The short answer: what a website costs in the UK in 2024
If you want a single figure, most small business websites in the UK land somewhere between £750 and £6,000 in 2024. That is a wide range because "a website" can mean a tidy five-page brochure site or a custom booking platform. The honest answer to how much a website costs depends on three things: how many pages you need, how custom the design is, and whether anyone has to build features that do not come out of a box.
To make the number useful, it helps to think in tiers rather than averages. A sole trader needing a credible online presence is in a completely different bracket from an e-commerce shop processing hundreds of orders a week. Below we break the real 2024 prices down by the kind of business buying, so your budget maps to what you actually get rather than to a vague headline figure.
Small business brochure sites: £750–£3,000
A brochure site sells your service and gets people to contact you. Think a homepage, an about page, two or three service pages, and a contact page with a form. At the lower end (£750–£1,500) you are usually working with a freelancer or a templated build on a platform like WordPress or Squarespace. At £1,500–£3,000 you get more bespoke design, proper on-page SEO, and copy written around the keywords your customers actually search.
The difference between £750 and £3,000 is rarely the page count. It is the thinking. A cheap site reskins a template and ships it. A mid-priced site researches your competitors, structures the pages around buyer intent, writes persuasive copy, and sets up the technical SEO basics so Google can find you. For most local UK businesses, the £1,500–£3,000 band is the sweet spot of value.
E-commerce websites: £3,000–£15,000
Selling online costs more because there is more to build and more that can go wrong. A starter shop on Shopify or WooCommerce, with a modest product catalogue and standard payment and shipping, typically runs £3,000–£6,000. Once you need custom product filtering, subscriptions, multi-currency, integrations with stock systems, or a heavily branded checkout experience, you move into the £6,000–£15,000 range.
Remember that e-commerce carries running costs a brochure site does not. Payment processing (Stripe, PayPal, or your card provider) takes a percentage of every sale. Platform fees, premium apps, and transactional emails all add up. Budget for these from day one so the build cost is not a nasty surprise followed by monthly bills you did not plan for.
- check_circleStarter shop (under ~30 products, standard checkout): £3,000–£6,000
- check_circleGrowing shop (filtering, integrations, custom design): £6,000–£10,000
- check_circleComplex store (subscriptions, multi-currency, bespoke features): £10,000–£15,000+
- check_circleOngoing: payment fees (~1.4–2.9% per transaction), platform/app subscriptions
Bespoke, hand-coded websites: £5,000–£25,000+
A hand-coded site is built from scratch in code rather than assembled from a theme. You pay more because a developer is designing and writing every part to fit your business exactly, with no template bloat. The payoff is speed, security, and a design no competitor can buy off the shelf. Small bespoke sites start around £5,000; sites with custom functionality, web apps, or booking systems can run well past £25,000.
Bespoke is not automatically better for everyone. If you need a five-page local services site, hand-coding it is overkill and you are paying for craft you will not use. Bespoke earns its money when speed genuinely affects conversions, when you need features no plugin provides, or when your brand needs to feel premium and unmistakably yours.
What actually drives the price up
Two sites with the same page count can quote thousands apart, and it is almost never the designer being greedy. Cost is driven by the work nobody sees in the final product: research, copywriting, custom functionality, and the number of revision rounds. Knowing these levers lets you trim a quote sensibly rather than just picking the cheapest bidder and regretting it.
The single biggest hidden cost is content. If you supply finished copy, photography, and your logo, the build is faster and cheaper. If the agency has to write everything and source images, that is real professional time and it shows in the quote. Be honest about what you can provide before you ask for a price.
- check_circleCustom features (booking, membership, calculators) — each is real dev time
- check_circleCopywriting and SEO content — the most under-budgeted line by far
- check_circlePhotography and brand assets — supplying your own cuts the cost
- check_circleNumber of revision rounds — endless tweaks burn hours and money
- check_circleIntegrations (CRM, payment, email marketing) — every connection adds testing
The ongoing costs people forget
The build price is not the whole bill. Every live website needs a domain name (roughly £10–£20 a year), hosting (£3–£30 a month for a small business, more for high-traffic e-commerce), and an SSL certificate (often free, included with good hosting). Skip any of these and your site either disappears or shows a scary "not secure" warning.
Then there is maintenance. Software needs updating, backups need taking, and small fixes crop up. Some agencies bundle this into a care plan (£30–£150 a month is common for small business sites); others charge by the hour. Whichever you choose, set aside a maintenance budget. A neglected website slowly breaks, and emergency fixes always cost more than steady upkeep.
Freelancer vs agency vs DIY: matching cost to risk
DIY builders like Wix and Squarespace cost £10–£40 a month and can work for a brand-new venture testing an idea. The trade-off is your time and a ceiling on how far the site can grow. A freelancer gives you a personal relationship and lower rates, but capacity is limited and cover during holidays or illness can be thin.
An agency costs more because you are paying for a team — design, development, copy, and SEO under one roof — plus continuity if one person leaves. For a business where the website is a serious sales channel, that reliability is usually worth the premium. The right choice is less about price and more about how much the site matters to your revenue.
How to get an accurate quote (and avoid nasty surprises)
Vague briefs get vague prices, then padded invoices. Before you approach anyone, write down your goal (more enquiries, online sales, bookings), your must-have pages, any features you need, and roughly how many products or services you offer. The clearer the brief, the more accurate and comparable the quotes.
Always ask three questions: what is included, what counts as an extra, and what happens after launch. A trustworthy quote breaks down design, build, content, and SEO as separate lines so you can see where the money goes. If a quote is a single round number with no detail, treat that as a warning sign and ask for the breakdown before you commit.
Frequently asked questions
Is a cheap website ever a good idea?expand_more
For a brand-new venture testing whether there is demand, a low-cost templated or DIY site can be a sensible first step. The risk is that cheap sites are often slow, hard to find on Google, and awkward to grow. Once the business is proven, most owners end up rebuilding properly, which costs more overall than investing once.
Why do website quotes vary so much for the same brief?expand_more
Because the brief rarely captures the invisible work: research, copywriting, SEO, custom features, and revision rounds. One quote assumes you supply finished content; another assumes the agency writes everything. Always ask for an itemised quote so you are comparing like for like rather than two very different scopes that happen to share a page count.
Do I pay it all upfront?expand_more
Usually no. The common structure is a deposit (often 30–50%) to start, with the balance due at or after launch. Larger projects may be staged into milestones. Be wary of anyone demanding the full amount before any work is shown, and equally wary of paying nothing upfront, as that often signals an unsustainable arrangement.
Will I need to pay for the website again every year?expand_more
Not the build itself, but you do have running costs: the domain (£10–£20/year), hosting (£3–£30+/month), and optional maintenance. Budget for these from the start. A site left unmaintained gradually breaks, and patching it after the fact almost always costs more than a steady care plan would have.