How Much Does a Website Cost in the UK?
Written by Aron Anderson · Founder & Chief Growth OfficerWritten by Aron Anderson · Founder & Chief Growth Officer
A professionally designed small business website costs between £1,000 and £5,000 in the UK. DIY website builders run £10 to £40 a month plus your own time, template builds sit around £500 to £2,000, ecommerce websites start near £2,000 and climb with complexity, and large bespoke projects run £10,000 upward. Those are honest 2026 ranges from inside the industry, and this guide explains exactly what moves a project up or down within them.
| Website type | Typical UK cost | Ongoing costs |
|---|---|---|
| DIY website builder (Wix, Squarespace, Shopify basic) | £10 to £40 per month plus your time | Subscription, apps, your hours |
| Template website built for you | £500 to £2,000 | Hosting £10 to £30 per month |
| Custom small business website | £1,000 to £5,000 | Hosting and maintenance |
| Ecommerce website (Shopify or WooCommerce) | £2,000 to £10,000+ | Platform, apps, payment fees |
| Large custom or bespoke web application | £10,000 to £100,000+ | Development retainer |
Ranges reflect the UK market in 2026 and our own pricing at Rank Craft, where custom business websites typically land between £1,000 and £5,000.
Five factors explain almost every quote you will receive. Number of pages and templates: a five-page brochure site and a fifty-page site with location and service silos are different projects. Custom design versus template: a template adapted to your brand costs less than design created from research about your customers; both can be right, our redesign checklist helps you tell which you need. Functionality: booking systems, ecommerce, calculators, member areas and integrations each add build and testing time. Content and copywriting: who writes the words? Copy that persuades and ranks is skilled work; "client to supply content" is where cheap projects go to stall. SEO foundations: keyword-mapped structure, schema, speed and analytics wired in from day one, the difference between a website and a website that gets found.
The DIY route, Wix, Squarespace, or Shopify for stores, costs £10 to £40 a month and your evenings. It is genuinely the right answer for testing an idea or a brand-new business watching every pound. The limits appear on schedule: builder sites are harder to make fast, harder to rank, and harder to make convert, and the owner's time quietly becomes the biggest cost. Professional web design earns its fee when the website's job is revenue: a £3,000 site that brings two extra customers a month pays for itself in the first year, which is the only comparison that matters. WordPress sits between the extremes, free software, professional build, full ownership, and it is why so much of the UK web, including projects like our Foodopolis build, runs on it.
An ecommerce website carries extra weight: product architecture, payment and shipping integration, and conversion design across category, product and checkout pages. UK builds typically run £2,000 to £10,000+ depending on catalogue size and customisation, on top of platform costs (Shopify subscriptions or WooCommerce hosting) and payment processing fees. The pricing logic and platform choice are covered fully on our ecommerce web design page.
Overpaying is obvious; underpaying is sneakier and more common. The £400 website that cannot rank, loads slowly and converts nobody is not cheap, it is £400 spent confirming you need a real one. Protect yourself in both directions: get itemised quotes so you can compare inclusions, ask who writes the content, ask what SEO is actually included (structure and schema, or just a plugin installed), confirm you will own the domain and site outright, and ask to see live sites with results attached, the reason we publish case studies with numbers. A good web designer will answer all five questions without flinching.
If you want a precise number instead of a range, that is what quotes are for: tell us what the website needs to do and we will price it properly, free, with everything itemised.
Because you are buying different products with the same name. A £600 website is a template with your logo; a £5,000 website includes strategy, custom design, copywriting, SEO foundations and testing. Compare what is included, not just the number.
It can be, at the very start. Builders are cheap and fast, and a decent DIY site beats no site. The ceiling arrives when you need to rank in search, load fast, or convert seriously; that is typically when businesses move to a professional build.
Domain (£10 to £30 a year), hosting (£5 to £50+ a month), any platform or plugin subscriptions, and maintenance. Budget realistically for updates too: a website is a vehicle that needs servicing, not a monument.
Aron founded Rank Craft in 2013 and leads growth and marketing strategy. He works with owners and marketing teams on the numbers that matter: leads, sales and return on marketing spend. More articles by Aron.