"How much does a website cost?" is the question we're asked first on almost every call, and the honest answer is that it depends entirely on how much of the thinking you want to do yourself. A single page where you supply the words and pictures is a fundamentally different job from a ten-page site with bookings, integrations and bespoke layouts per section.
So rather than give you a range wide enough to be useless, here are the actual bands we quote in, and what changes between them. These are our prices — a Norwich-based, founder-led studio working UK-wide — and they're broadly representative of what a competent independent designer or small studio in the UK charges in 2026. A large city agency will typically sit two to four times higher for equivalent scope, because you're also paying for account managers, offices and overhead.
1. The four realistic price bands
| What you get | Typical price | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| One page, fixed structure, you supply copy and images | £495 | 2 weeks |
| Five to six pages, bespoke layout, editable content | £1,250 | 3–4 weeks |
| Ten-plus pages, custom layouts, e-commerce or booking | £2,450 | 4–6 weeks |
| Bespoke: custom interaction, motion, bespoke integrations | From £6,000 | Quoted per project |
The £495 one-pager
This price only works because the scope is genuinely fixed. There's a set page structure, you provide all the copy and images, and there's one round of revisions. It's the right choice if you need a credible, mobile-optimised presence quickly — a trade business, a new consultancy, a service that sells over the phone. It is the wrong choice if you expect to redesign the layout three times, because that's a different job with a different price.
The £1,250 multi-page site
This is where most businesses land, and it's the figure we quote as our realistic starting point. Five to six pages, a layout built around how you actually sell rather than a template, content you can edit yourself afterwards, two rounds of revisions, contact forms and basic integrations. If you're choosing between this and the one-pager, the deciding question is usually whether you need separate pages for separate services — because separate pages are what get found in search.
The £2,450 large site
Ten pages or more, custom layouts per section, and the commercial machinery: taking payment, accepting bookings, connecting to the tools you already run on. The jump in price is mostly the jump in states — a booking flow has to handle the happy path, the double-booking, the cancellation and the failed payment, and each of those is real work.
£6,000 and above: bespoke
Sites that don't fit a template. Interactive work, motion design, bespoke data work, unusual integrations. We scope and quote these individually after a call, and the price is fixed before work begins. Our Lakeside House Properties site sits in this territory — a luxury new-build developer where the site had to feel as considered as the houses.
2. What actually drives the price
Page count is the number everyone asks about and it's rarely the real driver. In our experience the cost lives in five places:
- Content. If you supply finished copy, the project is faster and cheaper. If we're writing it, that's a genuine additional workstream — often the single biggest variable.
- Bespoke layout vs fixed structure. A designed page is drawn from scratch. A fixed structure is filled in. The difference is hours, and hours are the price.
- Functionality with states. Payments, bookings, logins, quotes, file uploads. Anything with a success path also has failure paths that have to be handled properly.
- Integrations. Connecting to your CRM, accounting package or supplier feed depends entirely on how cooperative their API is. Some take an hour; some take a week.
- Revision rounds. This is the one that quietly destroys budgets on day-rate contracts. Fix the number of rounds in the quote.
The scope-creep trap. If a quote is priced as a day rate with no fixed total, you are carrying all the risk of the estimate being wrong. We quote every project as a fixed, itemised price agreed before work starts — if we've underestimated, that's our problem, not your invoice.
3. Ongoing costs: hosting, domains and changes
The build price isn't the whole cost of ownership. Budget for these too:
- Domain name — roughly £8–£15 a year for a
.co.uk, more for premium extensions. - Hosting — anywhere from free on modern static hosting to £20–£60 a month for a busy e-commerce site. A brochure site rarely needs expensive hosting; don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
- Email — a business mailbox on your own domain is typically £4–£8 per user per month.
- Changes — the important question is whether you can make them yourself. If every text tweak needs a developer at £70 an hour, a "cheap" site becomes expensive within a year. Ask specifically: can I edit the content without you?
- Care and maintenance — optional, but if a plugin-heavy platform is involved, updates are not optional. Sites built without a plugin stack need far less babysitting.
4. DIY builders vs an agency vs a studio
Wix, Squarespace and Shopify are genuinely good products, and if your budget is under a few hundred pounds and you have a weekend, use them. The trade is your time and a ceiling on how distinctive the result can be — templates look like templates, and search results are full of them.
A large agency gives you process, redundancy and a team. You pay for that in overhead and in the distance between you and whoever actually builds the thing. For a business under about fifty people, that distance is usually the problem rather than the solution.
A small studio or independent sits in between: agency-standard output, direct access to the person building it, and no account-management layer. That's the model we run — founder-led from first call to launch. The risk to check for is capacity: ask who's building it and what happens if they're ill.
5. How to read a quote before you sign it
Whoever you use, get these six things in writing:
- A fixed total, itemised — not a day rate with an estimate attached.
- Who owns the site, the domain and the code at the end. The answer should be you.
- The number of revision rounds included, and the cost of further rounds.
- Who writes the copy and who sources the images.
- Whether you can edit content yourself after launch, and at what cost if not.
- What happens after launch — hosting, backups, updates, and how to get hold of them.
6. Quick answers
Can I get a decent website for under £500?
Yes — a well-built single page with a fixed structure, where you supply the content. Under about £250 you're either buying a template someone has filled in, or buying someone's inexperience.
Why do quotes for "the same" site vary so much?
Because they're almost never the same site. One includes copywriting, custom design and integrations; the other is a template with your logo dropped in. Compare the six items above, not the headline number.
How long does a website take?
Two weeks for a one-pager, three to four for a multi-page site, four to six for a large build. The delay is almost always waiting on content, so having your copy and photos ready is the single fastest way to launch sooner.
Do I need a monthly retainer?
Not usually for a brochure site. If someone insists on one before explaining what it buys, ask them to itemise it.
Want a real number for your project?
Tell us what you sell and who you sell it to, and you'll get a fixed, itemised quote — not a day rate. Straight from the person who'll build it.