How Much Does a Website Cost in the UK in 2026? Real Price Bands
Website cost UK guide for 2026: price bands for brochure, small business, ecommerce and custom sites, what drives the price, running costs.
Website cost in the UK in 2026 ranges from almost nothing for a do-it-yourself builder site to well over £20,000 for a custom platform. For a typical small business that wants a professionally designed site that brings in enquiries, the realistic range is about £2,500 to £8,000 to build, plus running costs of roughly £30 to £150 a month for hosting, licences and maintenance.
Those numbers only help if you know what sits behind them. This guide sets out price bands by type of site, explains what actually drives the cost, covers running costs that are easy to forget, and shows how to compare quotes that look impossible to compare. We finish with our own pricing approach, because a guide about prices that hides its own would be a bit rich.
Key takeaways
- Brochure sites typically cost £1,000 to £5,000; custom small business sites £2,500 to £8,000; ecommerce £2,500 to £15,000 or more; portals and custom builds £15,000 and up.
- The biggest cost drivers are the number of unique page layouts, custom functionality, content creation and migration work.
- Running costs (hosting, domain, licences and maintenance) often add £30 to £150 a month.
- Quotes vary because they include very different amounts of strategy, design, content, SEO and aftercare.
- Compare quotes line by line on scope, ownership and aftercare, not on the headline price.
Quick answer: price bands
These are indicative UK price bands for 2026. They reflect what freelancers and small to mid-sized agencies commonly charge, not the extremes at either end.
| Type of site | Typical UK cost | Typical timeline |
|---|---|---|
| DIY builder site (Wix, Squarespace) | £0 to £500 plus monthly fees | Days to weeks, your time |
| Template brochure site from a freelancer | £1,000 to £2,500 | 2 to 4 weeks |
| Custom-designed small business site | £2,500 to £8,000 | 6 to 10 weeks |
| Larger or feature-rich business site | £8,000 to £20,000 | 2 to 4 months |
| Ecommerce store | £2,500 to £15,000+ | 6 to 12 weeks |
| Portal, CRM or custom web application | £15,000 to £50,000+ | 2 to 6 months |
Most businesses do not need the most expensive option. Most also get poor value from the cheapest. The right band depends on what the site must achieve: a site that needs to win work against strong local competitors justifies more investment than a simple online presence. The government's UK Business Data Survey 2026 found that 78% of UK businesses now have a website, so simply having one no longer sets you apart. What it does for you is what counts.
What drives the cost
Two quotes for "a five-page website" can differ by thousands of pounds for good reasons. These are the factors that move the price most.
Unique page layouts
Each unique layout has to be designed, built and tested. A site with a home page, one service template used ten times and a contact page is far cheaper than a site where every page is bespoke.
Custom functionality
Booking systems, quote calculators, member areas, product configurators and integrations with CRMs or accounting software are where budgets grow fastest. Each one needs planning, building, testing and maintaining.
Content
Writing copy, sourcing or shooting photography, and preparing product data are real work. If an agency writes your content, expect to pay for it. If you write it yourself, expect the project to wait for it.
Strategy and SEO
Research into competitors, keywords and customer journeys adds cost upfront but usually pays back, because it decides what the site should say and where. Migration from an old site, with redirects to protect rankings, is part of this.
Design depth
A customised template is quicker than a fully bespoke design. Motion, illustration and interactive elements add further design and development time.
Aftercare
Training, documentation, warranty periods and ongoing support vary widely between suppliers, and they explain part of the gap between quotes.
Brochure sites
A brochure site presents your business, services and contact details, usually in five to ten pages, without advanced features. It suits new businesses, sole traders and firms whose customers mainly want to check who you are before calling.
- £500 to £1,000: a template with your logo and text, very little design input and basic setup.
- £1,000 to £2,500: a template-based site set up properly, with some customisation and basic SEO settings.
- £2,500 to £5,000: a custom-designed brochure site with proper service pages, copy support, speed work and tracking.
