How much does a small business website cost?

Anywhere from about a hundred pounds a year to tens of thousands, which is a useless answer until you know what moves it. The honest version: for most small businesses the build is the cheap part, the writing is the expensive part, and the ongoing costs are the ones that surprise people.

The unavoidable costs, whatever route you take

• A domain name — broadly £8 to £20 a year for a .co.uk or .com. This is yours and it matters; see the ownership warning below.
• Somewhere to host it — either bundled into a builder subscription or bought separately, commonly £5 to £25 a month for a small site.
• A secure connection — the padlock. Effectively always included now. If someone is charging you separately for it every year, ask why.
• A business email address on your own domain — a few pounds per user per month, and worth every penny against a hotmail address on your van.

So the floor is roughly a couple of hundred pounds a year in running costs, before anyone has built anything.

The three routes, and what they really cost

Build it yourself on a site builder

Typically £10 to £30 a month all in. You get a working site, hosting, and the ability to change your own opening hours at nine on a Sunday, which is worth more than it sounds.

The cost you are actually paying is your weekend. Budget a full day to get something decent up and a few evenings of fiddling afterwards. If your time is worth more than that and you hate it, this is not the cheap option.

Pay a freelancer

Broadly £500 to £3,000 for a straightforward site for a small business, depending on the number of pages, whether the design is bespoke or a customised template, and how much of the writing they do.

This is where most small businesses land, and it is usually good value — provided you are clear about who writes the words, because that is the thing that decides whether the site works.

Use an agency

Usually £3,000 upwards, frequently well upwards, and includes strategy, design, copywriting and project management. Appropriate when the website is a serious revenue channel with real complexity. Overkill when you need five pages that explain a plumbing business.

And ecommerce is its own thing

Selling online adds a platform subscription, payment processing fees on every order, and considerably more setup — products, delivery rules, tax, returns. Cheaper than it used to be, but do not budget for it as though it is a brochure site with a buy button.

What actually moves the number

1. How many pages, and how many are genuinely different rather than the same layout repeated.
2. Who writes the content. The single biggest hidden cost. See below.
3. Bespoke design or customised template. A good template well used beats a mediocre bespoke design at a quarter of the price.
4. Functionality. Booking, payments, logins, calculators, anything that has to talk to another system.
5. Photography. Real photos of your work and your premises; stock images undermine everything else you paid for.
6. Migration, if you already have a site with traffic. Doing the redirects properly is skilled and boring and absolutely necessary — moving a website covers what goes wrong.

The cost everyone forgets: the words

Almost every quote assumes you will supply the content. Almost nobody does, on time, and the project stalls for three months on a half-written About page.

Either agree that they write it — expect that to add meaningfully to the price — or block out real time to write it yourself. What a small business website should include and how to write a service page exist to make that a smaller job than it looks.

A beautifully built site with placeholder text is worth nothing. A plain site with clear honest words works. If the budget has to give somewhere, let it give on the design.

Four contract questions that matter more than the price

1. Whose name is the domain registered in? It must be yours. This is the one that ruins people — a business held hostage by a developer they fell out with, or a domain that quietly lapsed because it was registered to someone who moved on. Ask to be listed as the registrant, and know how to log in.
2. Can I change things myself? Prices, hours, a new photo. If every small edit is a billable email, the real cost is much higher than the quote.
3. What happens if you disappear? Where is it hosted, who has the logins, and can another developer pick it up. A site built on something ordinary is worth more than a clever bespoke one only its author understands.
4. What is included after launch, for how long. Updates, backups, fixes, and what an ongoing maintenance fee actually buys.

What is worth paying for and what is not

Worth it: good photography of your actual work, someone who can write clearly, a site you can edit yourself, and proper redirects if you are moving.

Rarely worth it for a small business: a bespoke design system, an animation budget, a custom content management system, or an SEO retainer bought before the site is even finished. On that last one, most of what a small local business needs is unglamorous and free.

The number to hold in your head

Not the build cost — the cost of not having it. If you know roughly what a customer is worth to you, a site that produces one extra job a month has paid for almost any of the options above within a year. If you do not know that number, work it out first: it settles this question and several others. Setting a budget starts there.

The bottom line

Budget a couple of hundred a year in running costs whatever you do. DIY costs your weekend; a freelancer is usually a few hundred to a few thousand; an agency is for when the site is a real revenue channel. The words are the expensive part and the part that decides whether it works. And before you sign anything, make sure the domain is registered in your name. See also whether you need a website at all.