The honest breakdown of what goes into a £750 site, a £3,000 site, and a £15,000 site, and which one is right for your business.
There's a wide range in what trades pay for websites. The differences aren't mysterious, and once you know what you're paying for, you can pick the right tier for your business intentionally.
DIY templates
Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy. You drag and drop a template, fill in your text, and it's live. Pros: cheap, fast, you control it. Cons: it looks like a hundred thousand other businesses, performs badly on mobile, ranks poorly on Google, and is hard to convert from. Right for: hobby businesses, side hustles, very early-stage testing. Wrong if you want the phone to ring.
Independent designer, custom build
Custom design (no template), 5–8 pages, conversion-focused copy, mobile-first build, on-page SEO foundations, basic CMS for updates. Pros: looks unique, performs well, designed for conversion. Cons: limited custom functionality (no booking systems, no member areas, no e-commerce). Right for: 90% of local service businesses.
Small agency, more custom
10–20 pages, more design polish, custom photoshoot included, booking integration, more sophisticated CMS, light branding work. Right for: established businesses with strong revenue who want a step-change in brand presence.
Full agency
Full brand design, custom photography and video, complex functionality (calculators, booking systems, member portals), thorough strategy work, multiple stakeholders. Right for: businesses turning over significant revenue where the website is genuinely a strategic asset.
Beware the £200 "agency" website
The agency that promises a full custom site for £200 plus a tiny monthly that "includes everything", these are template farms reselling the same site to hundreds of businesses with your logo swapped in. They lock you into long contracts, hold your domain hostage, and disappear when you ask for changes. Avoid.
What a proper trade website should actually deliver
At any honest tier, you should get: full custom design (no template you've seen elsewhere), conversion-focused copy written for your specific business, mobile-first build, sub-2-second load times, on-page SEO and schema, click-to-call/WhatsApp/quote-form integration, a private admin hub for leads, analytics and any tools you ask us to build in, and at least 30 days of post-launch tweaks. Anyone charging real money and not delivering all of that is overpriced.
The fastest way to find out what yours would cost
Pricing depends on scope. The honest answer is to get a free demo built for your business, then a tailored proposal with real numbers. Request one at /free-demo.