"How much for a website?" is the first question almost everyone asks us, and it's the one most agencies are weirdly cagey about answering. You'll see a lot of "it depends" and "get in touch for a quote", which is technically true but not much help when you're trying to work out whether you can afford to do this at all.
So let's actually answer it. Below are realistic UK price ranges for 2026, what pushes a project up or down those ranges, the ongoing costs people forget about, and how to tell whether a quote is fair. By the end you should be able to look at any quote, including ours, and understand exactly what you're paying for.
A quick note: the figures here reflect what we see across the UK market for small and medium-sized businesses. Every agency prices a bit differently, and London rates tend to sit higher than elsewhere. [Two Pixels team: adjust the ranges below to match your own pricing before publishing.]
The short answer
If you just want the numbers, here they are:
- DIY website builder (Wix, Squarespace): £0–£500 upfront, plus £15–£45/month
- Template site set up by a freelancer: £500–£2,000
- Custom-designed small business site (5–10 pages): £2,500–£7,000
- Larger custom site with CMS, blog, integrations: £7,000–£20,000
- E-commerce site: £4,000–£25,000+
- Complex web app or bespoke platform: £20,000+
That's a big spread, and the rest of this article is about why.
What you're actually paying for
A website isn't one thing. When you pay an agency, the price is made up of several distinct pieces of work, and understanding them makes quotes much easier to compare.
Discovery and planning
Before anyone opens a design tool, a good agency will want to understand your business, your customers and what the site needs to achieve. That usually means a kick-off call or workshop, a look at your competitors, and a sitemap showing every page and how they connect.
It's tempting to see this as the bit you could skip. It isn't. Most websites that fail do so because nobody asked "what is this site for?" at the start. On a typical small business project, planning might be 10–15% of the total cost.
Design
This is where the site's look and feel takes shape. A custom design means someone is designing your pages from scratch around your brand and your content, rather than dropping your logo onto a theme thousands of other businesses are also using.
Design costs scale with the number of unique page layouts. A site with a homepage, an about page, a services page and a contact page has four layouts. A site with twelve different types of page has twelve. Adding a thirtieth blog post doesn't add design cost, because it uses the same blog template as the first.
Development
Development is turning the designs into a working website: building every page so it looks right on phones, tablets and desktops, setting up the content management system (CMS) so you can edit things yourself, adding forms, animations and any integrations with other tools.
The platform matters here. Building on a visual platform like Webflow is often faster than hand-coding a custom WordPress theme, which can bring costs down. Complex functionality, such as booking systems, member areas or custom calculators, adds time regardless of platform.
Content
Somebody has to write the words and supply the photos. If you provide all your own copy and images, that keeps costs down. If you want the agency to write it, or organise a photographer, expect to pay for that separately. Copywriting for a small site might add £500–£2,500 depending on the number of pages.
Content is also the single most common cause of delays. We'll come back to that.
SEO foundations
Every professionally built site should include the basics: proper page titles and descriptions, a sensible heading structure, fast load times, image optimisation, a sitemap submitted to Google, and redirects from your old site's URLs so you don't lose rankings. These should be included, not sold as an add-on.
Ongoing SEO work, such as keyword research, content strategy and link building, is a separate service and usually a monthly cost.
Project management, testing and launch
Someone has to keep the project on track, chase feedback, test the site across browsers and devices, and handle the go-live. It's unglamorous work, but it's what separates a smooth launch from a stressful one.
The five things that move the price most
If you want to understand why one quote is £3,000 and another is £12,000, these are usually the reasons.
1. Custom design vs template. A template gets you something decent quickly and cheaply. A custom design gets you something built around your business that doesn't look like your competitors. Neither is wrong, but they're priced very differently.
2. Number of unique page types. As above, it's layouts that cost money, not pages. Ask any agency you're speaking to how many templates their quote includes.
3. Functionality. A brochure site with a contact form is straightforward. Online booking, payments, customer logins, product filters, multi-language support or connections to your CRM all add development time.
4. E-commerce. Selling online means product pages, a basket, checkout, payment gateways, shipping rules, tax settings, stock management and order emails. A shop with 20 products and simple shipping is very different from one with 2,000 products, variants and international delivery.
