How much does a website cost in the UK?

Nobody in this industry likes publishing prices, which is why you are reading your fourth article that says “it depends”. Here are actual numbers.

The short answer

In the UK, for a professionally designed and built site:

• Small business brochure site: £2,000 to £6,000
• Larger site with service and location pages: £6,000 to £12,000
• Ecommerce: £6,000 to £20,000, depending on catalogue and integrations
• Bespoke or headless builds: £12,000 upwards

Below £1,000 you are buying a template with your logo on it, which is a real option and occasionally the right one. Above £25,000 you are usually paying for a team rather than a website.

Why two quotes for the same job differ by thousands

Ask three agencies to price the same site and you will get three numbers that look like they are for different projects. Usually they are.

How much of the content is yours to write

This is the single biggest variable and almost nobody asks about it. A site where you supply finished copy for twelve pages is a different job from one where somebody has to interview you, write it, and get it approved. That difference alone can be £3,000.

Whether the design is drawn or chosen

A template with your colours is a day’s work. A design drawn around your business, your photography and the things you actually sell is a fortnight. Both are legitimate. Only one of them is worth arguing about the price of.

What has to talk to what

A site that stands alone is straightforward. A site that has to pull from your CRM, push to your accounts package or stay in step with a stock system is a different kind of project, and the integration is often the largest single line on the quote.

Who fixes it when it breaks

Some quotes include a support period and some end at launch. That is a real difference in cost and it rarely appears as a line item.

What it costs to run

The build is not the whole number. Budget annually for:

• Hosting: £60 to £400 a year for most small business sites
• Domain: £10 to £20 a year
• Maintenance: £300 to £1,500 a year if somebody else handles updates, backups and monitoring
• Changes: the thing everyone forgets. A site you cannot edit yourself generates invoices for every price change

A cheap build with expensive changes is not a cheap website. Ask what a small amendment costs in year two before you compare two quotes on the build alone.

Three questions that tell you which quote is real

“What happens if the scope changes?” A real quote has an answer. A guess has a shrug.

“What do I own at the end?” The code, the content, the domain and the hosting should all be yours, with nothing that stops you leaving. If the answer is complicated, the price is not the price.

“What is not included?” Good agencies have a list ready. It is the fastest way to find out whether the two quotes in front of you are for the same job.

So what should you budget?

If you are a small business in Milton Keynes or anywhere else in the UK wanting a site that looks professional, loads quickly and can be found: £3,000 to £5,000 is the realistic middle of the market, with a few hundred a year to run it.

Our own prices are published, which is unusual enough in this industry to be worth saying. You can see them on the pricing page, and if your project is none of those shapes, tell us what you are trying to do and you will get a fixed number and a date.