How much does a small business website cost in 2026?

Some people build their website themselves one weekend for next to nothing. Others pay a few thousand and still can’t change their own opening hours. What you pay depends on who builds it, and the bills carry on after it goes live.

Here’s how we’d explain it if you rang us.

Option one: build it yourself

Website builders like Wix, Squarespace and GoDaddy give you a set of templates and charge a monthly or yearly fee. Expect to pay somewhere around £150 to £250 a year for a basic plan, usually with a free domain name for the first year.

For some businesses that’s the right call, especially when you’re just starting out and money’s tight. But the real price is your time. You pick the template, write every page, sort out the photos, and fix it when something looks wrong on a phone. Some people enjoy that. If you’d rather be doing your actual job, it gets expensive in a different way.

Option two: pay someone to build it

This is where we come in, along with every other web designer and agency out there. You’ll get quotes from a few hundred pounds to several thousand for the same sort of site.

A lot of quotes only cover the build. After that you’re sorting out hosting, updates and changes yourself, or paying for each one as it comes up. So ask every quote the same thing: once it’s live, who looks after it, and what does that cost?

Our price is fixed and in writing before we start. It includes your first year of hosting and your domain, and once the site’s live we look after it and make your changes for you.

The running costs nobody mentions

A website keeps costing a little after launch. None of these is much on its own, but together they’re easy to forget when you’re budgeting.

Your domain name. It renews every year, and a cheap first-year deal often renews at several times the price. A .co.uk that costs a few pounds to register can easily cost £14 or so a year after that. Always check the renewal price before you buy.

Email. A proper address like [email protected] is usually charged per person, per month. We use Microsoft 365 ourselves and recommend it. Business Basic is about £6.50 a person a month including VAT on a yearly plan, so roughly £235 a year for three of you, with Teams and the online versions of Word and Excel thrown in.

Hosting. You’ll see hosting advertised for about a pound a month. Read the small print, because the price can jump a long way in year two.

WordPress updates. If your site runs on WordPress, it needs updating regularly to stay safe, and many of the add-ons that make it work charge a yearly subscription. Someone has to keep on top of all that, and if it isn’t you, it’s another bill.

The ICO fee. Not strictly a website cost, but it often gets forgotten. If you keep customer details, even just names and phone numbers, you’ll probably have to pay the ICO (the data protection regulator) a yearly fee. For most small businesses it’s £52, or £47 by direct debit, whether you’re a sole trader or a company.

Seven questions to ask before you pay anyone

Ask anyone who quotes you these, including us:

1. What will it cost over the first two years, including VAT?
2. What does hosting cost after year one?
3. Is the domain registered in my name?
4. Who makes changes after launch, how quickly, and what do they cost?
5. If it’s WordPress, who does the updates?
6. How many rounds of changes are included in the build?
7. What do I need to supply, and what if I haven’t got a logo or decent photos?

Get the answers in writing. Anyone who’s happy to do that is easier to trust than someone who just says “it depends”.

What we charge

All our prices include VAT, and they’re all on our pricing page.

• A single page website is from £240.
• The New Business Starter is three pages for £420, for businesses registered in the last 90 days.
• A standard website of up to five pages is from £780, and each extra page is £72.

That includes your first year of hosting, a .co.uk or .com domain, and two rounds of changes once you’ve seen the first version. Most sites are live within 3 to 5 working days of us having your words and photos. There’s more on how we design and build if you want the detail.

After the first year you can go on a care plan from £36 a month, which covers hosting, backups and two changes a month, usually done the same working day. You don’t have to. Without a plan, changes are £30 each and hosting is a small yearly cost we agree with you up front.

We’re based in Ruthin and work with businesses all over Denbighshire, Wrexham, the rest of North Wales and Cheshire, mostly by email and phone.

If you’ve already got a quote from someone else, send it over with what you need. We’ll give you a fixed price in writing, and we’re happy to help you work out the running costs on both.