How much does a website cost in the UK?

How much does a website cost in the UK? For a small trade or service business, a straightforward site usually costs somewhere between a few hundred pounds and a few thousand pounds to build, plus a modest amount every month or year to keep it online. Where you land in that range depends on who builds it, how it's built, and how much work you need the site to do once it's live.

That's the honest answer before the detail. The rest of this guide breaks down what you're actually paying for, what it costs to keep a site running after launch, and where small businesses tend to overspend or underspend.

How much is a website for a small business?

There isn't one number, because "a website" covers everything from a single page with your phone number on it to a multi-page site with service pages for every area you cover, an enquiry form, and photos of real jobs. Three routes cover most small businesses:

• A DIY website builder. You do the work yourself using a tool like Wix or Squarespace. There's no separate build fee, just the monthly or annual subscription to the platform.
• A freelancer. Someone builds the site for you, usually for a fixed price, for a simple brochure site with a handful of pages.
• An agency. A team builds and often looks after the site, typically for businesses that want the site to actively bring in enquiries rather than just exist.

Here's how those three compare in rough terms:

Route	Typical build cost	Typical ongoing cost	Best suited to
DIY builder	No separate build cost, just the subscription	From under ten pounds a month up to around thirty pounds a month before VAT for the higher tiers (based on IONOS UK's website builder pricing)	A simple site you're happy to update yourself
Freelancer	A few hundred pounds for a simple site	Hosting and domain renewal, typically a few pounds to around ten pounds a month	A one-off brochure site with light customisation
Agency	A few thousand pounds for a fuller build with service and area pages	Hosting, domain and ongoing support, varies by what's included	A site expected to generate and track enquiries

None of those agency or freelancer figures are a quote from us. They're a rough shape of what's typical across the UK market, and real quotes vary a lot depending on scope.

The cost of setting up a website: what you are paying for

Whoever builds it, the cost of setting up a website usually breaks down into the same handful of things:

• A domain name. Your .co.uk or .uk address. Registrars often advertise a low first-year promotional price, for example 123-Reg lists .co.uk domains at just under four pounds for the first year, with renewal usually costing more from year two. Always check the renewal price before you commit, not just the headline offer.
• Hosting. The server space that makes your site accessible online. More on this below.
• The build itself. Design, page layout, and getting your content into a working site. This is where the labour cost sits, whether that labour is yours, a freelancer's, or an agency's.
• Content. Words, photos, and any video. Cheap builds often skip this and use stock photography and thin, generic text, which is one of the quiet reasons a cheap site underperforms once it's live.
• Basic technical setup. A contact form that actually delivers to your inbox, an SSL certificate so the address shows as secure, and the site being readable on a phone.

A DIY builder bundles most of this into one subscription. A freelancer or agency price should tell you clearly which of these are included and which cost extra.

Website running costs after launch

A website isn't a one-off purchase. Once it's live, there are ongoing website running costs whoever built it:

• Hosting, renewed monthly or annually. How much does web hosting cost in the UK goes into this in more depth, including what pushes the price up.
• Domain renewal, once a year, usually at a higher rate than any first-year promotional price.
• Maintenance and updates, especially if the site runs on a content management system that needs security patches.
• Email, if you want addresses on your own domain rather than a free webmail account.

As a live example of hosting pricing, Fasthosts' UK shared hosting plans run from under six pounds a month for a basic single-site plan up to eight pounds a month for a plan built for a small number of sites, with higher tiers above that for more storage and databases. That gives a sense of the range for a straightforward business site, though what you actually need depends on how the rest of your build is put together.

How much does a website cost a month?

If you'd rather think in monthly terms than one lump sum, it's a reasonable way to plan. A DIY builder makes this easiest, because the subscription is the whole cost: IONOS's UK plans list regular pricing from around ten pounds a month at the entry level up to around thirty pounds a month before VAT for the plan aimed at growing sites, alongside introductory offers that discount the first few months.

A freelancer or agency build is usually priced differently: a one-off fee for the build, then a smaller monthly or annual figure for hosting, domain and any support. If someone quotes you a single monthly retainer that covers the build itself, it's worth asking exactly what that ongoing fee pays for once the site is live, rather than assuming it matches a builder subscription.

What makes the build website price go up

A handful of things reliably push the build website price higher, on any route:

• More pages. A page for every service in every area you cover costs more to build than one page trying to cover everything, but it usually performs far better. What your website needs to win local customers covers why that structure matters, not just for cost but for whether people can find and trust the page once they land on it.
• Custom design over a template. A template is cheaper because the layout already exists. A design built around your business costs more time, which shows up in the price.
• Booking or payment functionality. Anything beyond a contact form, like online booking or taking deposits, adds development work.
• Copywriting and photography. Proper words and real photos of your work cost more than stock images and filler text, but they're usually the difference between a site that looks credible and one that doesn't.
• Integrations. Connecting the site to a CRM, a review platform, or analytics and call tracking all add setup time.

None of these are wasted money if they do a job for your business. They're only expensive if you're paying for them without a clear reason.

Where small businesses waste money on websites

The most common way small businesses waste money is underspending in the wrong place. A very cheap site that nobody can find on Google is the expensive option, because it cost money to build and still isn't bringing in any work. Money tends to leak out in a few specific ways:

• Paying for a DIY builder subscription every month for a site that was set up once and never touched again.
• Buying features, like an online shop or booking system, that never actually get used.
• Running two hosting or domain accounts because a rebuild moved to a new one without cancelling the old.
• Choosing the cheapest build with no thought to whether it will help customers find you, then spending on adverts to make up for it.

Before adding a feature or paying for an upgrade, it's worth asking what specific job it does for your business, rather than assuming more spend means a better site.

DIY builder vs paying someone

The honest trade-off is time against money. A DIY builder is the cheaper route on paper, and it works well for a very simple site that just needs to exist, a name, a phone number, and a handful of photos. How to make a website for a small business walks through that route in detail if you want to build it yourself.

Paying a freelancer or agency costs more upfront, but you're paying for someone else's time rather than your own, and usually for judgement about what the site needs to do that a template doesn't provide by default. For a business that depends on the phone ringing, that judgement, structuring the site around your services and areas, writing content that answers real questions, and making sure the technical basics are right, tends to matter more than the platform you build it on.

There's no universally right answer. There's only the right answer for how much time you have, what the site needs to achieve, and how much of that work you're able to do well yourself.

A straight answer, if you need one

If you take one thing from this guide, take this: budget for the build and for what it costs to keep the site running every year, not just the headline build price. A site that's cheap to build but never gets found, or never gets looked after, ends up costing more in lost work than a properly built one ever would.

We build websites designed to rank and to keep working after launch, with results tracked on a live client dashboard rather than left to guesswork. If that's useful, see what our website builds include.