Ask ten web developers what a small business website costs and you will get ten different answers. Ask an agency and you might get a number with a lot of zeros. Ask a freelancer on a bidding site and you might get something that sounds suspiciously cheap. Neither answer is necessarily wrong — but neither tells you much about what you are actually getting.
Here is an honest breakdown.
Why there is no single answer
The cost of a website depends almost entirely on what it needs to do and how it is built. A one-page site for a sole trader is a very different project to a ten-page site for a growing business with a booking system, a gallery, and a CMS that three different staff members need to use. Both are websites. Both might be described as a "small business website." The price difference between them is significant.
The main factors that affect cost are:
- Complexity — how many pages, features and integrations the site needs
- Design — whether you need something built from scratch around your brand or a customised template
- CMS — whether you need to edit your own content, and how sophisticated that editing needs to be
- Custom functionality — contact forms, booking systems, product filters, anything beyond a standard informational site
- Timeline — rushed projects cost more
The three tiers most businesses fall into
DIY website builders — £0 to £30/month
Tools like Squarespace, Wix and Shopify let you build something yourself for minimal cost. They are fine for getting something live quickly, and for very small or very early-stage businesses they can be the right call. The limitations show when you need something that does not fit neatly into a template, when performance and load speed matter, or when you want your site to feel genuinely distinct from thousands of others built on the same platform.
Freelance developer — roughly £1,000 to £5,000+
This is the middle ground where most small businesses end up, and where the range is widest. A simple custom-built site from a freelance developer typically starts somewhere around £1,000 to £1,500. More complex builds with custom functionality, multiple page templates, and a full CMS push into the £2,000 to £5,000 range. What you get at this tier that you do not get from a builder is something built specifically for your business — not a template with your logo dropped in.
Agency — £3,000 to £20,000+
Agencies carry more overhead than a solo developer and that is reflected in their pricing. For larger organisations, that overhead often comes with project management, dedicated account handling and multiple specialists working on a project. For a small business that needs a straightforward website, it is often more than is necessary.
What cheap websites actually cost you
A website built for £200 on a freelancing platform is cheap for a reason. It is usually a template with minimal customisation, built quickly with little thought given to performance, structure or whether it will actually work for your business in a year's time.
The real cost tends to show up later — in a site that loads slowly and loses visitors before they have read a word, in a CMS that nobody can figure out how to use, or in a build so tied to a specific theme or plugin that making any changes means starting again.
What a properly built site should include as standard
Regardless of price, a website built by anyone worth working with should include:
- Mobile-responsive design that works on every device
- A CMS so you can manage your own content without calling a developer
- Fast load times — slow sites lose visitors and rank poorly in search
- Clean, well-structured code that search engines can read properly
- SSL (HTTPS) as standard
- A proper handover so you know how to use what you have paid for
If any of these are presented as optional extras, that is worth knowing before you commit.
What to ask before you hire anyone
Before signing anything, it is worth asking a few straightforward questions:
- Will I be able to update my own content?
- What happens if something breaks after launch?
- Do you build from scratch or use templates?
- Can I see examples of previous work?
- What is included in the quoted price?
The answers will tell you a lot about whether the person or agency is the right fit.
If you are a small business in Yorkshire thinking about a new website or a rebuild, you can take a look at what I offer and what it typically costs — no jargon, no hard sell.
