Websites · guide
How Much Should a Small Business Website Cost in 2026?
Real price bands, what drives them, and the line items worth paying for versus the ones quietly padding quotes.
Two agencies can quote £1,800 and £14,000 for what sounds like the same website. Neither is necessarily wrong. The difference is almost always scope, content and who is doing the thinking — not the code.
The four honest price bands
| Band | Typical cost | What you get | Right for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself | £0–£400 / yr | Template builder, your own copy and photos | Pre-revenue, testing an idea |
| Freelancer, template-led | £1,200–£4,000 | 5–8 pages, light customisation, basic SEO setup | Most local service businesses |
| Custom small-studio build | £5,000–£15,000 | Original design, written copy, structured content, integrations | Businesses where the site is the main sales channel |
| E-commerce or complex | £8,000–£40,000+ | Catalogue, payments, stock, fulfilment integrations | Retail and multi-location operations |
The cost driver nobody quotes for
Content is the schedule. Projects run late and over budget because photography and page copy are not ready, not because development is slow. If you cannot supply copy, pay for a copywriter and treat it as a core line item, not an extra.
What you should always be paying for
- A defined page list agreed before design starts, in writing.
- Mobile-first layouts checked on a real phone, not just a desktop preview.
- Fast load times — under two and a half seconds for the main content on a mid-range phone.
- Editable content, so you can change prices and opening hours without paying an invoice.
- Analytics, a contact form that reaches a real inbox, and call tracking if the phone matters.
- A handover document with logins, hosting details and renewal dates in your name.
What is usually padding
- Unlimited revision rounds — they invite scope drift on both sides. Two rounds per page is normal.
- Bespoke animation on a site whose job is to get phone calls.
- A blog you have no plan to write for. Build it when you have four articles ready.
- Premium hosting for a brochure site with 2,000 visits a month.
- Ongoing SEO retainers bundled into the build before there is anything to optimise.
Running costs to plan for
| Item | Typical annual cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Domain | £10–£20 | Register it yourself, in your business name |
| Hosting | £60–£400 | Managed hosting is worth it if nobody in-house does updates |
| Platform or plugin licences | £0–£600 | Check what auto-renews |
| Maintenance and updates | £240–£1,200 | Security patching, backups, small edits |
The five pages that do the work
For most local businesses, a site earns its keep with a homepage that states plainly what you do and where, one page per core service, a proof page with reviews and real project photos, a pricing or process page that answers the money question honestly, and a contact page with a phone number, an address and a form.
Anything beyond that is optional until the analytics tell you otherwise. A five-page site that loads fast and answers the customer's real questions will outperform a twenty-page site nobody finishes reading.
How to brief and compare quotes fairly
- Write one page: what the site must achieve, the page list, who supplies copy and photos, and your launch date.
- Send the same brief to three suppliers. Different briefs make quotes uncomparable.
- Ask each for a fixed price against that scope, plus a day rate for changes.
- Ask who owns the domain, hosting and code after launch, and get the answer in writing.
- Ask to see two sites they built two years ago and check they still load quickly.
Use the website cost estimator in our calculators section to sanity-check a quote against your page count and content readiness before you sign anything.
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