How Much Should a Website Cost?

This is the question everyone asks and almost nobody gets a straight answer to, mostly because "a website" covers everything from a £5/month template to a £15,000 custom build. We quote everyone from sole traders to businesses running several vans, and the honest answer is: it depends what you actually need it to do.

Roughly, the tiers look like this

• DIY builder (Wix, Squarespace): £15-30/month, your own time to build it
• Freelancer one-off build: £300-1,500, usually no ongoing SEO
• Agency monthly plan: £50-150/month, build + hosting + ongoing SEO work
• Bespoke agency build: £2,000-15,000+, for larger or more complex sites

What you're really paying more for

It's rarely just "a nicer-looking site." The real differences: does anyone submit your sitemap to Google, is anyone checking it still works in six months, can you update it yourself without calling someone, and is your Google Business Profile connected to any of it. A cheap site with none of that can rank worse than a free one, because nobody ever told Google it exists. A management accountant would put it bluntly: you're not buying a page, you're buying whether the money spent produces a return.

The question that actually matters

Not "what does it cost" but "what happens after it's built." A one-off payment with no ongoing SEO is fine if you just need a functioning site. If you want it to actively bring in more work over time, that's an ongoing job, not a one-time purchase, and pricing should reflect which one you're buying.

Worth reading alongside this the questions worth asking before you sign, DIY builders vs a custom build and our current pricing.