If you go ahead, payment is staged: 40% to go ahead, 40% when designs are signed off, 20% at launch. Care plans start at £95 a month, and extra work is £60 an hour.
Business websites from £450, online shops from £950, a website with an admin portal from £1,300. Compare packages
For a website, the next step is a free website plan. Portals, apps and business systems are priced differently: as a fixed quote in stages, after a free consultation. Whoever you choose, ask how the site grows when you need booking, payments or logins. Building twice is the one cost worth avoiding.
Website cost questions
Something else? hello@echticstudios.com
How much does a small business website cost in the UK?
A simple site from a website builder costs a few hundred pounds a year plus your own time. A custom-designed site from a freelancer or small studio usually costs £3,000 to £10,000. Ours start from £450. These are our estimates, explained on this page.
How much does an ecommerce website cost?
A builder or hosted platform can get you selling for a monthly fee plus transaction costs. A custom online shop typically starts around £5,000 and rises with catalogue size and integrations. Ours start from £950.
How much does it cost to run a website each year?
Budget for a domain (usually under £20 a year for a .co.uk), hosting, and either your own time or a care plan for updates and backups. Small business care plans commonly run from about £50 to £250 a month, depending on what they cover.
Do website prices include VAT?
Not always. A VAT-registered supplier adds VAT at 20%. Always check whether a quote is shown with or without VAT, especially when comparing a VAT-registered company with a freelancer who is not.
Why do quotes for the same website vary so much?
Because "a website" can mean a theme with your logo on it or a site designed and built around your customers. Ask each supplier what is included, who writes the content, who owns the code, and what it costs to run after launch.
Is a cheap website a false economy?
Not always. If you need a simple online presence, a builder can be the right choice. It becomes a false economy when the site is slow, hard to change, inaccessible, or has to be rebuilt from scratch when you need booking or payments.
Five working days from now, you could have your website plan.
A sitemap, a homepage design and a fixed quote. Free, with no obligation.