How much does a business website cost in the UK?

Key takeaways

The cost of a business website in the UK typically ranges from a few hundred pounds for a DIY builder site to £5,000–£20,000 for an agency-built lead generation site, and £10,000–£40,000 or more for e-commerce with integrations. Running costs add £50–£500 a month. The right budget depends on what the site must produce, not what it looks like.

• DIY website builder: about £15–£40 a month plus your time.
• Freelancer small business site: about £1,500–£5,000.
• Agency lead generation site: about £5,000–£20,000.
• E-commerce with integrations: about £10,000–£40,000 or more.
• Running costs: about £50–£500 a month for hosting, care and improvements.

What does a business website cost include?

The cost of a business website is the total spend needed to plan, design, build, fill with content, launch and run a site for its working life, typically three to five years, not just the build invoice.

Quotes that look cheap often exclude copywriting, photography, SEO set-up, tracking, training, hosting and maintenance. Quotes that look expensive may include all of them. Compare total cost of ownership over three years, not the headline price.

What do UK websites typically cost by type?

The ranges below are typical UK market prices seen in quotes for small and medium businesses. They vary with region, supplier and scope, so treat them as orientation rather than a price list.

• Website builder, self-built (Squarespace, Wix): about £15–£40 a month, plus your time.
• Template site by a freelancer: about £1,500–£5,000.
• Custom-designed lead generation site by an agency: about £5,000–£20,000.
• Larger multi-service or multi-location site: about £15,000–£40,000.
• E-commerce on Shopify or WooCommerce: about £5,000–£25,000.
• E-commerce with custom integrations (ERP, stock, CRM): about £20,000–£60,000 or more.

• Agency, freelancer or website builder?

What drives the price up or down?

Price is driven by scope, not by pages alone. The biggest factors are listed below, roughly in order of impact.

• Custom design versus an adapted template.
• Integrations: booking systems, CRM, payments, stock or accounting.
• Content: who writes the copy and provides photography.
• Number of unique page templates, rather than total pages.
• Migration of existing content and SEO redirects.
• Accessibility, performance and security requirements.
• Ongoing support and improvement included after launch.

• A website brief template agencies can quote from

What does a website cost to run each year?

Running costs are often forgotten at quote stage. A .co.uk or .com domain usually costs roughly £10–£20 a year. Hosting runs from a few pounds a month on shared plans to £20–£100 a month for managed hosting. Maintenance and support typically cost £50–£500 a month depending on how much changes.

Add paid tools where used: booking systems, email marketing, call tracking and premium plugins, often £10–£50 a month each. Over three years, running costs can match or exceed the build cost, which is why they belong in the budget from the start.

• Website maintenance costs in the UK
• Website hosting for UK small businesses

How do you judge whether a website is worth the cost?

Judge it by cost per enquiry or return on investment. If a £12,000 site produces 30 qualified enquiries a month and one in five becomes a £2,500 job, it generates £15,000 of work a month. A £2,000 site producing three enquiries is cheaper to build and far more expensive per result.

Across our client work, we have seen a 2.4x enquiry rate after a website rebuild. The value came from clarity, speed, proof and tracking, which is why those should be in the scope of any quote you accept.

• Website goals and KPIs for small businesses

When is spending less the right decision?

Spend less when the business is new and unproven, when the site's job is simply to confirm you exist, or when most work comes from referrals and the site rarely gets visits. A clean builder site with clear services, contact details and reviews can be enough.

The trade-off is growth. A cheap site that cannot rank, convert or be measured caps how much the website can contribute. Plan to reinvest once the business has a clear idea of which services it wants more of.

What does this look like in practice?

A pattern in UK SMEs: three quotes of £2,500, £7,000 and £16,000 for what looks like the same site. On closer reading, the cheapest excludes copy, SEO migration and tracking, and the most expensive includes a year of improvement work.

Laying the quotes side by side against the same scope list, with three-year running costs included, usually reveals that the gap is smaller, or larger, than it looked. Either way, the decision becomes about value rather than headline price.

• What makes a business website effective
• See client work

Website budget checklist

Use this before requesting quotes.

• Write down what the site must produce each month.
• List required integrations.
• Decide who writes copy and provides photography.
• List pages that must be migrated and redirected.
• Ask for three-year total cost, including running costs.
• Confirm tracking and SEO set-up are in scope.
• Confirm who owns the site, domain and content.

• See the three problems we fix for UK businesses

Next step

If you are budgeting for a new website, we will scope it with you in 30 minutes: what it needs to do, what drives the cost, and a realistic range for your requirements.