"How much does a website cost?" is the first question almost every client asks us — and the honest answer is anywhere from a few hundred pounds to tens of thousands. That's not a dodge. The range is wide because "a website" can mean a single landing page or a full online platform with logins, payments and integrations.
This guide breaks down what you get at each budget, where the money actually goes, and the running costs that catch people out after launch.
The Short Answer: Four Budget Tiers
£500 – £1,000: Template sites on Wix or Squarespace
A professionally set-up template on Wix or Squarespace, customised with your branding, content and photos. Ideal for sole traders, consultants and early-stage businesses that need to look credible quickly. Our Wix design and launch starts at £499 and Squarespace builds at £549.
Good for: 3–8 page brochure sites, portfolios, simple booking. Watch out for: limited flexibility and monthly platform fees.
£1,500 – £3,000: Custom-designed WordPress or small custom builds
This is where most small and medium businesses land. You get a design made for your brand (not a template), a content management system your team can update, proper SEO foundations and better performance. A custom landing page or brochure site starts from £1,499.
Good for: service businesses, clinics, agencies, local companies that rely on Google for leads.
£2,000 – £5,000: E-commerce
Online stores cost more because there's more to get right: product catalogues, payments, shipping rules, tax, and a checkout that converts. A Shopify Growth Store sits around £1,999, and bundles like our E-commerce Suite add a custom analytics dashboard on top.
£5,000+: Web applications and platforms
Customer portals, booking systems, marketplaces, SaaS products. These are software projects, built with frameworks like Next.js, and priced on scope. Our full web applications start from £4,999.
Where the Money Actually Goes
On a typical £2,500 project the budget roughly splits like this:
- Discovery and planning (10–15%) — understanding your customers, mapping pages, writing a brief.
- Design (25–30%) — clickable Figma prototypes of key pages, revised until you're happy.
- Development (35–40%) — building, connecting forms and integrations, making it responsive.
- Content and SEO (10–15%) — page titles, meta descriptions, structured data, redirects from your old site.
- Testing and launch (5–10%) — cross-browser and device testing, speed checks, going live.
If a quote is dramatically cheaper than others, one of those stages is usually missing — most often discovery or testing.
The Running Costs Nobody Mentions
A website isn't a one-off purchase. Budget for these every year:
| Cost | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Domain name | £10 – £40 / year |
| Hosting | £9 – £49 / month for managed hosting |
| Maintenance and updates | £49 – £199 / month on a care plan |
| Premium plugins / apps | £0 – £500 / year |
| Business email | £5 – £12 per user / month |
The one people skip is maintenance — and it's the one that bites. Unpatched plugins are the number one cause of hacked small-business sites. We explain what's covered in our guide to website care plans.
Five Ways to Get More for Your Budget
- Write your content before design starts. Nothing delays projects (and inflates bills) like waiting for copy.
- Launch smaller, then grow. Ship the ten pages that matter now; add the rest in month two.
- Choose the right platform, not the fanciest one. Our Shopify vs WooCommerce comparison is a good example of matching tool to need.
- Reuse your brand assets. If you already have a logo and colours, don't pay to reinvent them.
- Bundle hosting and support with the build. One team that built it will fix it faster than a stranger.
Red Flags in a Website Quote
- No mention of who owns the site, the domain and the code after launch.
- "Unlimited revisions" with no defined scope — it usually means no defined timeline either.
- No testing, SEO or redirect work listed.
- Hosting you can't move away from.
For a full list of questions to ask before signing, read how to choose a web agency.
So, What Should You Budget?
If you're a service business that needs leads from Google, plan for £1,500–£3,000 upfront plus £50–£150 a month for hosting and care. If you sell online, add £1,000–£2,000 for e-commerce. And if you're not sure, a £149 website audit of your current site is a cheap way to find out what actually needs fixing before you spend more.
Want a real number for your project? Send us a brief and we'll come back with a written quote within 48 hours. You can also compare all our packages on the pricing page.