How much does a website cost in the UK in 2026?

“It depends” is the true answer to what a website costs, and also the least useful one. The gap between a £500 template and a £50,000 build is real — but it's entirely explainable. Once you know what you're actually paying for, you can decide where on that spectrum your business should sit, rather than being talked up or down by whoever's quoting.

Here are the honest UK ranges in 2026, what each band genuinely buys you, and the running costs almost nobody puts in the quote.

The honest ranges

• DIY / template — £0–£2,000. Squarespace, Wix or a Shopify theme you set up yourself. Fine for validating an idea or a very small brochure presence. You trade differentiation and control for speed and price.
• Freelancer / small brochure site — £2,000–£8,000. A handful of pages, light customisation of a theme, basic SEO. Good value for simple needs; limited when you want something bespoke.
• Professional marketing site — £8,000–£25,000. Custom design, a proper CMS you can edit, performance and accessibility done properly, real SEO foundations. This is where most growing businesses should be — see our web design service.
• Ecommerce / bespoke — £25,000 and up. Shopify Plus, headless builds, complex catalogues, integrations and custom functionality. Priced by complexity, not by page count.

What actually drives the price

• Unique page templates. Ten variations of one layout is cheap; ten genuinely different page types is not.
• Custom design vs theme. A bespoke, on-brand design costs more than configuring an off-the-shelf theme — and looks and converts accordingly.
• CMS and editability. How much you can change yourself, safely, without breaking the design.
• Ecommerce and transactions. Payments, tax, shipping, inventory and checkout add real work.
• Integrations. CRM, email, booking, ERP and analytics tools each take time to wire in.
• Content and migration. Copywriting, photography and moving content off an old site are routinely underestimated.
• The performance and accessibility bar. Fast, accessible, well-structured sites take more care — and earn it back in rankings and conversions.

Template vs custom: the real trade-off

A template wins on speed and upfront price. A custom build wins on differentiation, performance and conversion — the things that decide whether the site actually makes you money. For a brand competing on anything other than being the cheapest, a templated site that looks like ten competitors is a false economy. For ecommerce specifically, Shopify and Shopify Plus hit a sweet spot of power and cost — which is why we build a lot of stores on it; see our Shopify work.

The running costs nobody quotes

The build is the start, not the end. Budget for hosting, a domain and SSL, platform or app fees (Shopify, plugins), ongoing maintenance and security updates, and support when something breaks. None of these are large individually, but a quote that ignores them isn't telling you the whole cost of ownership.

Where cheap gets expensive

The most expensive websites we see are the cheap ones built twice. A slow, templated site with weak SEO foundations and no thought for conversion will quietly cost you traffic and sales every month, then need replacing in eighteen months. Site speed is a genuine ranking and revenue factor now — a fast, well-built site isn't a luxury, it pays for itself.

What to ask before you pay

Ask who owns the site and code (it should be you), what platform you'll be on and why, what's included for SEO and performance, and what the ongoing costs are. A good partner will scope to your goals and tell you honestly where a cheaper option would serve you better — which is exactly how we approach a web project. If you want a straight estimate for what you're trying to do, tell us about it.