Guide · · 8 min read
How much does a website cost in the UK?
How much does a website cost? Anything from a small yearly subscription to tens of thousands of pounds, and the honest answer for your business depends on what the site has to do. This guide sets out the published UK price ranges we trust enough to quote, with their source, then walks through what moves a quote up or down.
We build websites in Leeds, so we have an interest here too. That is why every figure on this page comes from somewhere you can check, and why you will not find our own prices: every project is quoted on what it needs.
The short answer
- GoDaddy UK puts a simple website at “around £100 per year” and a very large, complex one at “£10,000 and beyond”. [1]
- The same article costs a basic site built by a web designer at £5,315 in the first year and £815 and up each year after. [1]
- The biggest levers on price are the number of page designs, who writes the words, online payments, and anything bespoke such as bookings or a customer login.
- Budget for the running costs too: domain, hosting, security updates and someone to make changes.
What published UK price guides say
Most articles on website prices are written by agencies selling websites, and their ranges tend to land wherever their own packages sit. We have used one source with a clear method and dated figures: GoDaddy’s UK guide, published on 1 May 2026. [1] GoDaddy sells domains, hosting and a do-it-yourself website builder, so bear in mind that its sums compare a designer against its own product.
Its short answer is this: “You can expect to pay from around £100 per year for a simple website, with website prices going up to £10,000 and beyond for a very large, complex website.” [1] Its longer tables break that down by the kind of site.
A basic business website
For a basic site built by a web designer, GoDaddy’s table shows design at £4,500, hosting at £110 a year, a domain at £15 a year, an SSL certificate at up to £90 a year and maintenance at £600 a year, which gives a minimum first-year cost of £5,315 and an ongoing cost of £815 and up. [1] The same table puts its own basic website builder at £203 a year outside of sales. [1]
A website that sells online
For a small to medium online shop built by a designer, the first-year cost in the table is £7,255–£12,255, with £2,345 or more a year after that. [1] A large online shop is shown at £15,895–£35,895 in the first year and £5,910 or more each year after. [1]
The running costs
GoDaddy says “you can expect to pay around £0-£30 a year for your domain”, and that most small businesses “will be comfortable using the products at the £3.99 to £16.99 price point” for hosting, which GoDaddy charges by the month. [1] On upkeep, it says web design companies charge “between £50 and £10,000 a month” for ongoing maintenance. [1]
What moves the price of a website
Those ranges are wide because two websites can look alike on the surface and be very different jobs underneath. These are the things that make the most difference to a quote, roughly in order.
How many different page layouts you need
A designer charges for designs, not pages. Twenty service pages that share one layout are far less work than six pages that each need their own. Before asking for quotes, sketch the kinds of page you need: home, a service page, a contact page, perhaps a gallery or case study.
Who writes the words and supplies the pictures
Copy is the part most often left until last and the part that most often delays a launch. If you supply finished words and good photos, the quote covers putting them in. If the designer writes the copy, interviews you for it or arranges a photographer, that is real work and should appear on the quote as its own line.
Taking payments or bookings
A checkout brings product pages, stock, delivery rules, payment providers, order emails and the legal information online sellers must give. A booking system brings calendars, reminders and cancellations. Either can turn a brochure site into something closer to software, and the price reflects that.
Anything bespoke
Customer logins, quote calculators, links to your accounts package or a stock feed all need building and testing, and someone has to look after them once they are live. If the job is mostly bespoke, it may be closer to web development than design, and it is worth asking for the two to be quoted separately.
Moving from an old site
If you already have a site that brings in enquiries, the move matters as much as the new design. Every old address that has links or search traffic needs pointing at its new home, or the visitors and the search visibility it earned are lost. Ask any designer how they handle redirects before you agree a price.
Website builder or web designer?
A website builder is the cheapest way to get online, and for a sole trader who needs a few pages and a contact form it can be the right choice. You trade money for your own time: you choose the template, write the words, sort the photos and fix it when something breaks.
A designer or developer earns their fee when the site has a job to do that a template does not do well: bringing in enquiries from search, selling online, matching a brand you have invested in, or connecting to the systems your business already runs on. The question is not which is cheaper, but which one gets you more customers for what you spend.
- Choose a builder if you have more time than budget, the site is mostly a contact card, and you are happy to keep it up to date yourself.
- Choose a designer if the site needs to win work from Google, take payments, or look like a business people already trust.
- Whichever you choose, make sure the domain is registered in your business’s name and that you hold the login.
Does a website cost less in Leeds?
We have not found a reliable published survey of website prices by city, so we will not quote one. The work involved in a site is much the same wherever the business is; what varies is each designer’s rate, which is why quotes from the same city can differ widely. What a local designer adds is who you can meet, how easily you can sit down with the people building it, and whether they understand who your customers are.
If you are comparing quotes from Leeds designers, compare what each one includes rather than the headline number: how many layouts, who writes the copy, whether redirects and search set-up are in, and what happens after launch.
Costs that are easy to miss
These rarely appear on the first quote and almost always appear on the first invoice after launch. Ask about each one up front.
- Renewals: the domain and hosting renew every year, and the renewal price is often higher than the first year’s.
- Updates and security: a site built on a content management system needs regular updates, and someone has to test them.
- Legal pages: a limited company must show certain details on its website, and a site that uses non-essential cookies needs consent first. See our small business website checklist.
- Email: a mailbox on your own domain is usually a separate monthly cost.
- Changes after launch: find out whether small edits are included, charged by the hour or something you can do yourself.
- Search: a new site is not automatically found. Read how long SEO takes before you set expectations.
How to get a quote you can compare
The cheapest way to get a good website is to know what you want before you ask. A one-page brief makes quotes comparable and saves days of back and forth.
- What the site is for, in one sentence: enquiries, bookings, sales or credibility.
- The pages you think you need, and any you have seen on other sites and liked.
- Whether you will supply the words and photos.
- Anything it must connect to: payments, a booking calendar, a mailing list, your accounts package.
- Your current site’s address, if you have one, and roughly how many enquiries it brings in.
- A budget range. It is not a trap: it tells the designer which version of the site to propose.
How LDC quotes a website
We quote after a short conversation, once we understand what the site needs to do. Hosting and updates after launch, if you want them from us, are agreed separately. Whoever you ask, it helps to ask for the layouts, the content work, any features and the move from your old site to be listed, so you can compare quotes line by line. See web design in Leeds for how a project runs, or the websites we have built to judge the work itself.
Questions
Website costs questions
What is the cheapest way to get a business website?
A do-it-yourself website builder. GoDaddy’s own UK guide puts its basic builder at £203 a year outside of sales. [1] You do the work yourself, so it suits a few simple pages more than a site that has to win work from search or take payments.
Why do website quotes vary so much?
Because the same brief can be read as a template with your logo on it or as a site designed around your customers, with the words written for you and old pages redirected. Ask each designer to list how many layouts, who writes the copy, what features are included and what happens after launch, then compare those lines.
Should a website quote include SEO?
It should include the basics: a title and description for each page, sensible headings, a sitemap, redirects from any old site and a check that pages can be found. Ongoing work to climb the results is a separate job. Ask what is included, and be wary of anyone promising rankings, which nobody can control.
Do I own my website once it is paid for?
You should. Make sure the domain is registered to your business, that you have the logins for the hosting and the site, and that the contract says the design and content are yours once paid. If a site can only live on the designer’s own platform, ask what happens if you ever want to leave.
Sources
Every figure and quotation in this guide comes from these pages. We read each one on the date shown.
- How much does a UK website cost? · GoDaddy UK, 1 May 2026. Read 1 October 2026.
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