The cheaper end works for getting online. The higher end works for winning work from search. The difference is rarely the look of the site. It is whether each service has a proper page, whether the copy answers customers' questions and whether the site is set up to be found locally and to track enquiries. Our guide to brochure websites explains when a brochure site is all you need.
Small business sites
Most established small businesses need more than a brochure: a page for each service, location information, reviews, case studies, a blog they will actually use, enquiry tracking and a structure built for search.
For this kind of site, £2,500 to £8,000 is the typical UK range. Towards the lower end you get a well-built site on a solid theme with your content. Towards the upper end you get more custom design, more pages, copywriting, deeper SEO work and features such as simple booking or quote forms.
The extra money in this band usually buys research, structure and content rather than decoration: time spent understanding your customers, planning pages around what they search for, and writing copy that answers their questions. Those are the things that decide whether a site produces enquiries.
This is the band where the difference between suppliers is most visible. Two sites at £4,000 can perform completely differently depending on how much strategy, content and SEO went into them. Our guide to small business website design in the UK covers what a good build includes.
Ecommerce sites
Online stores cost more because there is more to build and more that can go wrong: product structures, variations, payments, delivery rules, emails, stock and legal pages.
- £2,500 to £8,000: a Shopify store on a customised theme, or a straightforward WooCommerce shop with a modest catalogue.
- £5,000 to £15,000: a custom-designed WooCommerce or Shopify store with careful product and checkout design.
- £15,000 and up: large catalogues, integrations with stock or accounts systems, trade pricing or custom features.
The biggest variable in ecommerce pricing is usually the product catalogue rather than the design. A store with twenty simple products and a store with two thousand products in several sizes and colours are different projects, even if their home pages look alike. Photography, descriptions and data clean-up can take as long as the build itself, so decide early who is responsible for them.
Remember platform fees, apps or extensions and payment processing on top. Our guide to ecommerce website cost in the UK goes into detail.
Custom builds and portals
When the website needs to do work rather than just present information, costs move into a different band. Client portals, custom CRMs, trade ordering systems, booking platforms and web applications typically start around £15,000 and can run well beyond £50,000 for larger systems.
Unlike a website, a custom system also needs a budget for the years after launch: hosting, monitoring, security updates, support and new features as the business changes. A useful rule is to ask any supplier what they expect the system to cost to run and improve each year, and to compare that with the subscription fees it replaces.
These projects are priced on the number of user roles, integrations, reporting needs and the complexity of the business rules. A clear specification is the best way to control the cost, because it turns vague features into a defined list that can be estimated properly. If this is where you are heading, our guide to custom web application development explains how these projects are scoped and priced.
Running costs
The build price is only part of the total cost of a website. These are the running costs most UK businesses should expect:
| Item | Typical cost |
|---|---|
| Domain name (.co.uk or .com) | Around £10 to £30 a year, depending on registrar and extension |
| Hosting | £5 to £50 a month for most business sites; more for busy shops |
| SSL certificate | Usually free with good hosting |
| Premium plugin or theme licences | £50 to £300 a year in total for a typical WordPress site |
| Maintenance and support | £30 to £150 a month depending on the level of care |
| Builder or platform subscription | Varies by plan, if you use one |
Domains for .uk addresses are managed by Nominet, and prices vary between registrars, so check renewal prices as well as the first-year offer. Hosting is similar: introductory prices often rise at renewal.
Maintenance is the running cost most often left out, and the one that causes the most trouble when skipped. Our guide to website maintenance explains what it covers.
Hidden costs to watch for
Some costs only appear after you have agreed a price. Ask about each one before you sign:
- Stock photography and fonts. Licensed images and premium fonts are not always included.
- Premium plugins and apps. Booking, forms, SEO and backup tools often need paid licences that renew every year.
- Change requests. Extra pages or features added mid-project are usually charged separately.
- Content loading. Some quotes assume you will add your own text and images to every page.
- Email hosting. Business email is often a separate cost from website hosting.
- Renewal prices. Hosting and domains that are cheap in year one can cost much more in year two.
