How much does a website cost in the UK? (2026 price guide)
A straight answer on what UK businesses actually pay for a website in 2026 — by type of site, by who builds it, and what it costs every month after launch.
Key takeaways
- A simple template or DIY website in the UK typically costs £0–£1,500 to set up, plus £15–£40 a month.
- A professionally built small-business website usually costs £2,000–£8,000.
- A custom e-commerce store usually costs £6,000–£30,000+; a bespoke web app or management system £15,000–£60,000+.
- Budget £30–£300 a month for hosting, domain, maintenance and licences — the costs most quotes leave out.
The short answer
Most UK small businesses pay between £2,000 and £8,000 for a professionally built website in 2026. You can spend far less with a website builder, and far more if you need e-commerce, logins, bookings or integrations with other systems.
The price is driven by three things: how many unique page layouts you need, how much custom functionality there is (anything beyond "pages and a contact form"), and who builds it. The tables below break each one down so you can sanity-check any quote you receive.
UK website costs by type of website
These are typical market ranges we see across UK quotes in 2026, not a 2xdev price list:
| Type of website | Typical one-off cost | Typical timeline |
|---|---|---|
| DIY builder (Wix, Squarespace) | £0 – £500 + your time | Days |
| Template WordPress site set up by a freelancer | £500 – £2,000 | 1–3 weeks |
| Small-business brochure site (5–15 custom pages) | £2,000 – £8,000 | 3–8 weeks |
| Shopify / WooCommerce store | £3,000 – £15,000 | 4–10 weeks |
| Fully custom e-commerce storefront | £8,000 – £30,000+ | 8–16 weeks |
| Startup MVP / web app | £15,000 – £50,000+ | 8–16 weeks for v1 |
| Bespoke management system, CRM or portal | £15,000 – £60,000+ | Phased over 3–6 months |
Website costs by who builds it
- Doing it yourself — cheapest up front, but you pay with your time and usually with slower pages and weaker SEO.
- Freelancer — often £25–£60 an hour in the UK. Great for smaller sites; riskier when one person is your only point of failure.
- Small agency or senior studio — usually £50–£100 an hour or a fixed project price. You get design, development, QA and support from one team.
- Large agency — £100–£180+ an hour. Worth it for complex enterprise programmes, expensive for most SMEs.
Whatever you choose, ask for a fixed, itemised quote. An hourly estimate with no scope document is the most common reason UK website projects go over budget.
The monthly costs most quotes leave out
A website is not a one-off purchase. Budget for these running costs from day one:
| Running cost | Typical cost |
|---|---|
| Domain name (.co.uk / .com) | £10 – £20 a year |
| Hosting (shared → managed cloud) | £5 – £100 a month |
| Website builder or Shopify plan | £15 – £300 a month |
| Premium plugins, apps and licences | £0 – £100 a month |
| Maintenance, security updates and backups | £50 – £250 a month |
| Payment / platform transaction fees (e-commerce) | 0% – 2% of revenue |
Platform and app fees are why some growing shops move to a custom store. When we built Dairy Farm Products as a bespoke Next.js grocery store, the business stopped paying platform fees on every order.
What pushes the price up (and what doesn’t)
- Custom functionality — logins, bookings, calculators, dashboards and integrations cost more than extra pages.
- Unique designs per page — five layouts cost less than fifteen, even with the same number of pages.
- Content — copywriting, photography and product data entry are often quoted separately.
- Integrations — connecting a CRM, payment provider, stock system or accounting software adds scope. See our API integration services.
- Migrating an existing site — moving content and setting up redirects protects your Google rankings, but it’s real work.
What should not add much cost in 2026: mobile responsiveness, basic technical SEO (titles, sitemaps, schema), SSL and analytics. These should be part of any professional build.
How to avoid overpaying
- Write a one-page brief: goals, must-have features, nice-to-haves and examples of sites you like.
- Ask every supplier for the same thing: an itemised fixed quote, a timeline and who owns the code afterwards.
- Launch a lean first version, then improve it from real visitor data — the same approach we use for startup MVPs.
- Check that SEO basics and Core Web Vitals are included, not sold later as an extra.
- Make sure you own the domain, hosting and code. Lock-in is the most expensive "hidden cost" of all.
So, what should your website cost?
If you need a credible site that brings in enquiries, plan for the £2,000–£8,000 range. If your website is the business — an online store, a booking platform, a customer portal — plan for a custom build and judge it on the revenue or hours it saves, not just the price.
If you’d like a second opinion on a quote, or a fixed-price quote of your own, tell us about your project. We reply within one business day.