How much does a website cost in the UK? Build and monthly costs

A small business website – a brand website of up to 8 pages – costs from £1,900 at Sparcley and takes about 4 weeks. That size suits a typical service business that needs to explain what it does, show its work and turn visitors into enquiries.

The price buys a defined scope, not an open-ended number of hours. A brand website includes up to 8 pages, 2 revision rounds and copywriting of up to 2,000 words, and it comes with a 12-month guarantee and 3 months of hosting free. Payment is split into three parts – 30% when development begins, 40% when development is complete and testing starts, and 30% on approval and handover – so you pay in step with the work rather than all at once.

So how much should a website cost? Judge a quote by its scope, not by a guess about the number of pages. Two quotes for an 8-page site can be far apart because one includes the copy, revision rounds and a guarantee and the other does not.

Yes, for a brand website of up to 8 pages: Sparcley's brand website costs from £1,900. A budget of that size covers a complete site for a service business as long as the project stays within the package; it does not cover an online shop or work beyond the package limits.

What a brand website from £1,900 covers:

• Up to 8 pages, designed and built for your business.
• 2 revision rounds, so you can shape the design and content before launch.
• Copywriting of up to 2,000 words.
• A 12-month guarantee and 3 months of hosting free.
• Payment in three parts: 30% upfront, 40% when development is complete and 30% on approval and handover.

What costs extra: more than 8 pages or more revision rounds, which are added to the scope and priced in the quote; an online shop, which is an eCommerce website from £4,900; hosting after the first 3 months; and ongoing maintenance, which under Complete Digital Care costs £249 per month. Paid themes and plugins carry their own licence fees, whoever builds the site.

A WordPress brand website from Sparcley costs from £1,900 and takes about 4 weeks. WordPress itself has no licence fee – it is open-source software released under the GPLv2 (or later) licence – so a WordPress website costs whatever its design, build, content, hosting and upkeep cost.

We build websites on WordPress, and online shops on WooCommerce and OpenCart. Our brand website costs from £1,900, and the quote is based on the pages, content and features you need rather than on the name of the software.

Other WordPress costs come from add-ons and upkeep: premium themes and plugins are sold under their own licences, often with yearly renewals, and WordPress core, themes and plugins need regular updates after launch. Those updates are part of website maintenance, covered in the section on monthly costs below.

One example of this kind of project is a bilingual WordPress website we designed and developed for an athletics school in Lithuania, with a competition calendar, results, coach profiles and online admissions.

An eCommerce website from Sparcley costs from £4,900 and takes about 5 weeks, including integration with 1 supplier or upload of up to 50 products and copywriting of up to 2,000 words. It costs more than a brand website because an online shop also needs product pages, a basket, a checkout, payments and a way to manage orders.

Three things raise the price of an online shop:

• More products and suppliers. The starting price includes 1 supplier integration or up to 50 products; a catalogue fed by several suppliers needs supplier product import, which is quoted per project.
• Custom features. Price calculators, product configurators and made-to-measure options take design and development time beyond a standard shop.
• More languages. Every extra language adds content, translation and testing to each product and page.

The platform itself is rarely the big cost. WooCommerce and OpenCart are open-source, and neither charges a monthly platform fee; you pay for hosting, any paid extensions and the payment provider's fees, which are charged on each transaction.

Scope sets the price: the number of pages and templates, how much content is written for you, how many products and suppliers there are, and which custom features and integrations the site needs. Design, development and testing time all grow with scope, which is why two websites on the same platform can cost very different amounts.

The main cost factors, with the limits that apply at Sparcley:

• Pages and templates: a brand website includes up to 8 pages; each extra page or new page layout adds design and build time.
• Content: copywriting of up to 2,000 words is included in brand and eCommerce websites; longer copy and translations add to the scope.
• Revision rounds: 2 are included in a brand website; further rounds are added to the scope.
• Products and suppliers: an eCommerce website includes integration with 1 supplier or upload of up to 50 products; larger catalogues and more suppliers need more import work.
• Custom features and integrations: bookings, price calculators or a connection to other business software are built to order; a custom CRM, for example, is a separate project from £4,980.
• Platform extensions: paid themes, plugins and modules are one-off or yearly licences; our own OpenCart modules, for example, cost $39–$98 each on the OpenCart Marketplace.
• Legal pages and cookie consent: UK websites need consent before setting cookies that are not strictly necessary, as the ICO's guidance explains, so analytics and marketing tools come with consent set-up work.

Once a website is live, its running costs are hosting, the domain and maintenance; at Sparcley, the first 3 months of hosting are free and maintenance with 4 hours of work included costs £249 per month. Budget for these from the start, because software, content and security updates do not stop at launch.

Complete Digital Care costs £249 per month, or £2,390.40 per year, and includes 4 hours of work; extra hours are £59. Monitoring runs 24/7, and support is available Monday–Friday, 09:00–18:00.

The yearly view is the one to compare: add up the build price, hosting after any free period, the domain, maintenance and licence renewals for the first year. A lower build price can still mean a higher first-year total if every fix after launch is billed separately.

A website redesign is priced by quote, because the cost depends on how much of the current site can stay, so the quote follows a review of your site. A redesign costs less than a new build only when most of the content, page structure and platform can stay; when all three change, it is in effect a new website. That is why redesign quotes vary even more than quotes for new sites: the same word covers a new look for a working site and a complete rebuild.

Signs that a rebuild, not a redesign, is the better option:

• The platform or theme no longer receives updates, or updating it breaks the site.
• The page structure no longer matches the services you sell, so most pages need rewriting anyway.
• The site cannot take what you need next – an online shop, bookings or a second language – without being rebuilt.
• Most of the content is out of date and will be replaced.

If none of these applies, fix the current site first: faster pages, clearer content and a simpler checkout can do more for enquiries and sales than a new design. For a price on your project, send us the address of your current website and a list of what needs to change, and we will quote the redesign or the rebuild.

An accurate website quote is a price tied to a written scope: the pages, content, features and support you will get, and what each payment covers.

Check, too, whether the price includes VAT. VAT-registered suppliers add VAT at the standard rate of 20%, which adds a fifth to any price quoted without it.

A vague brief gets a vague price. Compare two requests: before – “a simple website for my business”; after – “6 pages, 2 languages, a contact form, about 1,500 words of copy we will write ourselves, launch in 6 weeks”. The second can be priced line by line, and two suppliers quoting it will be quoting the same thing.

To get quotes you can compare:

1. 01List the pages, languages and features you need, and mark the must-haves.
2. 02Decide who writes the content and roughly how many words it needs.
3. 03Count your products and suppliers if you sell online.
4. 04Ask what the price includes: revision rounds, copywriting, hosting, guarantee and support after launch.
5. 05Check whether the price includes VAT at the 20% standard rate.
6. 06Agree in writing who owns the code, the domain and the hosting account.
7. 07Compare the first-year total – build plus monthly costs – not just the build price.

At Sparcley, payment is split 30% upfront when development begins, 40% when development is complete and 30% on approval and handover. A brand website takes about 4 weeks and an eCommerce website about 5 weeks. Send us your list and we will reply within 24 business hours.