Ask five agencies what a website costs and you will get five variations of "it depends" followed by a request for a discovery call. That answer isn't dishonest, cost genuinely does depend on scope, but it leaves you unable to plan, and unable to tell whether the quote in front of you is fair.
This article explains what actually moves the number. Not a price list dressed up as advice, but the specific decisions that make one site cost a few hundred pounds and another several thousand. By the end you should be able to read a quote and understand what you are paying for.
Why nobody publishes a price
Two reasons, one legitimate and one less so.
The legitimate reason is that "a website" describes wildly different things. A three-page site for a plumber and a fifty-page site with a booking system and a customer login share a name and almost nothing else. Publishing a single figure would be meaningless.
The less legitimate reason is that hiding the number lets a quote be shaped around what a client seems able to pay rather than what the work costs. If two businesses ask for the same site and receive very different quotes, something other than scope is being priced.
The middle ground and what we do is publishing package prices for defined scopes, and quoting properly for anything outside them. You should expect a written scope and a fixed figure before work starts. If you can't get either, that itself tells you something.
The five things that actually move the price
1. Page count, but not the way you'd think
Pages matter less than page types. Ten pages that share one layout cost far less than four pages that each need their own design. A services page, a case study template and a contact page are three separate design and build problems. Ten more service pages using the first template are close to a rounding error.
When you receive a quote, ask how many unique templates it covers rather than how many pages. That's the number that drives the work.
2. Custom design versus a template
A theme or template gives you a proven layout at a fraction of the cost. A custom design gives you something that fits your business rather than something your business is fitted into.
The honest position: for a business that needs to look credible and be found, a well-implemented template is not a compromise. Most visitors cannot tell, and none of them care. Custom design earns its cost when you have a specific conversion problem to solve, an established brand to express precisely, or a competitive market where looking identical to three rivals is a real disadvantage.
Be wary of the reverse claim too. "Fully custom" is sometimes a template with the colours changed. Ask to see two previous builds and judge whether they look like siblings.
3. Copywriting
This is the single most underestimated line in any quote, and the most common reason projects stall.
Someone has to write every word on the site. If that isn't in the quote, it's your job, and it will take longer than you expect. Projects that miss their launch date usually miss it here — the build was finished weeks ago and is waiting on an About page nobody has written.
Decide early. Either budget for copywriting or block out real time to do it yourself. Deciding neither is how a three-week project becomes a three-month one.
4. Functionality beyond pages
Anything that does something rather than displays something adds cost, because it needs building and then testing against the ways users will break it:
- E-commerce — products, variants, stock, payment, shipping rules, tax, order emails
- Bookings — availability, calendar sync, confirmations, cancellations
- Accounts and logins — registration, password resets, data protection obligations
- Integrations — CRM, accounting software, email platforms, delivery providers
A contact form is not functionality in this sense. A form that creates a record in your CRM, triggers a sequence and notifies two people is.
5. Who is doing the work
A sole freelancer, a small studio and a large agency price differently for reasons that go beyond skill, overheads, project management, account handling, and how much of the fee reaches the person actually building.
Lower cost is not automatically worse. Higher cost is not automatically better. What matters is whether the scope is written down, whether you can see comparable work, and whether someone is accountable when something breaks in month four.
What most quotes quietly exclude
Read for absence as much as presence. Commonly missing:
- Copywriting, as above
- Photography — stock images have a look, and buyers recognise it
- Content migration from an existing site, which is manual and slow
- Ongoing hosting, usually billed separately
- Domain renewal, small but yours to remember
- An SSL certificate, often included but worth confirming
- Maintenance and updates after launch
- Training on how to edit your own site
- Extra revision rounds beyond the number specified
None of these are dishonest omissions. They're scope boundaries. But a quote that excludes six of them is not comparable to one that includes them, even if the headline figures match.
The ongoing costs nobody mentions upfront
A website is not a one-off purchase. Annual running costs typically include hosting, domain renewal, any paid plugins or licenses, and either a maintenance retainer or your own time keeping things updated.
The maintenance question deserves particular attention. Software that isn't updated becomes a security liability, and an unpatched site is the most common way a small business gets hacked. Either pay someone to keep it current or accept that you are doing it. There is no third option where it looks after itself.
How to compare two quotes fairly
Put them side by side and answer these questions for each:
- How many unique page templates are included?
- Is copywriting included, and for how many pages?
- How many revision rounds, and what counts as one?
- Who owns the site, the code and the domain when it's finished?
- What happens after launch, is there support, for how long, and what does it cover?
- What are the annual running costs, itemized?
- What is the payment schedule, and what triggers each payment?
- What happens if the project overruns?
If a quote can't answer these without another meeting, that's your answer.
Three realistic budget levels
To make this concrete, here is roughly what different budgets buy, using our own published pricing, so you can see the reasoning rather than take a claim on trust.
Around £500. A small starter site with a handful of pages on a proven layout, mobile-ready, contact form, basic on-page SEO so you can be found for your own name. Right for a new business that needs to exist credibly online and start trading. Our Launch Lite package sits here at £499.
Around £1,000. A fuller site with more pages, copywriting for the key pages, a Google Business Profile set up properly, structured data for search and AI visibility, and a couple of revision rounds. This is the level most small businesses actually need. Launch Pro is £999.
£2,000 and up. More pages or e-commerce, brand strategy work feeding the design, analytics and conversion tracking, and post-launch support and training. Worth it when the site is a genuine sales channel rather than a credibility marker. Launch Premium is £1,999.
Above that, you are usually paying for complexity, integrations, custom functionality, multiple user types, rather than for a nicer-looking site.
The question to ask yourself first
Before requesting any quote, answer this: what is the website supposed to do?
"Look professional" is a real answer, and it points to a smaller budget than people expect. "Generate thirty enquiries a month" is a different answer entirely and points at content, search visibility and conversion work that costs more than the build itself.
Most disappointing website projects are not badly built. They are well built against an unstated goal.