How much does a small business website cost in the UK?

By Hanbrook Studio · 24 September 2026 · 5 minute read

The honest answer is “anywhere from nothing to many thousands of pounds”, which isn’t much help. So here’s what you actually get at each price point in the UK, what the ongoing costs are, and how to work out which one makes sense for your business.

The short version

Most small businesses in the UK end up somewhere in one of these bands. The figures are typical ranges we see across the market, not quotes, and prices vary with how much work is involved.

• Do it yourself (£0 to about £40 a month): a website builder such as Wix, Squarespace or Shopify. You pay a monthly subscription and build it yourself.
• Freelancer or small studio, template-based (roughly £500 to £1,500): someone sets up a ready-made design, adds your words and photos, and puts it live.
• Bespoke design from a studio (roughly £1,500 to £5,000): a site designed around your business, with more pages, custom layouts and proper attention to getting found on Google.
• Larger agency or complex builds (£5,000 and up): online shops with lots of products, booking systems, customer accounts, or integrations with other software.

For context, our websites are designed from scratch for each business (never templates) and start from £500. We’ll come back to what pushes a price up or down, because that matters more than the headline figure.

What “cheap” and “expensive” really mean

A website builder can look like the obvious bargain, and for some businesses it is. If you’re just starting out, enjoy fiddling with design and mostly need somewhere to point people to, £20 a month and a free weekend might be all you need.

The hidden cost is your time, and what the site does (or doesn’t do) once it’s live. A DIY site often looks fine to its owner and slightly off to everyone else: stretched photos, walls of text, no clear next step for the visitor. Nobody tells you that. They just leave and ring someone else.

At the other end, a big price doesn’t guarantee a better result for a small business. A £10,000 site with features you never use isn’t better than a £1,500 site that loads quickly, looks trustworthy and makes it easy to get in touch.

The useful question isn’t “what’s the cheapest?” but “what does this need to do for my business, and what’s that worth?” If a website brings in two extra jobs a month, even a modest one pays for itself quickly.

What pushes the price up

• Number of pages. A five-page site (home, services, about, gallery, contact) is very different from thirty pages, one for each service and town you cover.
• Design from scratch. Starting from a proven design is faster and cheaper. Fully custom design takes more hours.
• Writing the words. If you supply your own text and photos, it costs less. If someone writes your copy or arranges a photographer, that’s extra, and often money well spent.
• Selling online. A shop means product pages, payments, delivery options and stock. It’s a bigger job than a brochure site.
• Bookings and accounts. Letting customers book appointments, log in or pay deposits adds work and usually a monthly fee for the booking tool.
• Connecting other systems. Linking the site to your till, CRM or accounting software is where costs can climb.

The ongoing costs people forget

Whatever you pay up front, a website has running costs. Budget for these from day one:

• Domain name: a .co.uk address typically costs around £10 to £20 a year.
• Hosting: where the site lives. This ranges from a few pounds a month for basic hosting to more for managed hosting with backups and monitoring. Website builders include it in the subscription.
• Business email: an address at your own domain, often a few pounds per person per month.
• Care and updates: security updates, small changes, fixing things when a browser update breaks something. You can do this yourself, pay as you go, or use a monthly care plan. Ours is optional, from £99 a month, and you’re welcome to host elsewhere.

Ask anyone quoting you what’s included after launch, and what a small change will cost six months from now. A low build price with expensive changes can work out dearer than a fair price with sensible aftercare.

Questions to ask before you pay anyone

• Who owns the site and the domain? It should be you. Make sure the domain is registered in your name.
• Can I see sites you’ve built, and are they live? Look at them on your phone, because most of your visitors will.
• How many rounds of changes are included? You want room to get it right, not a bill for every tweak.
• How fast will it load? A slow site loses visitors and ranks worse on Google.
• What happens if we stop working together? You should be able to take your site elsewhere.

So what should you budget?

As a rough guide for a typical local business such as a café, trades business, salon, clinic or consultancy:

• If money is very tight and you’re happy to learn, start with a website builder and upgrade later.
• If you want something that looks properly professional without a big project, £500 to £1,500 is usually the sweet spot. At that price, ask whether you’re getting a template with your logo on it or a design made for your business: some studios, including us, design from scratch at this level.
• If your website is a main source of new customers, or you’re in a competitive market, a bespoke site is worth considering because the extra enquiries tend to cover the difference.

Whatever you choose, the site should load quickly, look great on a phone, explain clearly what you do and where, and make it obvious how to get in touch. Those four things matter more than any feature list.

Related: Website design. See how we design bespoke websites for small businesses, from £500.