Guide
How much does a website cost in the UK?
A small business website in the UK costs between £250 and £5,000 in 2026, with most five to ten page brochure sites landing between £500 and £2,500 and online shops between £1,250 and £8,000. Monthly rental packages run from £30 to £150 a month but you do not own the result. This guide sets out the real bands, what moves the number, and the ongoing costs that almost never appear in the quote.
By James 12 min read
What a website costs in the UK, by type
The reason this question is hard to answer online is that almost nobody publishes a price. Search for web design in most UK towns and you will find a page of agencies inviting you to get in touch, with no figure anywhere. That is a choice rather than a necessity, and it means the first honest number most buyers see is in a quote.
A five-page brochure site for a small business is the most common purchase, and it runs from about £250 at the low end to £2,500 for a custom-designed build with content help. Below £250 you are buying a template with your logo dropped in, and there is a legitimate market for that. Above £2,500 you are usually paying for design work, strategy or content rather than for more pages.
A larger brochure or service site, fifteen to thirty pages with location or sector pages, runs from £1,500 to £5,000. The cost is content rather than build: thirty pages that say something specific take considerably longer to write than they do to construct.
An online shop starts around £1,250 for a manageable catalogue and runs to £8,000 or more where there are complex variants, trade pricing or an integration with a stock system. The shopfront is rarely the expensive part. Payments, postage rules, VAT configuration and stock are where the work sits.
A web application, meaning a booking system, a customer portal or anything with logins and real data behind it, is quoted as software rather than as a website and starts around £3,000. Our guide to custom software costs sets out that range properly.
For comparison, our own prices are published in full on the page about what a SetWeb website includes.
UK website price bands in 2026
| What you are buying | Typical UK cost | Typical timescale |
|---|---|---|
| Template site, logo dropped in | £150–£400 | 1–2 weeks |
| Five-page brochure site, custom design | £500–£2,500 | 2–4 weeks |
| Fifteen to thirty page service or location site | £1,500–£5,000 | 4–8 weeks |
| Online shop, manageable catalogue | £1,250–£4,000 | 4–6 weeks |
| Online shop, complex variants or integrations | £4,000–£8,000+ | 2–4 months |
| Booking system, portal or web application | £3,000+ | 6 weeks+ |
| Monthly rental package | £30–£150 per month, ongoing | Days to weeks |
| Hosting, if bought separately | £5–£40 per month | Continuous |
| Care plan: updates, backups, small changes | £20–£100 per month | Continuous |
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What actually moves the number
Page count matters far less than people expect. Duplicating a page template is close to free; the cost is in what goes on it. A ten-page site where every page says something specific costs more than a thirty-page site padded out with boilerplate, and it will perform considerably better.
Content is the single biggest variable and the one buyers consistently underestimate. If you supply finished copy and photographs, a build is quick. If somebody has to interview you, write the pages and arrange photography, that is real work and it should be priced separately so you can see what it costs.
Design is the second. A custom design built around your brand takes days that a configured theme does not. Both are legitimate purchases, and the difference should be stated plainly rather than blurred.
Functionality is where quotes diverge most. A contact form is trivial. A form that creates a record in your CRM, triggers a confirmation and appears in a calendar is a small integration. A booking system that understands availability is software. Those three get described as "a form" in conversation and differ by an order of magnitude in cost.
Migration is the cost most often left out entirely. Moving an existing site means mapping every old URL to a new one, and a rebuild that skips that will lose the rankings the old site was quietly earning. If a quote for replacing an existing site does not mention redirects, ask why.
Costs that are usually left out of the quote
Ask about every one of these before comparing two numbers, because a cheaper quote frequently excludes several of them.
- Hosting after the first year, and whether the first year is genuinely included
- The domain name, who registers it, and in whose name it is registered
- An SSL certificate, which should be included and occasionally is not
- Copywriting, or whether you are expected to supply finished text
- Photography, or whether stock images are being used and licensed properly
- Content population, meaning somebody actually putting your text and images into the site
- Training, so your team can make changes without paying for each one
- Updates and security patching after launch, which is the biggest ongoing risk if nobody owns it
- Backups, and specifically whether restores have ever been tested
- Redirects from an existing site, without which the rankings go
- Analytics and conversion tracking, without which you cannot tell whether it worked
- What a change costs after launch, and what the hourly rate is
Monthly packages: what the five-year number actually is
Monthly website packages are widely sold to UK small businesses at between £30 and £150 a month. They are quick, they need no upfront payment, and for a business with no cash to spare they are a genuine way to have a site rather than not have one.
The arithmetic is worth doing before signing. At £40 a month, five years is £2,400. At £99 a month, five years is £5,940. In both cases the site is usually not yours at the end, and if you stop paying it comes down. Compare that with a one-off build at £500 to £2,500 that you own outright, plus hosting.
The crossover point is typically somewhere between year one and year three depending on the monthly figure. Before that, renting is genuinely cheaper. After it, you are paying for something you will never own.
The questions worth asking any monthly provider are simple and a good one will answer them: if I stop paying, what happens to the site and the domain? Do I own the design and content? Is the domain registered in my name? What is the notice period? Can I have a copy of the site if I ask?
