How much does a business website cost in the UK?

A bespoke business website from a UK studio usually costs around £1,500 for a typical small business site, rising to £3,000 to £5,000+ for larger or more complex builds. Our own usual price for a website, for a trade business, a construction firm or a local service company, is about £1,500. Here is what that money actually buys, and how to tell a fair quote from a bad one.

The honest price bands

• £500 to £1,500: a template with your content dropped in. Fine for a brand-new business testing an idea. It will look like what it is.
• Around £1,500: a properly designed, bespoke site for a typical small business: trades, construction, local services. This is our usual price and where most serious small businesses should be.
• £3,000 to £5,000+: larger sites, booking or enquiry systems, deeper integrations, copywriting and brand work included.
• Beyond that: web applications, portals and platforms. At that point it is software, not a website. See what a web application actually is.

What moves the price

Page count matters less than people think. What actually costs money: custom design rather than a theme, anything the site has to do (bookings, payments, member areas), integrations with your other systems, and content creation. A ten-page brochure site is cheaper than a five-page site with a quoting engine.

Estimate your own project

The costs nobody mentions

• Hosting and maintenance: every site needs looking after. Our own WebCare plan is £49 a month for any site we build, and covers hosting, security, updates, backups and small content changes whenever you need them. Anyone who says a site needs no maintenance is selling you one.
• Your time: the cheapest quote often becomes the most expensive once you count the hours you spend chasing, rewriting and fixing.
• The cost of a bad site: a website that fails to convert is not free. It costs you every enquiry that went to a competitor instead.

How to buy well

1. Ask what is included in writing: design, build, content, training, launch, support.
2. Ask who does the work. The person selling should be the person building, or you are paying for a middleman.
3. Judge the portfolio, not the pitch. Our work is public for exactly this reason.

Want an exact figure rather than a range? Book a call and we will give you a fixed quote. Our web design and development page explains what is included.