What a small business website costs in the UK in 2026, and what the price should include

The short answer

UK price guides put a small business website, five to ten pages, at £1,500 to £3,000 from a freelancer and £3,000 to £8,000 from a regional agency. A London agency starts at about £8,000. The spread is real, and most of it comes from what each price includes rather than from anyone overcharging.

Why one brief gets three different quotes

Edge Studio sent the same brief, a five-page site for a small business, to three providers. The quotes came back at £1,500, £5,000 and £9,000.

• The £1,500 quote was a basic WordPress site, with little help on branding and no writing or search work.
• The £5,000 quote came from a small team: a plan for the site, a copywriter, a designer and a developer working together.
• The £9,000 quote added project management and meetings.

None of that is dishonest. They are three different jobs sold under one name. The only way to compare them is to ask each one what is in the price, in the same words.

The part most quotes leave out: the words

Website copy bought on its own costs £200 to £600 a page in the UK, or £1,000 to £5,000 for a site of five to ten pages (Whito, July 2026). When a quote says “you supply the content”, that is the bill still to come, paid in money or in your own time.

The words are also the part that decides whether a stranger rings you. A good layout around vague words is still vague. Ask who writes them, whether they will interview you first, and how many rounds of changes you get.

Photography is the other gap. A site built on stock photographs looks like a hundred others. If yours needs new photographs, ask whether the designer will write the shot list, and budget for the photographer separately.

What it costs every year after

Maintenance is optional; the hosting and the domain are not. Ask who each bill goes to, and whose name is on each account. Who should own your domain, hosting and files explains why that matters more than the amount.

VAT

A designer whose taxable turnover passed £90,000 in the last twelve months must register for VAT (GOV.UK), and then adds 20% to the invoice. Ask whether a quote includes it. If your business is not VAT-registered you cannot claim it back, so a £5,000 quote plus VAT costs you £6,000.

What the price should include

• The list of pages, agreed in writing before any design starts, and the price of an extra page.
• Who writes the words, and how many rounds of changes you get on the design and on the built site.
• A design made for a phone, where most strangers will first see you, not a laptop layout that shrinks.
• The copyright in the finished site, assigned to you in writing. In the UK the person who makes a commissioned work owns its copyright unless you agree otherwise in writing (Intellectual Property Office), and an assignment only counts if it is in writing and signed (Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, section 90(3)).
• Your domain registered in your name, and the hosting account in your name.
• What happens after launch: how long fixes are free, and what a change costs after that.
• When you pay, and what you keep if you stop part-way.

Six questions to ask any designer

1. Which pages are included, and what does an extra one cost?
2. Who writes the words?
3. Will I own the copyright, and will that be in writing?
4. Whose name will the domain and the hosting be in?
5. What does a small change cost after launch?
6. Does the price include VAT?

A designer who answers all six in writing, before you pay anything, is one you can compare fairly with the others.

Where my price sits

You are reading this on my site, so here is mine, answered the same way.

The first payment is US$750, for a Site plan in writing within 10 working days: the page list, every page’s structure and your home page’s first words, credited in full to the build. Before that, we talk on video, and you pay nothing. The whole offer, drawn to scale.