The domain is the part that catches people out. A website can be rebuilt. A domain held in a former supplier's name, carrying years of your search history, is a genuine problem and an unpleasant negotiation. Check whose name yours is in today, whatever model you are on.
There is a table setting out both models side by side in the full subscription against ownership comparison.
How much does a website cost in Mansfield and Nottinghamshire?
The same as the national bands, with one local difference: almost nobody in Mansfield or the surrounding towns publishes a figure at all. Several of the established local agencies answer the cost question in their own FAQ with an invitation to call.
What that means practically is that a local buyer cannot compare without booking three conversations, which is exactly why the question gets typed into a search engine so often. Our own prices are £249 for a five-page starter site, £499 for a brand-led business site and from £1,250 for an online shop, with a two to four week timeline and the first year of hosting included.
We publish those because a buyer should be able to work out whether we are in their range before speaking to anybody. If we are too expensive, that is a useful thing to establish in thirty seconds rather than after a meeting. If we are cheaper than expected, the honest caveat is that at £249 you are buying a well-built five-page site rather than a design project, and we would rather say that than let the number carry an implication it should not.
Regional variation across the UK is smaller than most people assume for small business work. London agencies charge more, and the gap narrows considerably below the £5,000 mark because at that level you are largely buying the same amount of somebody's time wherever they are.
How to compare three quotes properly
Quotes for a website are rarely comparable as written, because they include different things. This is how to make them comparable.
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Step 1
Write down what you need first
Number of pages, whether you need a shop, whether you need bookings, and who is providing the words and pictures. Send the same document to everybody. Three quotes against three different briefs tell you nothing.
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Step 2
Ask each one what is excluded
Not what is included, which everybody answers well, but what is not. Hosting after year one, content, photography, training and redirects are the usual gaps.
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Step 3
Get the five-year total
Build cost plus hosting plus care plan plus expected changes, over five years. A monthly package and a one-off build only become comparable at this point.
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Step 4
Ask who owns what
The design, the content, the code and the domain. Get the answer in writing rather than in conversation.
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Step 5
Ask what a change costs
A price for the build tells you nothing about the next three years. Ask the hourly rate and what a typical small change is billed at.
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Step 6
Ask to see two sites they built two years ago
Not the newest work. Sites that have been live a couple of years show you what a build looks like once real life has happened to it.
What you should expect for the money
At any price above the template band, a UK small business website in 2026 should include a custom design built around your brand, a mobile-first build that is genuinely fast on a phone, enquiry forms that deliver reliably and are monitored, on-page SEO with proper titles and structured data, an XML sitemap, SSL, analytics with conversion tracking on forms and phone taps, and training so your team can make small changes.
It should also include a Google Business Profile set up alongside if you serve a local market. For a great many small businesses that profile does more ranking work than the website, and a supplier who does not mention it is either not thinking about local search or is hoping you will not notice.
What you should not expect at the low end is a design process, a content strategy, or a site with thirty pages of original writing. Those cost real money because they take real time, and a quote that promises all of it for a few hundred pounds is describing something else.
Frequently asked questions
If the answer is not here, ask us. You will get a straight one, from someone who does the work.
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How much does a website cost in the UK?
Between £250 and £5,000 for most small business sites in 2026. A five-page brochure site with a custom design typically costs £500 to £2,500, a larger service or location site £1,500 to £5,000, and an online shop from £1,250 to £8,000 depending on catalogue complexity and integrations.
How much does a website cost in Mansfield?
The same national bands apply, with the local difference that almost no Mansfield agency publishes a figure. Our own prices are £249 for a five-page starter site, £499 for a brand-led business site and from £1,250 for an online shop, with a two to four week timeline and the first year of hosting included.
Why do website quotes vary so much?
Mostly because they include different things. Content, photography, hosting after year one, training and redirects from an existing site are the items most often excluded from a cheaper quote. Ask each supplier what is not included rather than what is, then compare on a five-year total.
Is a monthly website package good value?
For the first year or two, often yes, particularly if cash flow is tight. At £40 a month you have paid £2,400 over five years and typically do not own the site. The crossover against a one-off build is usually somewhere between year one and year three.
What are the ongoing costs of a website?
Hosting at roughly £5 to £40 a month, an optional care plan covering updates, backups and small changes at £20 to £100 a month, and the domain renewal annually. Anything beyond that should be a quoted change rather than a recurring charge.
How long should a website take to build?
Two to four weeks for a small brochure site, four to eight weeks for a larger service site, and four to six weeks for a shop. The constraint is almost always how quickly content, photographs and sign-off arrive rather than the build itself.
Do I own the website I paid for?
You should, including the design, the content and the code, and the domain should be registered in your name. With monthly rental packages you usually do not, which is the single most important thing to establish before signing.
What happens to my Google rankings if I rebuild?
They survive if every old URL is redirected to its replacement and the pages that were earning traffic keep their content. They do not if the URLs change without redirects, which is the most common and most expensive mistake in a rebuild.
Is a cheap website worth it?
A well-built cheap site beats an expensive one that nobody maintains. What matters more than the price is whether it loads quickly, says something specific, delivers enquiries reliably and has somebody responsible for updating it. Those are achievable at the low end.