How much does a website cost in the UK? Prices by route

Website cost in the UK: it depends on the route

“how much does a website cost uk” is searched 210 times a month in the UK and “website cost for small business” 50 times. There is no honest single figure to give: the same small business site can cost almost nothing or a large budget depending on who builds it and what is written on it. Four routes cover nearly every case:

• A website builder (Wix, Squarespace, IONOS and others): you build the pages yourself and pay a monthly plan that includes hosting.
• An online shop platform (Shopify): the same idea for a business that sells products online, with card fees on each sale.
• WordPress on your own hosting: you pay for hosting and a domain, and spend your time on setup, updates and security.
• A freelancer or an agency: you pay for the work on a quote, then hosting and maintenance on top.

Whatever the route, the yearly costs remain: a domain name, hosting (included in builder plans), and someone’s time to keep the site up to date.

Website builder plans: from free to a monthly plan

Wix puts it plainly on its plans page: “Creating your own website is free. With a Premium plan you can connect your own domain, remove Wix branding from your site, and more.” A free plan is a way to try, not a business website: your address stays on the builder’s domain and its branding stays on your pages.

Paid plans are charged by the month or the year. Wix states that “Prices and currency vary by location.”, so compare its plans from the UK, logged out, with VAT shown. On the UK site of IONOS, the Plus website builder plan costs £1 a month for the first year, then £16 a month, excluding VAT charged at 20%: £12 in year one, £192 in each later year, before VAT.

A builder is the cheapest route for a service business that needs a few clear pages and a contact form. The limit is your time and your writing: the plan gives you the tool, not the pages that bring enquiries.

An online shop: Shopify’s UK prices

On Shopify’s UK pricing page, Basic costs £19 a month paid yearly or £25 paid monthly, and Grow £49 a month paid yearly or £65 monthly. Hosting, a custom domain name and an SSL certificate are listed in every plan.

The plan is only part of the cost of a shop: Shopify lists online standard card rates of 2% + 25p on Basic, paid on every sale, and paid themes and apps are extra. Work out your fees on your expected monthly sales before choosing a plan.

WordPress on your own hosting

WordPress itself is free; you pay for hosting and a domain. On IONOS UK, the Plus web hosting plan costs £1 a month for the first year, then £9 a month excluding VAT, so £108 a year once the offer ends.

This route costs the least in cash and the most in time: themes, plugins, updates, backups and security are yours to handle. It suits someone who likes the tool, or a business whose freelancer builds on WordPress and maintains it.

Freelancer or agency: what you are paying for

We found no official UK source for the price of a website made by a freelancer or an agency, and we will not quote an average we cannot source. What we can say is what changes the price, so that you can compare quotes line by line:

• The number of pages, and who writes their text: content is often what a quote leaves out, and it is what brings calls.
• Photos: your own, a photographer’s, or stock images.
• Features: booking, payments, a members’ area, a link to your accounting or CRM.
• Setup for Google: page titles, Search Console, sitemap, analytics.
• What happens after delivery: hosting, updates, backups, changes, and how much each costs per year or per hour.

Ask that the domain is registered in your business’s name and that you get every login. Content matters more than the design: of the 2,747 small business websites we analysed in France, 40% have fewer than 400 words on the home page.

Yearly costs: domain, hosting, maintenance

The build is a one-off; these come back every year:

• Domain name: a .co.uk was £1 for the first year at IONOS UK (instead of £10, excluding VAT) and £3.99 a year as a new customer offer at 123 Reg. Check the renewal price, which is the one you will pay from the second year.
• Hosting: included in builder and Shopify plans, paid separately for WordPress or a site built by a freelancer.
• Maintenance: updates and backups for WordPress, changes to text and prices on any site. Either your time or a monthly fee to a provider.
• Email on your domain: sometimes included, sometimes a separate subscription per mailbox.

Being found on Google is a separate budget: the site has to exist and be useful first. What SEO work costs is covered in our guide to SEO pricing.

Our take

For a local service business, we would start with a builder plan or a simple WordPress site and put the money saved into the text of one page per service, with your prices or ranges, your area and your phone number on every page. Compare every offer on its price after the introductory period, excluding VAT on both sides: a first year at a pound a month says nothing about what you pay from year two. The trap we would avoid is a site you do not own, with the domain in a provider’s name and no access to the logins. Shopify is worth its card fees only if you really sell products online.

The FindMyCompany team