5. Who's doing the work. A solo freelancer has lower overheads than an agency with designers, developers and a project manager. Agencies cost more, but you're paying for a team, continuity if someone's off sick, and generally a more structured process.
The ongoing costs people forget
The upfront build is only part of it. Budget for these too.
Domain name. Usually £10–£25 a year for a .co.uk or .com.
Hosting. Anywhere from £5 a month for basic shared hosting to £30–£50 a month for managed hosting or a platform plan such as Webflow's CMS tier. Cheap hosting is often a false economy, because it tends to be slower and less secure.
Email. Business email through Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 is typically around £5–£12 per user per month.
Plugins, apps and licences. WordPress sites often rely on premium plugins with annual licences. Shopify stores often run several paid apps. These add up quietly.
Maintenance and support. Someone needs to keep the site updated, backed up and secure, and make changes when you need them. Care plans typically range from £50 to £250 a month depending on what's included. You can do some of this yourself, but it's worth being honest about whether you will.
Content and marketing. A website doesn't bring in traffic on its own. If you want it to generate leads, you'll likely spend something on SEO, content or advertising over time.
As a rough guide, a small business site might cost £300–£1,500 a year to run once it's live, not counting marketing.
Cheap websites: when they make sense and when they don't
We're not going to pretend everyone needs a £10,000 website. If you're a sole trader just starting out, testing an idea, or you simply need a page with your contact details, a website builder or a low-cost template is a perfectly sensible choice. Spend the money on getting customers instead.
Where cheap websites tend to go wrong is when a business outgrows them but keeps patching them. Common symptoms:
- The site looks similar to lots of competitors because it uses a popular theme
- It's slow, because it's on bargain hosting and loaded with plugins
- Nobody on your team knows how to update it
- The original builder has disappeared and you're not sure who owns what
- It doesn't bring in enquiries, so it's effectively an online brochure nobody reads
If a website is a meaningful part of how you win business, it's worth treating it as an investment rather than a cost to be minimised.
How to tell whether a quote is fair
When you're comparing quotes, a low price and a high price can both be red flags. Here's what to look for.
A clear breakdown. You should be able to see what's included: number of page templates, rounds of revisions, CMS setup, SEO basics, training and post-launch support. A single figure with no detail makes comparison impossible.
Who owns what. You should own your domain, your content and ideally the site itself. Be wary of arrangements where the agency owns everything and you're effectively renting.
What happens after launch. Is there a support period? What does it cost to make changes later? Can you edit content yourself?
Revision limits. Most agencies include a set number of revision rounds. That's fine and normal, but you should know what the number is.
Portfolio and reviews. Look at sites they've actually built, ideally for businesses similar to yours, and check they load quickly on your phone.
Payment schedule. A deposit of 30–50% upfront is standard. Paying 100% before any work starts is not.
How to get the most from your budget
If your budget is tighter than you'd like, there are good ways to make it stretch without cutting corners on quality.
Launch smaller, then grow. Start with the pages that matter most and add others after launch. A focused five-page site done well beats a sprawling twenty-page site done badly.
Prepare your content early. Delayed content is the biggest cause of projects running over, and time is money on both sides. If your words and images are ready when design starts, everything moves faster.
Be decisive with feedback. Consolidate feedback from everyone in your business into one set of comments per round, rather than drip-feeding changes.
Choose a platform you can manage yourself. If you can update your own text, add blog posts and swap images, you won't be paying someone every time something changes.
Be upfront about your budget. It can feel like a negotiating risk, but telling an agency your budget means they can propose the best possible site for that money, rather than guessing and quoting for something you can't afford.
So, what does Two Pixels charge?
[Two Pixels team: add your own pricing here. For example, "Most of our small business websites fall between £X and £Y, with e-commerce projects starting from £Z. Our care plans start at £N per month." Being specific here is a genuine advantage, because very few agencies are.]
Every project is a little different, so the best way to get an accurate number is to have a quick chat. Tell us what you need and what budget you're working with, and we'll give you an honest answer about what's realistic, even if that answer is "a website builder is probably fine for now."
[Get a quote from Two Pixels →]