What a small business website costs in the UK
It can be a few pounds a month or several thousand pounds up front. Here’s what you get at each price, what a site costs to keep running, and what to ask before you pay anyone.
When someone asks me what a website costs, the honest answer is that it depends on who builds it and what it has to do. Search for it and you’ll find prices from a few pounds a month to several thousand pounds, which doesn’t help much when you’re trying to set a budget.
Here’s how the prices break down in 2026 for the kind of site most small businesses need: a handful of pages that say what you do and make it easy to get in touch. I build websites for a living, so my own prices are near the end. I’ve tried to be fair to the other options, because for some businesses they’re the better choice.
Roughly: £9 to £17 a month to build it yourself on a website builder, about £500 to £3,000 from a freelancer, and about £2,000 to £8,000 from an agency. Whichever you choose, plan for the yearly costs too: the domain, the hosting and someone to keep it up to date.
Building it yourself
Website builders such as Wix and Squarespace give you a template, hosting and an editor you drag things around in, all for a monthly fee. Wix’s plans start at about £9 a month and Squarespace’s at £12, both paid a year at a time. Paying month by month costs more: Squarespace’s cheapest plan goes up to £16. Both include a free domain name for the first year on a yearly plan, and after that you pay for the domain on top. Wix also has a free plan, but it shows Wix adverts on your site and won’t let you use your own domain name.
The bigger cost is your time. Picking a template takes an evening. Writing the words and getting every page to work on a phone usually takes a lot longer than people expect, and the updates are yours to do from then on.
It’s also worth knowing that a site built on Wix or Squarespace stays there. Neither lets you move the finished site to another host, so if you move later, you’ll be rebuilding it. If you’ve got the time and you enjoy that sort of thing, a builder is still a sensible way to start.
Hiring a freelancer or an agency
A freelance web designer is one person who designs and builds the site for you. Price guides published by UK web designers this year put a small site from a freelancer at roughly £500 to £3,000, with most four or five page sites somewhere in the middle. What’s included varies as much as the price does, so two quotes for the same job can be a long way apart.
An agency has a team: a designer, a developer, often a copywriter and a project manager. The same guides put a small business site from an agency at about £2,000 to £8,000, and London agencies tend to charge more. For a larger business, or a site with a lot of moving parts, that team can be worth paying for.
Whoever you go with, look at sites they’ve built for businesses like yours, and open them on your phone, because that’s where most of your visitors will see yours.
£12
a month for Squarespace’s cheapest plan, paid yearly. Paid monthly, it’s £16.
£25+
a year that some registrars charge to renew a .co.uk name after a cheap first year.
£649
for the first year of a five-page site from me, with hosting.
The yearly costs most quotes leave out
The build is paid once. These come round every year, and they’re where people get caught out.
The domain name. A .co.uk address usually costs around £10 to £15 a year to renew. Watch for a cheap first year followed by a much higher renewal, as some registrars charge £25 or more.
Hosting. This is the server your site lives on. On a website builder it’s part of the monthly fee. If a designer builds your site, you’ll pay for hosting separately, either to them or to a hosting company. It runs from a few pounds a month for basic hosting you look after yourself to £30 or £40 a month for hosting someone looks after for you.
Updates and care. Opening hours change and prices go up. Someone has to make those changes and keep the site secure and backed up. Find out who that is and what it costs before you sign anything.
What pushes the price up
Most quotes go up for the same few reasons.
- More pages. Five pages take longer than one, and twenty take longer again.
- Bookings, a shop or customer accounts. Anything that takes bookings or payments needs more building and a lot more testing.
- Writing the words. If the designer writes them, that time is in the quote. If you send them, the job is quicker.
- Photos and a logo. Professional photos and a new logo are separate jobs, usually with separate prices.
- Rounds of changes. A clear idea of what you want at the start keeps the cost down.
What I charge
My prices are fixed and published, so here they are in full. A one-page Starter site is £99. A Business site, with up to five pages, a gallery, enquiry forms and help with the words, is £449. Bespoke work, such as bookings or a shop, starts at £699. Hosting is £200 a year, or £350 a year with monthly content edits included. There’s no VAT to add, and if you’d like me to manage your domain, I charge it at cost.
So a five-page site with hosting comes to £649 in its first year and £200 a year after that. A one-page site with hosting is £299 in its first year. The site and the domain are yours, and if you move to another host, both go with you.
That’s below most of the freelance and agency figures above. I’m one person working by phone and email, and I build to fixed packages rather than charging by the hour. That’s how the prices stay where they are. You get a fixed quote in writing before I start, and that’s what you pay. Every price is on my pricing page.
Questions to ask before you pay anyone
- Is the price fixed? Get it in writing, with a list of what’s included.
- Is VAT on top? Some quotes are given before VAT.
- Whose name is the domain in? It should be yours.
- What does hosting cost after the first year? A cheap first year can renew at a much higher price.
- Who makes changes, and what do they cost? Ask about small ones, like new opening hours.
- Can I take the site with me if I leave? Ask what you’d get and how a move would work.
Whichever way you go, a small, clear site that works on a phone will do more for most businesses than a big one that took months to finish. If you’re still working out what yours needs, my guide to what a first website needs is a good place to start, and these five mistakes are worth checking for whoever builds it.
Website builder prices from Squarespace’s UK pricing page (October 2026) and Expert Sure’s Wix UK pricing guide (prices checked August 2026), on yearly plans. Freelance, agency, domain and hosting ranges from UK web design price guides published in 2026. They’re a guide, not a survey.
