It is the first question every business asks and the one most agencies refuse to answer on their website. The honest answer is 'it depends', but that is not useful on its own, so here is what it depends on, what the ranges look like in 2026, and how to tell whether a quote is reasonable.

Typical UK website prices in 2026

Prices vary by region and by who is doing the work, but across the agencies and freelancers we see quoting against us, these ranges hold for a professionally built site with custom design rather than a template.

  • Starter or brochure website (5-8 pages, custom design, contact form): £1,500 - £4,000
  • Business website (10-20 pages, design system, SEO foundations, integrations): £4,000 - £10,000
  • E-commerce store (Shopify or WooCommerce, catalogue setup, checkout, feeds): £6,000 - £25,000+
  • Custom web application or headless build: £15,000 upwards, scoped individually
  • Hosting, maintenance and care plan: £50 - £250 per month

What actually drives the cost

A website is priced on time, and time goes into five things. Understanding them lets you push the price down where it does not matter and spend where it does.

  • Page templates, not page count. Twenty pages built from four templates cost far less than ten pages that are all different.
  • Functionality: booking systems, CRM integrations, calculators, member areas and product feeds each add days of work.
  • Content. Writing, photography and video are often the largest hidden cost. If you supply them ready, the quote drops.
  • Search work built in: keyword research, page structure, schema and speed work done during the build rather than bolted on later.
  • Revisions and process. Fixed-scope projects with wireframe sign-off are cheaper than open-ended ones because nothing is built twice.

Why a £500 website usually costs more

A very cheap site is almost always a purchased template with your logo dropped in. It will look like a hundred other sites, it will be slow because of the bloat templates carry, and it will fight you every time you try to make it fit your actual content. The common outcome is a second site eighteen months later - so the £500 is spent on top of the real cost, not instead of it.

The same is true of DIY builders for any business that depends on being found in search. They are fine for a holding page. They are a poor foundation for ranking against competitors who have invested properly.

What a reasonable quote should include

Whatever the price, the quote should be written, fixed and specific. Look for these items; if any are missing, ask why.

  • A page-by-page or template-by-template scope
  • Mobile, tablet and desktop designs shown before build
  • Performance targets - Core Web Vitals passing on mobile
  • On-page SEO: titles, descriptions, headings, schema, sitemap, redirects from the old site
  • Training and documentation so your team can edit it
  • Ownership: domain, hosting and code in your name
  • A defined support period after launch

How Websitelift prices a project

We quote a fixed price after a free consultation and a short audit of what you have now. The figure covers the whole job from wireframe to launch and thirty days of support, and it does not change unless you change the scope - in which case we quote the change before starting it. Guide prices for each kind of project are on our pricing page.

Published · Last updated · By the Websitelift team