What actually drives the cost of a website?
Cost follows scope, not design flair. The biggest driver is how many unique page templates a site needs. A five-page brochure site with one layout repeated is a small job. A site with a services hub, a case study archive, a team directory and a booking flow is four or five distinct builds sitting under one roof.
After that it is whether the design is bespoke or built on an existing theme, whether you are selling online, and how much has to talk to other systems. Payment gateways, booking software, CRMs and stock feeds all add build and testing time. Migrating an older site with hundreds of pages and no consistent structure adds more still.
- Number of unique page templates, not just page count.
- Bespoke design versus a configured off-the-shelf theme.
- E-commerce: products, variations, shipping rules, tax.
- Integrations with booking, CRM, accounting or stock systems.
- Who writes the words and supplies the photographs.
- Migration complexity if an existing site is being replaced.
What are realistic price bands in the UK?
These are typical ranges across the UK market, not quotes. Prices vary by region, and a London agency costs more than a studio in Sussex for similar work. Treat them as a sanity check. If a quote sits far outside the band for the type of supplier you are speaking to, ask why before you assume it is a bargain.
The bands overlap because the labels do. Some freelancers are better than some agencies. What you are really buying is a number of days of experienced attention. Work out roughly how many days the job needs and the price stops looking arbitrary. A quote that implies two days for a fifteen-page bespoke site is not a saving. It is a warning.
| Type of supplier | Typical cost | What you usually get |
|---|---|---|
| DIY builder (Squarespace, Wix) | £150 to £400 a year | Templates and hosting; you supply the time, words and images |
| Freelancer | £750 to £3,000 | A small brochure site |
| Small studio | £2,500 to £8,000 | A bespoke WordPress site with SEO groundwork |
| Agency | £10,000 upwards | Larger builds; more for e-commerce or custom functionality |
| E-commerce (added cost) | +£2,000 to £10,000 | Depends on catalogue size and integrations |
What ongoing costs do people forget?
The build is one payment. Running the site is a recurring one, and it is where budgets quietly break. Hosting, the domain, backups, plugin and theme licences, and someone to apply updates all cost money every year. None of it is expensive on its own. Together it is a line item you should plan for from the start.
Ask whether a maintenance plan covers updates only, or updates plus backups, uptime monitoring, security scanning and a set amount of content editing each month. The gap between those two offers is wide and it is rarely spelled out unless you ask. Get the scope in writing before the first invoice, not after something breaks.
- Hosting: roughly £60 to £400 a year depending on quality.
- Domain renewal: usually £10 to £20 a year for a .co.uk.
- SSL certificate: often included free with decent hosting.
- Premium plugin or theme licences: frequently £150 to £500 a year in total.
- Maintenance and updates: typically £30 to £150 a month.
- Content changes and small additions as the business changes.
Why is the cheapest quote often the most expensive?
Cheap sites are cheap because something has been left out. Usually it is the thinking. No keyword research, no page structure, stock photography, filler text, and a theme demo with your logo dropped in. It launches, it looks fine on the day, and it never brings in an enquiry. That is not a saving, it is a slow write-off.
Then there is the rebuild. If a site has to be replaced after eighteen months, you have paid twice and lost whatever search visibility it had built. Price a website over three years, including hosting, maintenance and the likelihood of a rebuild. The cheapest quote often loses on that arithmetic, and the mid-range one usually wins.
Who writes the content, and why does that change the price?
Words are the part everyone underestimates. If you supply finished copy for every page, the build is faster and cheaper. If the designer has to write it, that is professional writing time and it should appear as a separate line on the quote. Neither approach is wrong. What causes problems is nobody owning it.
The same applies to photography. Stock images are fine as a stopgap and obvious as a permanent choice. A half day with a photographer covering your premises, your team and your work usually does more for trust than another few hundred pounds of design. Budget for it rather than discovering the gap at launch.
What should you ask before accepting a quote?
Most disputes come from unstated assumptions. These questions take ten minutes and tell you more than a portfolio does. If a supplier is vague about any of them, that vagueness will turn up later as an extra invoice or a delay you did not plan for. Ask every one of them and keep the answers with the quote.
- Who owns the site, the domain and the hosting account when we are finished?
- Is this a fixed price or an estimate, and what triggers extra cost?
- How many rounds of revisions are included?
- Who writes the copy and sources the images?
- What happens to my existing URLs and rankings?
- What does month thirteen cost me?