It's the first thing almost everyone asks me, and the honest answer is that a small business website in the UK costs anywhere from nothing to tens of thousands of pounds. That range is no use on its own, so here's what sits behind it: who builds it, what you're actually paying for, and the running costs people forget to ask about.

The short answer

Do it yourself on a website builder: roughly £10 to £30 a month, plus your time.
A freelance designer: usually £500 to £1,500 for a five-page small business site, and £1,500 to £3,000 for something bigger.
An agency: typically from £3,000, and often £5,000 to £12,000 for a brochure site.
An online shop: from about £2,000 with a freelancer, and £5,000 or more with an agency.

Those ranges come from two recent UK pricing guides, from ExpertSure and kwiboo. London prices sit well above them.

What you're paying for

The price of a website is mostly time. A few things decide how much of it a job needs:

Number of pages. Home, services, about and contact is a very different job to thirty pages of services and locations.
Who writes the words. If you supply them, it's quicker. If the designer writes them, budget for it.
Photos. Your own, stock images or a photographer all cost differently.
Features. Bookings, a shop, customer logins or links to other systems add days, not hours.
A template or a design of its own. A template adjusted to fit is cheaper; a design made around your business takes longer.

The running costs

The build is a one-off. These carry on every year, and they're where cheap quotes often hide the real cost:

Domain name: around £10 to £15 a year for a .co.uk.
Hosting: from under £10 a month for basic shared hosting, to £20 or more for hosting that's set up and looked after properly.
Email on your own domain: usually charged per mailbox.
Changes and upkeep: basic maintenance packages start at around £25 to £50 a month; bigger ones run to hundreds.

When you compare quotes, ask what you'll pay after launch. Over three years, a £400 site with £60 a month of extras costs £2,560. A £900 site with £25 a month costs £1,800.

What it costs with me

I keep it simple and publish my prices:

Websites from £499, whether it's a small business site, a site built to bring in enquiries, something bespoke or a rebuild. See all my web design prices.
Hosting from £24.99 a month, with daily backups, SSL and a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
Domains from £11.99 a year, and business email from £36 a year.
No maintenance plan to pay for: change the site yourself, or book me for a half day (£295) or full day (£495).

There are no contracts on hosting or email.

How to get a quote you can compare

Write down what the site needs to do: bring in calls, take bookings, sell, or simply make you look credible.
List the pages you think you need, and who's writing them.
Ask every designer the same three questions: what's included, who owns the domain and the site, and what it costs each year after launch.

If you'd like a straight answer for your business, get in touch and I'll tell you what it would cost before anything starts.