How much does a website cost UK small businesses?

How much a website costs in the UK: what the published guides say

GoDaddy's UK guide, updated in May 2026, prices its own builder from £16.99 a month, about £203 a year for a basic site. It puts a basic site from a web designer at about £4,500, a small to medium online shop at £5,000 to £10,000, and a large shop at £10,000 to £30,000.

Checkatrade's cost guide, last updated in December 2023, gives a range of £495 to £15,000 for website design, with an average of £7,747.50. It puts a WordPress site at £400 to £7,000 and a bespoke design at £2,500 to £10,000.

Both guides agree on the point that matters: the number depends on what the site has to do. A single figure without that is a guess, not a price.

What a website costs with Fixr Systems

A new website from Fixr Systems starts from £1,200, and redesigning a site you already have starts from £750. The exact price for your project is fixed in a written quote, so the figure you agree is the figure you pay.

That is well under what published guides give for a basic designed site, and it includes a page for each service you sell and each place you cover. Every starting price we charge is published on our pricing page, before you have to ask.

What different types of website cost

A brochure website, a handful of pages and an enquiry form, is the simplest build. With Fixr Systems a new site starts from £1,200, with a page for each service you sell and each place you cover.

A website that takes bookings needs slots, payments and confirmation emails built and tested, and with Fixr Systems a booking system built into your site starts from £1,200. An online shop is the biggest job of the three, and GoDaddy's guide puts a small to medium shop at £5,000 to £10,000 from a designer.

Redesigning a site you already have costs less where the foundations are sound, and with Fixr Systems that starts from £750.

Builder, freelancer or agency

A website builder is the cheapest way to get online, and GoDaddy's own builder costs from £16.99 a month. You do the building, the writing and the search work yourself, and the site lives on the builder's platform.

A freelancer or an agency builds it for you. GoDaddy's guide puts a basic designed site at about £4,500, and the real difference between providers is what the price includes and who owns the result.

Fixr Systems is a small agency where the founder builds every site: from £1,200 with a fixed written quote, research behind every page, and your content and customer data always yours. For a business that wants to be found and to own what it pays for, that is the combination that matters.

Three things that decide what a website costs

The first thing that decides what a website costs is how many pages it needs. A business selling three things in two towns needs fewer pages than one selling eleven across twenty five, and the page count follows what people search for, not what looks tidy.

Whether money changes hands on it. A site that takes bookings and payments has slots, prices, deposits and confirmation emails to set up and test, which is what a website booking system involves.

What it has to talk to. Connecting a till, a calendar or an accounts package adds work, and it is usually the part that saves the most time afterwards.

Two website cost factors you control yourself

Whether your words and photographs are ready is the biggest cost factor that sits with you. Having your own photographs and a rough idea of what you want to say moves a build along faster than anything else.

How much of the existing site can be kept is the other. Where the foundations are sound, a redesign costs less than a rebuild, and we tell you which one you are looking at before you spend anything.

How much web designers charge in the UK

UK web designers charge anything from a few hundred pounds to tens of thousands, which is why the two guides above give such wide ranges. The figure on its own tells you very little.

What tells you something is what the price is fixed against. A fixed price quoted against a written scope means you know today what you will pay at the end, and that is how every Fixr Systems quote works.

What the money buys over a do it yourself builder

The comparison worth making between a builder and a built site is what each is bringing you a year later, not the first weekend. Three things decide that, and each is something you can check for yourself.

They are whether there is a page for every thing people search, whose name the domain and the code are in, and whether somebody answers when it needs changing.

A page for each thing people search

A page for each search is what decides whether you get found. Google shows a page, not a business, so a single Services page covering eight things has nothing specific to show somebody searching for one of them.

A built site starts with the research: the exact phrases people near you type, with real volumes, and then a page for each. SV Autos has a page for each of its eleven services and twenty five towns, and was shown 632 times in Google's AI answers in its first eleven weeks live, measured in Search Console.

It is also the hardest thing to add later, which is why it goes in first.

What you own at the end

With Fixr Systems your content and customer data are always yours, and we look after the domain and the hosting for you, so the site is set up properly and stays that way.

Ownership is worth checking wherever you buy from. A site made on a website builder only exists on that builder's platform, while with Fixr Systems your content and customer data are yours from the first day.

How long a website takes

Most Fixr Systems websites go live within 2 to 4 weeks of us having your words, your photographs and the list of what you sell. Content being ready is the biggest thing that moves the date, and your quote carries the actual date.

What a website costs to keep running

Once a site is live there is hosting, a security certificate, updates and backups to keep going. GoDaddy's guide puts hosting at £3.99 to £179.99 a month and a domain at up to £30 a year.

Sites we build go on a maintenance plan sized to the site, and looking after a site somebody else built is £50 an hour. The full breakdown is in what website maintenance costs.

Website costs people forget

Business email is usually separate from the website, and Google Workspace's Business Starter plan is £5.90 per user per month on an annual commitment. A domain name is up to £30 a year, according to GoDaddy's guide.

Words and photographs cost time or money if you do not already have them. A privacy notice is a legal requirement once your site collects names or emails, because the ICO says people must be told what you do with their information.

VAT is the other one. A business has to register for VAT once its taxable turnover passes £90,000, so check whether every quote you compare is with or without VAT.