The rest of this explains where the money goes, so you can tell a fair quote from a padded one.
Breakdown
Where the money goes
A website quote is mostly time. For a straightforward five-page site for a local business, the work breaks down like this:
- Design. Deciding how the site looks and how someone moves through it. A day or two.
- Build. Turning that into pages that load fast, work properly on a phone, and can be used by everyone. Two or three days.
- Setup. Hosting set up, your domain pointed at it, the contact form tested, search engines told the site exists. Half a day.
Add it up and a small brochure site is a handful of days of work. At a sole trader's day rate, that is where the lower end of the range above comes from. If a quote is well above that for the same scope, it is fair to ask what the extra days are for.
Price guide
A rough guide by type of site
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Simple£300 to £600
One-page site. A single scrolling page: who you are, what you do, how to get in touch. £300 to £600. Enough for a sole trader who mainly needs to look real and be reachable.
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Standard£500 to £1,200
Five-page brochure site. Home, services, about, a gallery or case studies, contact. £500 to £1,200 for most trades and local services. Most small businesses need nothing more.
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Larger£1,200 to £2,500
Larger or custom site. More pages, separate pages for several towns you cover, a blog, layouts that are not off a single template. £1,200 to £2,500.
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ShopFrom around £1,500
Online shop. Starts around £1,500 and depends entirely on how many products you sell and how complex the postage and payment rules are.
These are build costs, paid once. The ongoing cost after that should be small: a domain is roughly £10 to £15 a year, and hosting for a site like this is a few pounds a month, sometimes free.
Monthly
Paying monthly instead
Not every designer charges this way. Some, me included, charge a small setup fee and then a monthly fee that covers hosting, changes and keeping the site working. In the UK that is typically £30 to £100 a month. Over three years it usually costs more than a one-off build, and what you get for the difference is never having to deal with the site yourself. Both models are fair, as long as you know which one you are buying and the site is yours at the end. Mine is on the pricing section of the homepage.
Cost drivers
What pushes the price up
Four things, roughly in the order they come up:
- More pages, or one-off layouts. A fifteen-page site with three custom section designs is more design and more build than a five-page site working from one layout you both agreed.
- Features. A booking system, a filterable gallery, a map with several locations, a link to software you already use. Each one is scoped and priced on its own.
- Selling online. A shop is a different job from a brochure site: products, payments, delivery rules, tax. Expect it to roughly double the starting figure and rise from there.
- Content help. Supplying your own words and photos keeps the price down. Help with writing the pages or sorting photography is real work, and it gets added to the quote.
Each of these is more work, and a good quote tells you which of them it includes.
Watch out
What you should not be paying for
- Rent on a site you cannot take with you. A monthly fee is fair when it pays for something you can name: hosting, changes, someone looking after the site. It is not fair when it covers vague "management", ties you in for years, and leaves you with nothing if you leave. Ask what happens to the site on the day you stop paying.
- A page-builder licence dressed up as value. If the site stops working the day you stop paying the platform, you are renting again, just less obviously.
- An SEO retainer bolted on before launch. For a local business, most of your search visibility comes from a well-built site, a complete Google Business Profile, and consistent contact details across the web. Get those in place, see where you stand, and then decide about a monthly SEO contract.
Checklist
Questions to ask before you pay
- Do I own the domain and the site files, and can I have them if I leave?
- If there is a monthly fee, what exactly does it cover, and is there a minimum term?
- If I want to leave, can I take the site to another host or another developer?
- Is this a template, and if so, which one? A template is fine, as long as you are told.
- What is not included in this price?
- After launch, what can I change myself, what has to come back to you, and at what cost?
A quote that answers those plainly is usually a fair one, whatever the number on it.
Questions
Common questions
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How much does a 5 page website cost in the UK?
For most local businesses, a five-page brochure site costs between £500 and £1,200 to build once. The spread comes from how custom the layouts are and how much of the content you supply yourself.
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Is a cheap website bad for SEO?
Not because it was cheap. It is bad for search when it loads slowly, is hard to use on a phone, or is built on a platform that buries your content in heavy templates. A modest budget spent on a fast, well-structured site beats a large one spent on a slow one.
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Is Wix or Squarespace cheaper than a custom website?
Often cheaper in money, as long as you count your own time as free: you build and look after the site yourself. You are also renting the platform rather than owning the site. They are a reasonable choice if you will maintain it yourself and do not need anything unusual. There is more detail in Squarespace or a custom-built site.
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Do web designers charge for changes after launch?
It varies, so ask before you sign. Some include changes in a monthly fee; others charge for each job. Get it in writing: what you can edit yourself, what has to come back to the designer, and what that costs.