How much does a website cost in the UK?

Website costs in the UK cover an unusually wide range, from a few hundred pounds a year for a DIY build through to £35,000 or more for a large bespoke project, so the useful question is rarely "what does a website cost" in the abstract but "what does a website like mine typically cost." Breaking the market down by who builds it, and what kind of site it is, gives a much clearer picture than a single average figure ever could.

At the cheapest end, a DIY website built on a platform like Wix or Squarespace commonly costs £240 to £360 a year once a domain name and a proper business email address are included, with no separate design or development fee since you are building it yourself using templates. This suits straightforward brochure sites where design flexibility matters less than getting something live quickly and cheaply. A step up from that, hiring a freelance web designer to build a small business site commonly costs £800 to £3,000, with a straightforward four-to-five-page build typically landing around £1,200 to £2,000 for a freelancer working solo rather than as part of a studio.

Working with an agency rather than a freelancer generally costs more but usually comes with more structured project management, in-house design and development skills, and ongoing support built in. A UK agency typically charges £2,500 to £10,000 for a standard small-business website, with agencies based in London sometimes charging noticeably more for a broadly similar specification. Within that range, a basic professional brochure site with proper design and search-engine-friendly setup commonly costs £1,500 to £4,000, while a more bespoke project with custom design work, animations or non-standard functionality typically runs £3,000 to £10,000 or more depending on complexity.

E-commerce sites cost more than a standard brochure website across the board, mainly because of the extra work involved in payment integration, product catalogues, inventory management and ongoing security requirements. Most UK businesses launching an online store commonly budget somewhere around £4,000 to £15,000 for a properly designed and built site, with a basic store starting from around £2,000 at the cheapest end. On a platform like Shopify specifically, small agency-built projects commonly start around £2,500, with a typical properly designed store often landing in the £3,000 to £12,000 upfront range depending on how much custom design and functionality is involved. Larger, fully custom or headless e-commerce builds, the kind aimed at more complex retail operations, commonly run £25,000 to £100,000 or more, a different tier of project entirely from a standard small-business store. It's also worth remembering that platforms like Shopify charge their own separate monthly subscription on top of the build cost, commonly ranging from around £19 a month on an entry-level plan up to roughly £289 a month on a more advanced tier.

Whatever kind of site you end up with, budgeting for it doesn't stop once it goes live. A reasonable rule of thumb for UK small businesses is to expect ongoing running costs of roughly 15-20% of the original build cost each year, covering hosting, security updates, backups and occasional content changes. In practice, a fully managed maintenance plan bundling hosting, security monitoring, backups and support commonly costs £29 to £99 a month for a small-business brochure site, £150 to £600 a month for a growing e-commerce store with more moving parts, and £600 to £3,000-plus a month for a large, high-traffic or enterprise site. If you'd rather buy hosting and maintenance separately rather than as a bundled plan, a domain name alone commonly costs £10 to £25 a year, basic shared hosting £5 to £15 a month, and a properly managed hosting package £20 to £50 a month.

Given how wide these ranges are, it's worth being specific when requesting quotes: the number of pages, whether e-commerce functionality is needed, whether the design is templated or fully custom, and what ongoing support is included, all shift the price considerably. Asking two or three providers to quote against the same written brief, rather than a vague description, is the most reliable way to see whether a given quote is genuinely competitive for what you actually need.

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