How much does a website cost in the UK?

First, the thing that isn't published anywhere

There is no official UK figure for what a small business spends on its website. The obvious source, the ONS's E-commerce and ICT Activity survey, last published 2019 data in February 2021 and its next release is still listed as “to be announced”. Even at its most recent it measured whether businesses had a website, not what they paid — and it only surveyed businesses with ten or more employees, which excludes almost every sole trader and small firm reading this.

So anyone quoting you an “average UK website spend” is quoting an agency's estimate. Worth knowing before you compare your quote to a number in a blog post.

What is checkable is what companies publish. Everything below is a real published price with the source named, checked on 15 September 2026.

What the DIY builders cost

These prices are all per month with annual billing, which is how they are advertised. Monthly billing costs more, sometimes dramatically.

The Wix finding is worth a paragraph of its own. Loaded from a UK broadband connection, Wix's plans page still shows US dollars, with the note: “Prices and currency vary by location. USD prices displayed for reference only... Prices do not include applicable taxes.” A UK small business cannot see what Wix costs in pounds without going to the checkout. The dollar reference figures are $17, $29, $39 and $159 a month, but converting those and calling them UK prices would be guesswork, so this guide doesn't.

All four builders give a free domain for the first year only. Wix spells out the limit: the voucher “is only included with the first time purchase of a Premium plan” and “cannot be used to renew or extend a domain you already own”.

What a WordPress site really costs to run

Self-hosted WordPress — the software is free, you buy hosting and a domain separately — is where the advertised price and the real price diverge most sharply. Two business models are visible in UK hosting, and knowing which one you're looking at is worth more than any price comparison.

A SiteGround StartUp customer pays £23.88 + VAT in year one and £167.88 + VAT in year two for exactly the same service. Mythic Beasts, at the other end, states in writing: “We charge the same price for renewals of our Web & Email Hosting as for new accounts”, and notes its standard account price “has remained unchanged since the company was founded in 2000”.

Add a domain at £7.99 to £11.99 a year from a registrar that prints its real renewal price, and a small WordPress site's genuine running cost is somewhere around £100 to £180 a year once the introductory pricing has run out. The hosting side is covered properly in how much does website hosting cost, including the free options that genuinely work.

What a designer or agency charges — and who will tell you

Here is something you can check yourself in five minutes. Search “how much does a website cost UK” and look at what comes back: every result on the first page is a blog post written by an agency or a lead-generation site. Not one is a price list. The ranges in those articles are unsourced, and they are written by people quoting for the work.

So this guide only uses firms that publish actual figures. Of six UK agency sites checked directly, roughly half had no price anywhere on them at all.

Those are eight named firms who chose to publish, not the UK market. Don't average them. But they do show the real shape: a working brochure site from a UK firm that prints its prices starts in the low hundreds, and £5,000 is a bespoke build, not a small business website.

The monthly option, and the arithmetic nobody does

Several UK firms sell a website as a subscription: build, hosting and support rolled into one monthly fee. Published examples run £55 to £105 a month (Hollis Web), £79 to £199 a month (Plumber Web Design, described as a “launch price, locked 12 months”) and £99 a month (Aspire Tech).

If you stop paying, do you keep the website?

This is the question that matters most and the one least often answered. The answers, where firms do publish them, are wildly different:

• Plumber Web Design states assets are “fully transferable” and that it will “provide all website files and assist with migration”.
• Pixelish says you own the site “once the build is paid for: the design, the files, the lot”, and the domain “stays yours. It was in your name from day one”.
• Kitching Ltd offers rolling monthly with no lock-in — but “if you cancel your subscription, the website will be taken offline”.
• Maverick Websites states it “retains ownership and copyright of the design, underlying code and any bespoke assets created”, and on cancellation “the website will be removed from your servers”.

All four are legitimate businesses publishing their terms honestly. The point is that “no contract” and “cancel any time” do not mean you keep the website. Two of those four let you leave whenever you like and take the site down when you do. The question to ask is not “is there a contract?” but “who owns the files, and does the site stay up?” If you're not sure where you stand on an existing site, do I own my website walks through how to check.

What an online shop costs

Shopify's UK prices are £19 a month on Basic billed annually, £49 on Grow and £259 on Advanced. The fees underneath are where it gets real:

Working that through at Shopify's own published rates: a shop on Basic annual taking £3,000 a month across 100 orders pays £19 platform + £60 card fees + £25 per-order fees = about £104 a month, or £1,248 a year, before a theme, an app or a domain. That is a calculation from published rates, not a quote.

Squarespace charges an extra 2% online store transaction fee on its Basic plan and 0% from Core upward. Among the UK firms above, an ecommerce build is published at £699 to £700 + VAT.

What a cheap website actually leaves out

Not quality, necessarily. Usually one of two specific things, and both are checkable.

