How much does a small business website cost in the UK?
Nobody publishes this, which is exactly why you should read it before you ask anyone for a quote. Here is what a website actually costs in the UK in 2026, what makes the number go up, and why two quotes for “a website” can differ by a factor of twenty and both be fair.
The short answer
For a small UK business that needs a handful of pages, a contact form and to be findable on Google, you are realistically looking at somewhere between £500 and £3,000 from a freelancer or a small studio. Below that you are usually buying a template you fill in yourself. Above that you are usually buying an agency's overheads along with the website.
Those are not our numbers. Published 2026 UK figures put freelance day rates between £240 and £550, a basic five-page brochure site at £500 to £1,500, and a five to ten page small business site at £1,000 to £3,000. Agencies start around £3,000 and London agencies routinely quote £8,000 to £25,000 for work a freelancer would do for a tenth of it.
What you are actually paying for at each level
Do it yourself — £12 to £30 a month
Wix, Squarespace, Shopify. You pick a template and type into it. This is a perfectly sensible choice for a lot of businesses and anyone who tells you otherwise has something to sell.
The cost is your time and the ceiling. A weekend becomes three weekends, the result looks like the template, and when you want something the builder does not do, you cannot have it. Also worth knowing: those prices are usually shown excluding VAT, and taking payments puts you on a higher plan.
A freelancer — £500 to £3,000
One person, usually working evenings or alongside other clients. You get something made for your business rather than a filled-in template, and you get to speak to the person building it.
The risk is continuity. People change jobs, get busy, stop replying. Ask what happens in six months when you need a price changed, and listen carefully to the answer.
A small studio
Two to five people, usually sitting between the freelance and agency figures above. There is a process, somebody answers the phone, and the work gets checked by a second pair of eyes. You pay for that. Published guides tend not to separate this tier out, so treat anything you are quoted here on its own merits rather than against a benchmark.
An agency — £3,000 to £25,000
Account manager, designer, developer, project manager. For a business spending real money on marketing, that structure earns its keep. For a five-page site for a plumber, you are paying for a meeting room.
What actually drives the number up
In rough order of impact:
- How many pages. Five is the baseline. An accountancy firm with eight separate service pages is genuinely more work than a single-location cafe, and should cost more.
- Whether anything has to work. A menu is pages. An order builder with a basket, a booking request that goes somewhere, a calculator — those are things that have to work, be tested, and keep working. That is the biggest single jump in any quote.
- Selling online. Products, variants, stock, payment, shipping rules, tax. It is a different job. Freelance e-commerce commonly runs £2,000 to £5,000 and agency work £5,000 to £15,000.
- Whether the content exists. If your text and photos are ready, the build is faster. If somebody has to interview you and write it, that is real hours.
- Design from scratch versus a theme. A bespoke design costs more than a well-chosen theme adapted properly. Both are legitimate. Ask which you are getting.
The costs nobody puts in the quote
This is where people get caught. The build is one payment. The website is a running cost forever.
| What | Typical UK cost |
|---|---|
| Domain name (.co.uk) | £10–15 a year after the first year |
| Shared hosting | £7–12 a month at renewal prices |
| Managed WordPress hosting | £9–18 a month |
| SSL certificate | Free. Should be included. Do not pay for one. |
| Basic maintenance | £25–50 a month |
| Fuller care and content | £100–500 a month |
Budget £500 to £2,500 a year to keep a small business site alive once it is built. Two things on that list deserve flagging. The first-year domain price is a promotion and the renewal is higher. And if anyone charges you for an SSL certificate, ask why, because they are free and have been for years.
Why WordPress costs more than it looks
WordPress is free to install, which is how it gets sold as the cheap option. It is not quite. WordPress needs updating — core, theme, plugins — and an unmaintained WordPress site gets broken into. Not might: does. That is what maintenance plans are for, and it is why a WordPress site has a higher running cost than a hand-built one.
That is not an argument against it. If you want to edit your own prices and opening hours without emailing anybody, WordPress is the right answer and the maintenance is the price of that freedom. Just know you are choosing it.
How to compare two quotes that look nothing alike
Ask all of these, in writing, and the quotes become comparable:
- How many pages, and what happens if I need a seventh?
- Who writes the text?
- Is it a custom design or an adapted theme?
- Who owns the finished site, and the domain?
- What is hosted where, and what does it cost from month two?
- How many rounds of changes are included?
- What happens if I want to move it elsewhere in a year?
- What is your hourly or day rate for anything outside the quote?
The last one matters most. “Out of scope” is where fixed-price projects quietly become expensive. A quote that does not mention it is not a fixed price.
Where we sit, since you are going to ask
Our Starter Website is £399, which is at the bottom of the freelance range above. That is deliberate and it is not a loss-leader: it is five pages, a tight scope, and we build websites alongside running our own software products rather than as our only income. If you need twelve pages and an ordering system, we will quote you properly for twelve pages and an ordering system, and it will not be £399. Published starting prices are on the pricing page.
The one piece of advice worth more than the rest
Spend less than you were planning to on the first version, and keep the difference for changing it once you know what people actually do on it.
Almost every business we talk to has a clear idea of what their website should say, and almost every one of them is partly wrong, because you cannot know until real customers are on it. A £600 site you improve twice beats a £6,000 site you cannot afford to touch.
Market figures in this article come from published 2026 UK pricing guides, linked below. They are guides, not quotes, and they move. Our own prices are on our pricing page and are what we actually charge.
Sources: Kwiboo — How much does a website cost in the UK, a 2026 breakdown.