Short answer: in the UK in 2026, a small-business website costs about £1,500 to £6,000, a custom-designed business site £6,000 to £20,000, an online shop £10,000 to £40,000, and a web application £30,000 and up. Template sites from £500 exist and are fine for a one-page presence. The range is wide because "a website" can mean a brochure or a booking system; the price follows what the site has to do, not how many pages it has.
What drives website cost
- Number and complexity of pages. Five static pages cost far less than a site with dynamic content, search, filters, or user accounts.
- Design. A customised premium template is cheaper than fully custom design built around your brand from scratch. Custom design is usually 30 to 50 percent of a bespoke quote.
- Functionality. A brochure site is simple. Online booking, quote calculators, customer portals, membership areas, and payments each add real development and testing time.
- Platform. WordPress, Shopify, and similar platforms launch faster and cheaper than fully custom code, and most UK service businesses never outgrow them. Custom code earns its cost when you need logic no plugin does.
- Content and photography. Often missing from quotes. Professional copy for ten pages and a half-day photo shoot typically add £800 to £2,500, and a site built around content that does not exist yet is the most common cause of a late launch.
- Integrations. Connecting the site to a CRM, a calendar, an accounting tool, or a payment provider is where the "simple site" quote often doubles.
Website cost by type (UK, 2026)
| Website type | What it includes | Typical UK cost | Approximate USD |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-page or template site | Premium template, your content, contact form | £500 to £1,500 | $650 to $2,000 |
| Small-business brochure site | 5 to 10 pages, customised template, on-page SEO, booking or quote form | £1,500 to £6,000 | $2,000 to $8,000 |
| Custom business site | Custom design, CMS, integrations with CRM and calendar, blog | £6,000 to £20,000 | $8,000 to $25,000 |
| Online shop | Product catalogue, checkout, payments, shipping rules, on Shopify or WooCommerce | £10,000 to £40,000 | $12,000 to $50,000 |
| Web application | Custom logic, user accounts, database-driven features | £30,000+ | $40,000+ |
These are industry-typical ranges for UK agencies and experienced freelancers in 2026. A freelancer will usually sit at the lower end and an agency with design, development, and copy in-house at the upper end. Offshore-only teams can quote lower, and the gap is usually design and project management rather than code.
A worked example: a Manchester heating engineer
A typical brief we see from a trades business: a 10-page site (home, six service pages, about, reviews, contact), an online booking form that lands in a CRM, click-to-call on mobile, and Google review requests sent automatically after a job. In 2026 that lands around £3,500 to £5,500 on WordPress, including copy, in three to five weeks. The same site with the CRM and automation set up so that enquiries are chased without anyone typing is closer to £5,000 to £8,000. That second version is the one that pays for itself, because the site's job is not to look good; it is to turn a missed call into a booked job.
WordPress vs Shopify vs custom-built
WordPress and Shopify get you live faster and cheaper for standard business sites, content, blogging, and common e-commerce needs, because those are solved problems. WordPress suits service businesses and content-led sites; Shopify suits shops, with hosting, checkout and payments handled for you at a monthly fee (from about £25 a month plus card fees). A custom-built site or web application costs more upfront and makes sense when your requirements go beyond what a plugin ecosystem handles well: custom logic, unusual integrations, or performance a template cannot reach.
| WordPress | Shopify | Custom build | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Service businesses, content, brochure sites | Shops of any size | Apps, portals, unusual workflows |
| Typical build cost | £1,500 to £15,000 | £3,000 to £30,000 | £15,000+ |
| Monthly running cost | Hosting £10 to £60, plugins £0 to £50 | £25 to £300 plan plus apps and card fees | Hosting £20 to £200 plus maintenance |
| Who can edit it | You, easily | You, easily | Depends on what is built |
| Main risk | Plugin sprawl and updates | App fees adding up | Paying for flexibility you never use |
Ongoing costs after launch
A website is not a one-off expense. Budget for hosting (from £10 a month for a small site to hundreds for high traffic), a domain (£10 to £20 a year), an SSL certificate (usually included), platform and plugin updates, and periodic content or design refreshes. A realistic maintenance budget for a small-business site is £30 to £150 a month; for a shop, £100 to £500. A site with zero ongoing budget tends to look, and perform, like it was abandoned within a year.
Hidden costs people forget
- Email. Professional email on your domain (Google Workspace or Microsoft 365) is £5 to £12 per user per month and is not part of a website quote.
- Photography and copy, as above.
- Migration. Moving an existing site with dozens of URLs needs redirects to keep search rankings; skipping this is the most expensive mistake on a redesign.
- Accessibility and cookie compliance. A cookie consent tool and an accessibility pass cost little upfront and a lot when a customer complains.
- Your time. Content sign-off is the number one cause of delay. Plan it in.
How to get the most for your budget
- Get specific about functionality before requesting quotes. "I need a website" gets vague answers; "a 12-page site with online booking, a reviews page, and a blog, connected to my CRM" gets accurate ones.
- Plan the content first. Sites redesigned around content that does not exist yet routinely go over budget and past the deadline.
- Match the platform to the need. Do not pay for custom development if a well-configured platform solves the requirement, and do not force a platform to do something it was not built for.
- Ask what happens after launch. Who updates it, who monitors it, and what a change costs. A cheap build with no support is an expensive rebuild in eighteen months.
- Ask for the connected version. A site that feeds a CRM and chases enquiries automatically costs 20 to 40 percent more and is worth several times that in booked work.
Bottom line
The honest answer to "how much does a website cost" is: tell us what it needs to do, and we will tell you what it costs. Anyone quoting a number before that conversation is guessing. For most UK service businesses the number is between £1,500 and £8,000; for shops and custom builds it is higher, and the extra should be buying something specific.
Book a free call and we will scope your site and give you an accurate cost range based on what it actually needs to do.