One: the year-one bundle. Buzz Web Design's £175–£550 packages include the domain, twelve months hosting, SSL and five email accounts — and they say so plainly, which is to their credit. But those are twelve-month inclusions. In year two they become your bill. Every builder does the same with the free domain.

Two: the compulsory monthly plan. Cheap Web Design's £399 + VAT build carries a £24.99 + VAT monthly care plan after three free months — £299.88 + VAT a year, which passes the build price inside eighteen months. Brambla's £1,200–£1,800 build has a mandatory £65 a month plan attached, £780 a year. Whether that's good value depends entirely on what the plan does, which is the subject of how much does website maintenance cost.

Can you take it with you?

Two builders, opposite answers, both in their own words.

Wix, in its own support documentation: “your site must run on Wix's servers. The reason you can't use another host for your Wix site is that the SaaS architecture does not support external hosting since it uses Wix's proprietary technology.”

Squarespace exports layout pages, one blog with its posts, text blocks and image blocks — and explicitly not album, cover, index, info, calendar, portfolio or store pages, not page-specific headers and footers, not style settings and not custom CSS. It also says: “It's not possible to export content from one Squarespace site and import it into another.”

GoDaddy's website builder advertises the opposite on its own page: “Download your code anytime. You always have control over your code.”

None of that makes any of them a bad choice. It means “moving” a Wix site and “rebuilding” it are the same job, and a quote for a straightforward migration from Wix has not looked at what it's migrating.

What to do before you accept a quote

Four questions, all answerable in writing, all of which change the number:

• What does it cost in year two? Get the renewal figure for hosting, domain and any plan, not the introductory one.
• Whose name will the domain be registered in? Yours, ideally, from day one.
• If I stop paying, what happens to the site? Stays up, comes down, or transfers to me.
• Is a monthly fee part of this, and is it optional? If mandatory, add it to the build price before comparing.

Common questions

How much should a website cost for a small business in the UK?

Among UK firms that publish their prices, a small brochure site runs from £175 + VAT for a single page up to around £1,200 for eight pages, with bespoke builds published at £2,500 to £8,000 and above. Building it yourself on a website builder costs from about £7.49 a month on an annual plan. There is no official UK average — the ONS survey that came closest stopped at 2019 data and only counted businesses with ten or more employees.

How much does a website cost per month in the UK?

On a builder, from £7.49 a month (GoDaddy Starter, annual) or £12 a month (Squarespace Basic, annual), with monthly billing costing considerably more — GoDaddy charges exactly double. Pay-monthly build-and-maintain packages from UK firms run £55 to £199 a month. A £99 a month plan is £1,188 a year and £3,564 over three years, more than most published one-off builds.

Why is my website cheaper in the first year?

Because the advertised price is usually a first-term promotion. WordPress.com prints the renewal on the plan card: Personal is £3 a month in year one and auto-renews at £5, Premium £7 renewing at £12. Hosting is worse — SiteGround's entry plan is £1.99 a month introductory and £13.99 on renewal, a sevenfold rise. A free domain on a builder is a first-year offer too.

Can I move my website if I build it on Wix or Squarespace?

Not really. Wix's own documentation says a Wix site “must run on Wix's servers” because the architecture “does not support external hosting”. Squarespace exports layout pages, one blog, text and images, but explicitly not shop pages, portfolios, custom styling or CSS, and states “it's not possible to export content from one Squarespace site and import it into another”. GoDaddy's builder, by contrast, advertises “download your code anytime”.

What does a cheap website leave out?

Usually one of two things. Either the recurring costs are bundled for year one and reappear in year two — domain, hosting and email all commonly free for twelve months — or there is a compulsory monthly care plan that overtakes the build price quickly. One UK firm charges £399 + VAT to build and £24.99 + VAT a month thereafter, which passes the build fee inside eighteen months.

What does an online shop cost in the UK?

Shopify Basic is £19 a month billed annually or £25 monthly, plus 2% + 25p per online card transaction. The part small shops miss is the extra fee for not using Shopify Payments: 2% of every sale on Basic, on top of whatever your own provider charges. A shop taking £3,000 a month over 100 orders pays about £104 a month all in, roughly £1,248 a year before apps or theme.

Prices checked 15 September 2026 from each company's own UK pricing page, viewed from a UK connection: Squarespace, WordPress.com, Wix, GoDaddy UK, Shopify UK, SiteGround UK, Hostinger UK, 123-reg, Krystal, Mythic Beasts, 20i; Buzz Web Design, Aspire Tech, Cheap Web Design, Hollis Web, Plumber Web Design, Brambla, London Website Design Services, Pixelish, Kitching Ltd, Maverick Websites. Platform limitations quoted from Wix's and Squarespace's own support documentation. Survey position from ONS E-commerce and ICT Activity (2019 data, published February 2021) and DSIT SME Digital Adoption Taskforce update, June 2026. Every price here is published by a company selling the thing it is pricing; none has been averaged or estimated. VAT treatment is stated only where the source states it.