How much should a website cost for a small business?

It is the first question most business owners ask, and the honest answer is that it depends on what you are buying. A website can cost fifty pounds or five figures, and the price usually tells you which of three very different things you are getting.

The three price bands, roughly

• Do it yourself (£0 to £30 a month): a template builder like Wix or Squarespace. You do the work, the design, the words and the upkeep.
• One-off freelance build (£800 to £4,000): someone builds it once and hands it over. It looks good on day one, then it is yours to maintain, update and keep found on Google.
• Done for you, ongoing (a monthly fee): the site is designed, built, hosted, kept up to date and worked on every month. You never touch it.

Why the cheapest option is rarely the cheapest

A template you build yourself has no price on the invoice, but it has a price in your time and in the enquiries a rushed, generic site never brings in. A one-off build looks like a bargain until six months later, when it is out of date, nobody is looking after it, and it has quietly slipped down Google. The real cost of a website is not what you pay to launch it. It is what it earns, or fails to earn, over the years you rely on it.

What to actually compare

Ignore the headline number for a moment and ask four things. Who keeps it running after launch? Who makes sure it keeps getting found? What happens when you need a change? And how many enquiries is it realistically expected to bring in? A more expensive site that answers those clearly is usually cheaper than a bargain that answers none of them.

If you would rather not weigh all that up, that is exactly the gap a done-for-you service fills. Tell us your town and we will show you what your site could look like.