How Much Does a Website Cost in the UK?

A website in the UK can cost anything from a few hundred pounds a year on a DIY builder to £50,000 or more for a complex portal or enterprise build. Our own published estimates run from £1,040 for a landing page and £2,600 for a small brochure site to £15,600 to £23,400 for a membership portal, all excluding VAT. The figure depends on how many pages and templates you need, what the site has to connect to, who writes the content and how much custom design is involved. Budget separately for running costs, which most quotes leave out.

Website pricing has a reputation for being opaque because most agencies will not give a number until you have sat through a sales call. This guide sets out typical ranges, the things that move the price and the costs that arrive after launch, with our own published prices so you have at least one fixed reference point.

What does a website cost by type?

The size and type of build is the biggest single factor. These are the estimates we publish on our website price calculator, based on our standard rate of £130 + VAT per hour.

Website type	Typical hours	Estimated cost (ex. VAT)
Landing page	8 to 15 hours	£1,040 to £1,950
Brochure website (5 to 10 pages)	20 to 35 hours	£2,600 to £4,550
Business website (10 to 20 pages)	40 to 60 hours	£5,200 to £7,800
E-commerce website	80 to 120 hours	£10,400 to £15,600
Web portal / membership	120 to 180 hours	£15,600 to £23,400
Enterprise solution	200+ hours	£26,000+

Across the wider market, typical ranges look roughly like this. Treat them as a rough guide, not a benchmark, because quotes vary widely with location, team size and scope:

• DIY website builders: about £150 to £500 a year in subscriptions, plus your own time.
• Freelancers: often £500 to £5,000 for a small site, with quality and after-launch support varying a great deal.
• Agencies: our own range runs from £2,500 to £50,000+, and larger agencies working on complex or multi-site builds can go well beyond that.

What drives the cost of a website?

Two sites with the same number of pages can be priced very differently. These are the decisions that cause it.

Templates, not pages

Developers price by the number of distinct page layouts, not the number of pages. A 40-page site with a home page, a service template, a news template and a contact page can cost less than a 12-page site where every page is designed differently. Ask any agency how many templates their quote assumes.

Design: standard, semi-custom or bespoke

A standard layout adapted to your brand is the cheapest route. A fully bespoke design, drawn from a blank page, adds design and front-end hours. In our calculator, semi-custom design adds 15 hours and fully bespoke adds 40.

Platform

WordPress and Shopify are the cheapest bases to build on. Umbraco, Astro and custom builds take more developer time, and Umbraco hosting usually costs more to run. If you are weighing the two most common choices for an institute or association, our guide to Umbraco or WordPress for a professional body sets out the trade-offs.

Integrations

This is where budgets break. Connecting the site to a CRM, a membership system, an events platform or a payment gateway takes real development and testing. Our calculator adds 12 hours for CRM integration as a starting point. A two-way membership integration with single sign-on is a project in its own right, which is why we wrote a separate note on what a membership CRM integration involves.

Content

Who writes the words matters more than most buyers expect. If you supply finished copy, the price stays down. Professional copywriting adds about 20 hours in our calculator, and an SEO content hub adds 40. Content migration from an old site adds about 10 hours, more if the old content needs cleaning up.

Speed

A rushed deadline costs more because other work has to move. We apply a 1.5x multiplier for priority delivery.

What does a website cost to run each year?

The build price is a one-off. These costs recur, and a cheap build with expensive or neglected running costs is not cheap.

1. Domain name. Usually a small annual fee for a .co.uk or .com.
2. Hosting. Shared hosting is inexpensive but slow and crowded. Managed or dedicated hosting costs more and is usually worth it for a business site. Umbraco on .NET typically costs more to host than WordPress.
3. Licences. Premium plugins, themes, form tools, booking systems and some CMS add-ons charge annual or monthly fees. Ask for a list with renewal dates.
4. Maintenance. Updates, backups, security patches and monitoring. Our care plans are £165 a month (Essential) or £330 a month (Plus), excluding VAT. Our maintenance service lists what each plan covers.
5. Changes and new features. Sites need new pages, campaign landing pages and fixes as the business changes. We bill ad hoc work at £130 per hour, or sell prepaid blocks called Kickass Days that start at £100 per hour.

As a rough planning rule, set aside an annual running budget alongside the build budget from day one, rather than discovering it at the first renewal invoice.

How to get an accurate quote

You get better quotes, and quotes you can compare, when you send the same information to every supplier.

1. List what the site must do. “Take membership applications and renewals” or “generate enquiries from three service areas”, not “look modern”.
2. List the systems it must connect to, with the name and version of each.
3. Say who will write the content, and roughly how many pages exist today.
4. Give a budget range. Agencies design to a budget. Without one, you get quotes for three different websites.
5. Ask each supplier to split the price into discovery, design, build, content, integrations and launch, plus annual running costs.
6. Ask who owns the result. Code, domain, hosting and content should all be in your name.

For larger projects, a paid discovery phase before the build is often the cheapest way to get an accurate figure. It turns a guess into a costed plan, and you keep the plan whoever builds it. Our strategy and discovery service runs as a two-week, fixed-fee phase.

Red flags in a website quote

• One line item with a single total and no breakdown.
• No mention of hosting, licences or maintenance after launch.
• A very low price paired with a long monthly contract and the agency holding the domain.
• No question about your content, your systems or your goals before quoting.
• Integration described as “simple” before anyone has looked at your CRM.

Where to start

Run your requirements through our price calculator to get an order of magnitude in a couple of minutes. If you then send the brief, we reply with a fixed price and a date, and our web design service explains how the build itself runs.