Website costs, UK, 14 October 2026
What a small business website actually costs.
A website built for you here is £400, then £100 a year, with no VAT to add. Building one yourself on Wix or Squarespace costs about £11 to £19 a month once VAT is counted, and a design agency will usually quote £2,000 to £5,000. Over five years the first two land in almost the same place. Here are the real numbers, read off each platform’s own pricing page.
- Prices checked
- 14 October 2026
- Billing
- Annual, standard price, no first-year offers
- Five years
- Monthly price times sixty, so you can check the sum
- VAT
- Added where a platform lists its price without it
01 / Brochure website
Five years of a brochure website.
02 / What the £400 includes
16 things, all inside the price.
- A website built from scratch around your business, not a template with your logo dropped in
- Your domain name, bought and set up for you
- Hosting, sorted and paid for
- Your Google Business Profile set up properly, or fixed if it is already a mess
- Every page written so Google can find you
- Set up so ChatGPT and Gemini can recommend you, which almost no small business has done yet
- Privacy policy, terms and cookie banner, written for you
- Checked on phones, tablets and computers, because most of your visitors are on a phone
- Usable by people with poor eyesight or who cannot use a mouse
- Your photos resized and optimised so nothing loads slowly
- Your words tidied up, or written from scratch if you would rather I did
- A contact form that actually reaches you, and a record of every enquiry
- Nothing to update and no plugins to go wrong
- A round of changes after you have seen it, written into the quote
- Shown how to edit it yourself afterwards, if you want to
- Yours outright. Move it somewhere else whenever you like
A monthly plan gives you hosting, a template, and the domain for the first year. Everything else on this list is yours to do, or to pay somebody else for.
03 / Online shop
Five years of an online shop.
04 / Small print
What the monthly price leaves out.
Wix and WordPress.com list their prices without VAT. If your business is not VAT registered, which most small ones are not, you pay a fifth on top, so a £16 a month Wix plan is really £19.20. The figures on this page include it. Squarespace and Shopify do not say on their pricing pages whether VAT is added, so they are shown exactly as listed. There is no VAT on mine.
The free domain lasts one year on Wix, Squarespace and WordPress.com. From year two you pay for it separately. Mine is inside the £100.
Every one of the platform figures assumes you build the site yourself: choosing a template, writing the pages, sorting the images, working out the search settings. That is the part of a website that takes the time, and it is the part the monthly price does not cover.
Stop paying the platform and the site goes with it. A site built for you here is yours outright, and you can move it anywhere.
Card fees apply everywhere you take payments. On the shops I build, payments go through Stripe at 1.5% plus 20p for a standard UK card. Shopify Basic charges 2% plus 25p.
05 / The figures
Every number, and where it came from.
Brochure website
| Option | Price | Five years | Who builds it |
|---|---|---|---|
| A design agency Typical quote | £2,000 to £5,000 to build | £2,000 to £5,000 | Built for you, plus hosting on top |
| Wix Core | £16 + VAT = £19.20 a month | £1,152 | You build it |
| Squarespace Core | £17 a month | £1,020 | You build it |
| Ferris Creative Website | £400, then £100 a year for hosting and domain. No VAT to add | £900 | Built for you, with all 16 things below included |
| Squarespace Basic | £12 a month | £720 | You build it |
| Wix Light | £9 + VAT = £10.80 a month | £648 | You build it |
| WordPress.com Premium | £7 + VAT = £8.40 a month | £504 | You build it |
Online shop
| Option | Price | Five years | Who builds it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wix Business | £25 + VAT = £30 a month | £1,800 | You build it |
| Shopify Basic | £19 a month | £1,140 | You build it, card fees 2% + 25p |
| Squarespace Core | £17 a month | £1,020 | You build it |
| Ferris Creative Online shop | £500, then £100 a year for hosting and domain. No VAT to add | £1,000 | Built for you, all 16 things included plus checkout and delivery, card fees 1.5% + 20p |
Prices read from each platform’s own UK pricing page on 14 October 2026, annual billing, standard price: Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, WordPress.com, Stripe. Platforms change prices and run offers, so check before you buy.
06 / Straight answer
Where building it yourself does come out cheaper.
If you want the smallest possible site, have the evenings to build it, and do not mind a template, a WordPress.com or Wix Light plan is cheaper in cash than anything I do. That is a perfectly sensible choice, and I would rather tell you than pretend otherwise.
Where it stops being cheaper is when the site has to bring work in. The search setup, the Google listing, the structured data that lets assistants recommend you, and the writing all come with mine and none of them come with the monthly plan.
Agency prices are not published, so that range is an estimate of typical small agency quotes. Yours may come in higher or lower.
07 / Questions
The things people worry about asking.
How much does a Wix website cost in the UK?
As listed on 14 October 2026, Wix costs £9 a month for Light, £16 for Core, £25 for Business and £119 for Business Elite, on annual billing. Those prices exclude VAT, so a business that is not VAT registered pays £10.80, £19.20, £30 and £142.80. Business is the cheapest plan that takes payments. Over five years Core comes to £1,152 including VAT, and you build the site yourself.
How much does Squarespace cost in the UK?
As listed on 14 October 2026, Squarespace costs £12 a month for Basic, £17 for Core, £29 for Plus and £79 for Advanced, on annual billing. Basic adds a 2% fee on online store sales; Core and above do not. Over five years Core comes to £1,020.
How much does a Shopify shop cost per month in the UK?
As listed on 14 October 2026, Shopify costs £19 a month for Basic, £49 for Grow and £259 for Advanced on annual billing, or £25 a month for Basic paid monthly. Card fees on Basic start at 2% plus 25p per sale. Over five years Basic comes to £1,140 before card fees.
Is a WordPress website free?
The WordPress software is free, but you still pay for somewhere to host it and a domain. WordPress.com, the hosted version, listed Personal at £3 a month, Premium at £7 and Business at £20 on 14 October 2026, on annual billing and before tax. With VAT that is £3.60, £8.40 and £24.
How much does a website cost for a small business?
Roughly three routes. Build it yourself on a platform for anywhere from about £45 to £360 a year including VAT, plus your own time. Have it built by one person, which here is £400 then £100 a year including the domain and hosting. Or use a design agency, which typically quotes £2,000 to £5,000 before hosting.
Why is a website built for you only £400?
It is one person with low overheads who has built enough of them to be quick, rather than an agency carrying an office, a sales team and account managers. Nothing is held back at that price and nothing is added later unless you ask for it.
Tell me what you are thinking.
Two fields are required and you are not committing to anything. Even if you are only half sure, send it. I would rather talk you out of something than sell you the wrong thing.