- Fixes after the warranty period. Check what "support" means once the site is live.
None of these are unreasonable costs. The problem is discovering them late. A clear written quote shows the full website cost in the UK market for your project, not just the headline figure.
Ways to reduce the cost without cutting corners
- Prepare your content early. Having your copy, photos and service details ready shortens the project and reduces project management time.
- Reuse layouts. Ten service pages built from one well-designed template cost far less than ten bespoke pages.
- Phase the features. Launch the core site first and add booking, portals or integrations once the site is earning.
- Decide quickly. Slow feedback extends timelines, and longer projects cost more to manage.
- Choose proven tools. A well-supported platform and a small set of reliable plugins keep both build and maintenance costs down.
Freelancer vs agency vs builder
Who builds your site affects both the price and what you get.
| DIY builder | Freelancer | Small agency or studio | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Typical cost | Lowest upfront, ongoing fees | Low to mid | Mid to high |
| Strategy and SEO | Up to you | Varies widely | Usually included |
| Design and development skills | Templates | Often strong in one area | Several specialists |
| Availability and continuity | Always there, no help | Depends on one person | Team cover |
| Best for | Very small budgets, simple needs | Well-defined projects | Sites that must win work |
Good freelancers can be excellent value, and weak agencies can be expensive disappointments, so judge the supplier, not the label. Our guide to freelance web designer vs agency covers the trade-offs, and how to choose a web design agency gives a shortlisting process. If a price looks too good to be true, read the true cost of cheap website design first.
How to compare quotes
Website quotes vary because they describe different projects. To compare them fairly, put them side by side and check each of these:
- Scope. How many pages and unique layouts? Which features exactly?
- Content. Who writes the copy, who sources images and who loads the content?
- SEO. Is there keyword research, on-page setup, redirects from the old site and tracking?
- Design. Custom design or customised template? How many rounds of revisions?
- Ownership. Will you own the domain, hosting account, design files and code? Our guide to who owns your website explains why this matters.
- Aftercare. Training, warranty period, maintenance and support costs after launch.
- Timeline and payment terms. Deposit, stage payments and what happens if deadlines slip.
A good supplier explains each item in writing. Our guides to what a website design quote should include, what a web design contract should include and the questions to ask a web designer will help you check. Watch for the warning signs in our list of web developer red flags, and ask how long the build will take against our guide to how long it takes to build a website.
Finally, think about return rather than cost alone. A site that brings in two extra jobs a month can pay for itself quickly. Our guide to website ROI shows how to estimate it before you commit.
Our pricing
We price every project from a written brief, because two sites described the same way can need very different amounts of work. Rather than publish fixed bands that would not fit most projects, we send a fixed written quote once we understand what the site has to do, and our care plans are quoted the same way.
Every quote we send lists the pages, features, content responsibilities, SEO work, ownership and aftercare in plain English, so you can compare it with any other quote line by line. You can see how a project runs on our process page and read what clients say on our reviews page.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a website cost in the UK?
In 2026, a DIY builder site can cost under £500 plus monthly fees, a template brochure site from a freelancer £1,000 to £2,500, a custom small business site £2,500 to £8,000, and an ecommerce store £2,500 to £15,000 or more. Portals and custom web applications usually start around £15,000. Running costs for hosting, licences and maintenance come on top.
How much should a small business pay for a website?
Most established small businesses that want a site to bring in enquiries should budget £2,500 to £8,000 for the build and £30 to £150 a month for hosting and maintenance. A new business testing an idea can start lower. Spend more where the site has to compete hard for local searches or handle bookings or sales.
Why do website quotes vary so much?
Quotes describe different projects. They vary in the number of unique layouts, custom features, who writes the content, how much SEO and migration work is included, the depth of design and the level of aftercare. Comparing quotes line by line on scope, ownership and support shows whether a cheaper quote is genuinely better value.
Get a clear quote
If you would like a fixed, itemised price for your project, get a fixed quote and we will send a written breakdown you can compare with any other supplier.