How much does a website cost in the UK?

A website in the UK can cost anything from £10 a month to £30,000 or more, and that is not a useful answer until you pin down what you actually mean by "website". A Squarespace site you build yourself and a custom, design-led site built by a studio are both "websites" the way a bike and a car are both "transport". They solve different problems and cost accordingly.

Here is the honest version: a DIY builder runs £10 to £50 a month. A lightly customised template sits around £500 to £3,500. A custom, design-led site from a studio typically runs £8,000 to £30,000+, and e-commerce builds go higher again. The rest of this guide is about working out which of those you need, so you do not overpay for custom you will not use or cheap out on the thing your customers judge you by.

Typical UK website costs in 2026

These are the ranges across UK providers this year. Where you land depends mostly on one thing: template versus custom.

• DIY builder, Wix or Squarespace: £10 to £50 per month
• Template site, lightly customised: £500 to £3,500
• Freelancer, custom small-business site: £1,500 to £5,000
• Studio or agency, custom design-led site: £8,000 to £30,000+
• E-commerce build: £3,000 to £35,000+
• Ongoing, hosting and maintenance: £50 to £300 per month

Freelancers sit below agencies for the same brief. London studios and full-service agencies sit at the top. A boutique studio, the two-to-nine-person kind, usually lands in the £8,000 to £20,000 band for a proper marketing site, more if there is product or e-commerce in the mix.

Why the range is so wide

Two things drive almost all of the difference: how much of the site is custom, and how much design and strategy sits behind it.

A template is a house someone else designed that you move into and repaint. It is quick, it is cheap, and for plenty of small businesses it is genuinely fine. A custom site is designed and built around your brand, your content and how you want people to move through it. It costs more because someone is making decisions instead of picking a preset.

A cheap site can look done on launch day. Whether it loads, ranks and converts a year later is what you are actually paying for.

What drives the cost up or down

• Template versus custom. The single biggest lever. Custom design and build is where the studio-level numbers come from.
• Number of pages and templates. A five-page site and a fifty-page site are not the same job.
• E-commerce. Selling online adds real complexity: products, payments, stock, tax.
• Content. Copywriting, photography and imagery are often quoted separately. Ask.
• Integrations. Booking systems, CRMs, portals and logins all add build time.
• How it is built. A modern custom build, the React and Next.js kind, costs more up front than a template, and tends to be faster, more secure and cheaper to run afterwards.

The costs people forget

The build is a one-off. A website is not. Budget for the running costs before you commit, because they catch people out:

• Hosting: £5 to £100 a month depending on the site.
• Domain: roughly £15 a year.
• Maintenance and care: £50 to £300 a month for updates, security and backups, more if you want content changes handled for you.

A cheap build with no plan for the running of it is how sites end up broken, out of date or hacked within a year.

When a template is fine, and when it is not

We build custom sites, so it would be easy to tell you everyone needs one. They do not.

If you are testing an idea, running a simple local business, or you need something live this week on a tight budget, a Squarespace or Wix site is a sensible, honest choice. Do not spend £15,000 proving something a £15-a-month site would prove just as well.

Custom is worth it when the website is the business's shopfront and you are being judged by it: when you are selling something considered, raising money, competing on credibility, or the site has to convert traffic into real enquiries or sales. At that point the template starts costing you in lost customers what it saved you in build fees, and cheap turns expensive.

The trap in the middle is the £2,000 custom-ish site that is neither. It is too expensive to be disposable and too rushed to perform, and it usually gets rebuilt within eighteen months. Paying twice is the most expensive option of all.

How to avoid overpaying, or underpaying

Whoever you brief, these questions cut through the quote:

• Is this custom or a customised template? Both are valid, but you should know which you are buying.
• What is included, and what is quoted separately? Content, copy, photography and SEO are the usual extras.
• How is it built, and who hosts and maintains it afterwards?
• What can I edit myself, and what needs to come back to you?
• What happens in a year when I want to add or change something?

A studio that scopes you down when you do not need the full build is worth more than one that says yes to everything.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a small business website cost in the UK?

A simple custom small-business site from a freelancer typically runs £1,500 to £5,000. A lightly customised template is £500 to £3,500. A DIY builder you set up yourself is £10 to £50 a month. Which is right depends on how much the site has to do for you.

How much does an e-commerce website cost?

Anywhere from £3,000 to £35,000+, depending on how many products you sell and how much custom design and functionality you need. A basic Shopify store sits at the lower end. A bespoke, design-led shop with custom features sits much higher.

How long does it take to build a website?

A template site can be days to a couple of weeks. A custom, design-led marketing site is usually four to eight weeks. E-commerce and product builds take longer, driven by complexity and how quickly content and feedback come back.

Why is one quote £2,000 and another £20,000 for the same website?

Because they are not the same website. The cheap one is almost always a template with light changes. The expensive one is custom design and build, made around your brand and how it needs to perform. Neither is wrong, they are answers to different questions.

What are the ongoing costs of a website?

Plan for £50 to £300 a month across hosting, maintenance, security and backups, plus about £15 a year for the domain. Skipping this is how sites break or get hacked.

A straight answer for your business

If you want a clear view on what your site should actually cost, custom or template, and whether it is worth building now or better left simple for a while, that is a conversation we are happy to have. We get hired to fix dated and underperforming sites, so we have seen most versions of this, including the ones where the honest answer was you did not need us yet.

Talk to Grid