The short answer
- A simple, professional small business website costs £300 to £1,000 to build.
- An online shop or a site with a booking system is usually £1,000 to £5,000.
- Budget £150 to £400 a year to keep it running: domain, hosting, email and updates.
- Most small businesses need far less than they're quoted for.
"How much is a website?" is the question we're asked most, and the honest answer is that it depends on what it needs to do. A plumber who wants the phone to ring needs something very different from a shop selling 400 products. The good news is that most small businesses sit at the simpler end.
Below is what each price level really buys you in 2026, based on the sites we've built and the quotes our clients show us from elsewhere.
What you get at each price
| Budget | What you usually get | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Under £300 | A DIY builder or a template with your logo dropped in. You write the words and add the photos. | Testing an idea |
| £300–£1,000 | A designed site of 3 to 8 pages, written for your customers, set up for Google and mobile. | Most trades and local services |
| £1,000–£5,000 | An online shop, bookings, a members' area or a bigger site with lots of pages. | Selling online, growing teams |
| £5,000+ | Custom features built just for you, links to your other systems, ongoing development. | Businesses with complex needs |
Under £300: do it yourself
Website builders like Wix and Squarespace are cheap to start and fine for a holding page. The catch is time. You'll write every word, pick every photo and work out the settings yourself, and monthly fees add up. It's a good way to test an idea, but rarely the site that wins you work.
£300 to £1,000: a proper small business site
This is where most of our clients land. For this you should expect a site designed around your business, not just a template with your name on it. It should have clear pages for each service, your contact details on every page, a quote form, and the basics in place for Google.
Our own website packages sit in this range, with fixed prices and nothing extra added later.
£1,000 to £5,000: when your site needs to do more
The price goes up when your website has to take payments, bookings or manage lots of products. An online shop needs product pages, a basket, delivery options and payment set up properly. That takes longer to build and test.
Most small businesses need far less than they're quoted for.
£5,000 and above: built from scratch
At this level you're paying for something built around how your business works, such as a customer portal or booking system that talks to your other software. Worth it when you need it, but you'll know if you do.
The running costs
The build is only part of it. Every website has a few yearly costs, and it's worth knowing them before you start:
- Domain name: around £10 to £20 a year for a .co.uk or .com.
- Hosting: £5 to £30 a month, depending on how busy the site is.
- Business email: a few pounds per person per month.
- Updates and backups: either your time, or a maintenance plan so someone else keeps it safe.
Check who owns the domain. Some cheap deals register your domain in the designer's name. If you fall out or they disappear, you can lose your web address. Always make sure it's in yours.
When cheap costs more
A low price isn't a bad thing on its own. What matters is what's missing. These are the problems we're most often asked to fix:
- A site that looks fine on a laptop but is hard to use on a phone, where most visitors are.
- No way for Google to understand what the business does or where it works.
- A monthly fee that never ends and can't be cancelled without losing the site.
- No access to edit anything, so every small change costs money.
How to choose
Start with what you want the website to do, not how it should look. If the answer is "make the phone ring" or "get quote requests", a well-made site in the £300 to £1,000 range will do the job. If it's "sell products" or "take bookings", look higher.
Then compare quotes on what's included, not just the total. A cheaper quote that leaves out the words, the photos or the Google set-up may end up costing more.
Questions to ask any web designer
- Is the price fixed, and what isn't included?
- Who owns the domain and the website when it's finished?
- Can I edit the site myself?
- What are the yearly costs after it goes live?
- Can I see sites you've built for businesses like mine?
Any good designer will answer all five without hesitating. If you'd like to ask us, book a free 20-minute call.
