How much should a small business website cost?

Why the range is so wide

You can get a website for nothing, and you can spend fifty thousand pounds on one. Both are called 'a website'. The difference is rarely the thing you see.

A template you set up yourself costs a few pounds a month and a weekend of your time. An agency at the other end charges thousands for strategy workshops, custom design and a team of people. Most small businesses need something in the middle, and get sold something at one of the ends.

What you are actually paying for

Design and build is the obvious part, but it is often not the expensive part. What costs money is the thinking: who the site is for, what you want them to do, and how a visitor becomes an enquiry. A beautiful site that brings you no work is an expensive business card.

You are also paying, or should be, for it to load fast, work properly on a phone, stand a chance of being found on Google, and be something you can update yourself without paying someone every time a price changes.

Rough figures

• A simple, credible site that brings in enquiries, a handful of pages done properly: roughly £800 to £2,500.
• A larger site with more pages, custom design, or features like booking or a members area: £2,500 to £8,000 and up, depending on what it actually has to do.
• A template you build yourself: the cost of the subscription and your time. Genuinely fine for some businesses, and I will tell you if it is fine for yours.

The costs after launch

A website is not finished when it goes live. Hosting, the domain, any tools it relies on, and updates all cost something. Ask about it up front. A simple site can cost very little to keep running. Be wary of anyone who needs paying every time you want to change a sentence.

How to not overpay

Be clear about what the site is for before you ask for a price. 'I need more enquiries from local customers' leads to a very different, and usually cheaper, build than a vague 'I need a website'. The clearer you are, the less anyone has to pad the quote to cover what they do not yet understand.

And make sure you own it: the domain, the content, the site itself. It is surprising how often a business finds it cannot move its own website because whoever built it holds the keys.

For most small businesses the right number is well under an agency quote and a bit more than free. The way to find yours is to talk through what the site actually needs to do.