How much does a website actually cost? An honest 2026 answer

“It depends.”

That’s the answer you get from most web designers when you ask what a website costs, and I do understand why. It genuinely does depend. But “it depends” is also a brilliant way to tell you absolutely nothing, and you came here for a number, not a shrug.

So here’s mine, before I waffle: most of the websites I build land somewhere between £3,000 and £20,000. It’s a wide range, I know. Let me explain what moves you up and down it, what you actually get for the money, and where the cheaper options make sense (and where they’ll bite you later).

Why the range is so wide

A website isn’t one thing. “I need a website” can mean a tidy five-page site for a local trades business, or a WooCommerce shop with a thousand products, stock syncing and customer logins. Those aren’t the same job, and they shouldn’t be the same price.

The honest version: a website costs roughly what the work costs. The design, the build, the content, the functionality, the testing. The more of each, the more it costs. That’s genuinely it. Anyone advertising “any website, £499!” is either restyling a template and changing the colours, or counting on you not noticing the upsells later.

What you actually get at each end

Rough brackets, because every project’s bespoke, but this is more or less how it shakes out:

Around £3,000 to £5,000 gets you a proper, bespoke small-business site. A handful of pages, designed around your business rather than dropped into a stock theme, fast, mobile-friendly, and built to be found on Google. For most local businesses, this is the sweet spot.

Around £5,000 to £10,000 is where it grows up: more pages, more custom design, a blog or news section, light functionality like online booking or smart enquiry forms, maybe a small shop. The sort of site a growing business needs to hold its own next to bigger competitors.

£10,000 to £20,000 and beyond is the serious end: WooCommerce shops doing real volume, bespoke functionality, integrations with the other systems you run, the lot. If your website is a core part of how you actually make money, this is what “properly” costs.

Past that you’re into bespoke web apps, which is a different conversation entirely. (I build those too, but that’s another post.)

What actually drives the price

If you want to make sense of any quote, look at these:

• How many pages, and how custom. Five pages from a template is quick. Twenty pages, each designed from scratch, is not.
• Bespoke design vs a theme. A design that genuinely looks like you takes longer than restyling someone else’s template. It also doesn’t look like everyone else’s.
• Functionality. A brochure site is straightforward. A shop, a booking system, a members’ area, a calculator, an integration with your CRM… every one of those is real work.
• E-commerce. Selling online drags in payments, products, stock, tax, shipping and a pile of edge cases. Worth it, but never free.
• Content. Got the words and photos ready? Brilliant. Need them written and shot? That’s part of the cost too.
• The boring-but-vital stuff. Hosting, security, backups, speed, the SEO foundations, accessibility. Skimping here is exactly how you end up with a cheap site that costs you dearly later.

”But I’ve seen websites for £500”

You have, and some of them are genuinely fine. Here’s the honest trade-off.

A DIY builder like Wix or Squarespace runs you a tenner or two a month, and if you’ve got the time and a decent eye, you can put together something perfectly respectable. The catch is the time, and the ceiling: you’re doing the work, and you’ll hit the edges of the template sooner than you’d like.

A cheap freelancer at a few hundred quid can also work out nicely, right up until you need support, or a change, or they quietly stop replying. At that price you’re not really buying a website, you’re buying a one-off favour.

What you’re paying a studio for isn’t just the pixels. It’s the judgement, the doing-it-properly, and, crucially, the still-being-here-in-two-years when something needs sorting. Which brings me neatly to the local bit.

Why local actually matters

I’m based in Didcot and I work with businesses right across Oxfordshire. A website can obviously be built by someone anywhere, but there’s a lot to be said for being able to sit across a table from the person building it.

I like meeting clients. I like understanding the business before I design a single pixel. And when something needs fixing in a year’s time, you’re talking to me, in your timezone, who actually remembers your project, rather than a ticket queue on another continent. For plenty of Oxfordshire businesses, that’s worth more than shaving a couple of hundred quid off the quote.

So, what’ll yours cost?

Honestly? I don’t know yet, and anyone who hands you a firm number before understanding your project is guessing. But I’d far rather give you a real range than a vague shrug.

If you want a number on the spot, our quote builder will give you an honest estimate in a couple of minutes, no waiting and no obligation. If you’d sooner just talk it through, book a free chat and we’ll scope it out properly. No hard sell, no jargon, just a straight answer.

Which is, at the very least, a good deal more than “it depends”.